ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to challenge two views of the battles between the Egyptians and the Crusaders between 1099 and 1105, in which a series of Egyptian expeditions into Palestine were either defeated or failed to secure the victory. On the one hand was the traditional view expressed by Runciman, that the Egyptian army was large but incompetent. On the other was the view of Hamblin that it was a fine, composite force that failed to dislodge the Crusaders since the main purpose of its expeditions was defensive: they were reactions to Frankish attacks upon the cities of the coast that arrived too late for a decisive encounter. The chapter argues that they were aggressive, undertaken at considerable cost by the Wazir al-Afdal on behalf of the Fatimid Caliph, in fulfilment of the duty of the Amir al-Mu’minin to defend the lands of Islam against the infidel, and thereby to secure his own position as the Caliph’s chief representative.
