On 7 May 1104, on the plains south of Harran in Upper Mesopotamia, a Turkish army under the emirs Chökürmish of Mosul and Sokman of Mardin destroyed the combined forces of the crusader states of Edessa and Antioch. Count Baldwin of Edessa and his vassal Joscelin were taken prisoner, while Bohemond of Antioch and his nephew Tancred escaped with a handful of men. It was the first great defeat of the crusader states founded after the First Crusade, and it ended their push to the east.
The crusader states in 1104
After the First Crusade the Franks held a chain of new states in Syria and Palestine. The County of Edessa, the most easterly of them, had been ruled since 1100 by Baldwin of Le Bourg, a cousin of King Baldwin I of Jerusalem. To his west lay the Principality of Antioch, held by the Norman Bohemond, who had only been released from Turkish captivity in 1103.1
In the spring of 1104 two powerful Turkish emirs, Chökürmish of Mosul and Sokman ibn Artuk of Mardin, settled their quarrels and joined forces against the Franks. The Damascus chronicler Ibn al-Qalanisi says they swore to wage holy war together and camped at Ras al-Ain early in the Muslim month of Shaban, which began on 29 April. They moved against Edessa. Baldwin called for help, and Bohemond and Tancred marched from Antioch to join him and his chief vassal, Joscelin, lord of Tell Bashir.2
The siege and the pursuit
Instead of waiting for the Turks at Edessa, the four leaders attacked Harran, a stronghold that the historian Harold S. Fink places twenty-three miles south of the city. Fink sees the move as a diversion that drew the Turkish army away from Edessa. The Armenian chronicler Matthew of Edessa says the Franks pressed Harran so hard that it was close to famine. He also tells how a Frankish soldier fouled a loaf of bread and left it at the town gate, and how the townspeople took it as a sacrilege that God would punish.3
When the Turkish army came up, it used a feigned retreat. Fink writes that the Turks fell back south for three days, drawing the Franks after them until the crusaders split into two bodies. Matthew places the battle two days' march from Harran, at a place he calls Oshut, and blames the defeat on pride: Baldwin and Joscelin, he says, kept Bohemond and Tancred at a distance so that they could take the glory of the first attack for themselves. The exact site of the battle is not known.4
The battle of 7 May
The two Frankish bodies were beaten one after the other. Ibn al-Qalanisi dates the battle to 9 Shaban, which he equates with 7 May, and Britannica gives the same date for Baldwin's capture. The date is in the Julian calendar used in Europe at the time. Baldwin and Joscelin were taken prisoner. Bohemond and Tancred escaped to Edessa with a small following.5
The chroniclers give large figures that cannot be checked. Ibn al-Qalanisi writes that the Frankish numbers exceeded ten thousand horse and foot, not counting the baggage train. Matthew of Edessa speaks of more than thirty thousand Christian dead, and of ten thousand more fugitives cut down by the people of Harran on the way back. Ibn al-Qalanisi called it a great and unexampled victory that broke the Franks' power of attack and lifted Muslim spirits.6
A limit in the east
The captives were shared out. Joscelin was held by Sokman, while Chökürmish took Baldwin from Sokman's camp and carried him off to Mosul. Fink writes that Bohemond and Tancred, who gained from Baldwin's absence, were slow to pay his ransom, and that Baldwin spent four years in captivity. Britannica says he was ransomed in 1108 and fought his way back into Edessa. In 1118 he was crowned King of Jerusalem.7
Tancred became regent of Edessa. Antioch lost ground on every side: Fink describes Ridwan of Aleppo retaking a string of border fortresses almost without a fight, and Byzantine forces seizing Latakia and towns in Cilicia. Short of men and money, Bohemond left Tancred in charge and sailed for Italy to raise new forces against Byzantium. Fink compares the battle to the defeat of the Roman general Crassus at Carrhae, the same place, in 53 BC, and argues that it ended any chance the Franks had of pushing into Iraq. The struggle between the crusaders and their Muslim neighbors went on, and its turning point is told in our article on the Battle of Hattin.8
