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ARABS

i
OTHER WORKS BY THE AUTHOR

Travel/History
Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land (1997)
Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of
Ibn Battutah (2001)
The Hall of a Thousand Columns: Hindustan to Malabar with
Ibn Battutah (2005)
Landfalls: On the Edge of Islam with Ibn Battutah (2010)

Editions/Translations
The Travels of Ibn Battutah (2002)
Two Arabic Travel Books (with James E. Montgomery; 2014)
Kitab al-Ifadah (Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi’s description of Egypt;
forthcoming)

Fiction
Bloodstone (2017)

ii
AR ABS
A 3,000-YEAR HISTORY OF
PEOPLES, TRIBES AND EMPIRES

TIM MACKINTOSH-SMITH

YALE UNIVERSIT Y PRESS


NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

iii
Copyright © 2019 Tim Mackintosh-Smith

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that
copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the
public press) without written permission from the publishers.

For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact:
U.S. Office: [email protected] yalebooks.com
Europe Office: [email protected] yalebooks.co.uk

Set in Fournier MT by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd


Printed in Great Britain by Gomer Press Ltd, Llandysul, Ceredigion, Wales

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018968579

ISBN 978-0-300-18028-2

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

iv
Sha’b: . . . Collection, or union; and also separation, division, or disunion
. . . A nation, people, race, or family of mankind . . .
Edward William Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon

And if your Lord had so willed, He could surely have made mankind one
community. But they will not cease to disagree.
Qur’an 11:118

Thus we had upwards of 1,400 separate tribal ‘governments’ in the two


[Hadhrami] states. There were also several hundred autonomous towns
of unarmed men . . . Altogether I calculated there were about 2,000
separate ‘governments’ in the Hadhramaut.
Harold Ingrams, Arabia and the Isles

v
In memory of a unified Yemen (1990—2014)
and of Ali Husayn Ash’ab (1998—2016)
and all the others who died with it.

vi
CONTENTS

List of Illustrations and Maps ix

Foreword The Wheel and the Hourglass xii

Introduction Gathering the Word 1

EMERGENCE: 900 BC – AD 600


1 Voices from the Wilderness: Earliest Arabs 19
2 Peoples and Tribes: Sabaeans, Nabataeans and Nomads 46
3 Scattered Far and Wide: The Changing Grammar of History 70
4 On the Edge of Greatness: The Days of the Arabs 88

REVOLUTION: 600–630
5 Revelation, Revolution: Muhammad and the Qur’an 115
6 God and Caesar: The State of Medina 147

DOMINANCE: 630–900
7 Crescaders: Openings-Up 177
8 The Kingdom of Damascus: Umayyad Rule 223
9 The Empire of Baghdad: Abbasid Sovereignty 262

DECLINE: 900–1350
10 Counter-Cultures, Counter-Caliphs: The Empire Breaks Up 305
11 The Genius in the Bottle: The Hordes Close In 348
vii
CONTENTS

ECLIPSE: 1350–1800
12 Masters of the Monsoon: Arabs around the Indian Ocean 381

RE-EMERGENCE: 1800–NOW
13 Identity Rediscovered: Awakenings 413
14 The Age of Hope: Nasserism, Ba’thism, Liberation, Oil 459
15 The Age of Disappointment: Autocrats, Islamocrats,
Anacharchs 488

Afterword In the Station of History 527

Chronology 537
Notes 559
Bibliography 602
Index 609

viii
ILLUSTRATIONS
AND MAPS

ILLUSTRATIONS

1 Wadi Rum, Jordan. Daniel Case.


2 A village near al-Tawilah, north-western Yemen. Bernard Gagnon.
3 Gypsum wall panel from Nimrud, Iraq, 728 BC. British Museum 118901
© The Trustees of the British Museum.
4 Part of the southern sluice of the Sabaean dam at Marib, Yemen, sixth
century BC. Chris Hellier / Alamy Stock Photo.
5 A South Arabian calcite-alabaster stele commemorating Ha’an ibn Dhu
Zu’d, first–third century AD. British Museum 102601 © The Trustees of
the British Museum.
6 Muhammad Ali at the Ka’bah, Mecca, 1972. Bettmann / Getty Images.
7 Persian image of the Prophet Muhammad on his ‘night journey’ and
ascension to the heavens, early twentieth century. Chris Hellier / Alamy
Stock Photo.
8 Qur’an fragment with parts of Chapters 19 and 20, before AD 645.
9 Mosaics from the west side of the courtyard, Umayyad Mosque,
Damascus, early eighth century. Heretiq.
10 The Baghdad Gate, al-Raqqah, eighth century. B. O’Kane / Alamy
Stock Photo.

ix
I L L U S T R AT I O N S A N D M A P S

11 A gold coin minted by King Offa of Mercia, AD 774. British Museum


1913, 1213.1 © The Trustees of the British Museum.
12 Sultan Qabus of Jurjan’s mortuary skyscraper, Iran, AD 1006. Robert
Harding / robertharding.
13 A manuscript miniature from al-Hariri’s Maqamat, AD 1237. World
History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo.
14 Marble tombstone commemorating Ali ibn Uthman al-Mursi, Aden,
fourteenth or fifteenth century. British Museum 1840, 0302.1 © The
Trustees of the British Museum.
15 A panel over the entrance of the Great Mosque, Xi’an, China. Frédéric
Araujo / Alamy Stock Photo.
16 Napoleon visiting the Great Pyramid in 1798, nineteenth-century
woodcut. World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo.
17 The procession of the Egyptian mahmal leaving for the Mecca
pilgrimage, c. 1917. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II 2018.
18 King Ibn Sa’ud of Saudi Arabia and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt
aboard the USS Quincy, Egypt, 1945.
19 Nasser of Egypt with Nikita Khrushchev of the USSR, 1964. Pictorial
Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo.
20 Saudi Aramco’s main installation, Dhahran. MyLoupe / Contributor /
Getty Images.
21 Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhafi in Belgrade, near the beginning of his rule.
Courtesy of Tanja Kragujević.
22 Mu’ammar al-Qadhdhafi in Addis Ababa, 2 February 2009. U.S. Navy.
23 Graffito by Banksy on the Israeli-built separation wall, Palestine, 2012.
Nick Fielding / Alamy Stock Photo.
24 A camel-borne hireling of the Mubarak regime scatters anti-Mubarak
protesters in Cairo, February 2011. Mohammed Abou Zaid / Associated
Press.
25 Members of the ‘Islamic State’ use sledgehammers on a statue in the
Nineveh Museum, Iraq, February 2015. Screengrab from an ‘Islamic
State’ video.
26 Fans of Bashshar al-Asad at a rally to support his candidacy in the forth-
coming presidential election, Damascus, April 2014. Xinhua / Alamy
Stock Photo.

x
I L L U S T R AT I O N S A N D M A P S

27 Detail of the late thirteenth-century minbar formerly in the Great


Mosque, Aleppo. Bernard O’Kane / Alamy Stock Photo.

MAPS

1 The Arabian Peninsula and adjoining regions before Islam.


2 The Arab empire.
3 Arabs abroad.
4 The Arabic world in recent centuries.

xi
FOREWORD

THE WHEEL AND THE


HOURGLASS


ُ‫ال أَحْ ِسبُ الد ْھ َر يُبْلي ِج ﱠدةً أبداً وال تُقَ ﱢس ُم شعبًا واح ًدا ُش َعب‬
I did not think that time would ever wear out what was new,
or that its changes would divide a people who were one.
Dhu ’l-Rummah

Twenty-seven years ago I began work on my first book, an exploration of


the land and history of Yemen, the country in which I was living, and where
I still live now. The two former parts of the country had been unified not
long before, in May 1990, just ahead of German unification. Walls were
coming down, iron curtains parting, and a line in the wilderness was being
erased. In Yemen, it was a time of optimism. Admittedly, there was a short
war of attempted secession in 1994, in which the former regime in the south
shot almost as many Scud missiles at us in San’a as Saddam Husayn had
launched at Israel three years earlier; in response, our rulers in the north
inflicted a horde of straggle-bearded islamists on Aden who trashed, inter
alia, the only brewery in Arabia. But the unified Yemen survived. Bygones,
it seemed, became bygones.
That first book of mine was a homage to a land that had held on to much
from its past, to its millennial cultural unity. Between the lines, the book was

xii
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

also homage to its renewed political unity. Yemen had been a unified state
in earlier periods: in pre-Islamic times, briefly in the fourteenth century,
briefly again in the seventeenth. To many Yemenis, as to me, that unity
seemed, still seems, to be somehow right and proper, something natural. It
seemed right at least as long ago as the fourteenth century: ‘If Yemen were
to be united under one ruler,’ wrote an observer in Egypt, ‘its importance
would increase and its position among the eminent nations would be
strengthened’.
In fact, for more than nine-tenths of its known history, Yemen has not
been unified; far from it. Now, as I write, it appears to be falling apart again.
So too, seemingly, are Iraq and Libya; Syria may hold together, just, under
brute force; Egypt’s integrity looks safe, but its society is deeply riven.
These five countries contain half the population of the Arabic-speaking
world. According to a recent United Nations report, that ‘world’ is home to
5 per cent of humanity, but generates 58 per cent of the earth’s refugees and
68 per cent of its ‘battle-related deaths’ . . . Sometimes it seems that only one
thing unites Arabs, and that is their inability to get along with each other.
Why this disunity? Why this extraordinary level of self-harm?
‘The absence of democracy and its institutions,’ Westerners (shorthand
but useful) would say. They may have a point; but recent foreign interven-
tions allegedly aiming to promote democracy appear only to have added to
the mayhem. And when there are free and fair elections, the islamists tend to
win them; the elections are annulled in a military coup, and the Westerners
go strangely silent. Mouths and money do not go together, it seems.
‘The failure of Islam to unify itself,’ the islamists (again, shorthand)
would say. But that unity has itself been a mirage almost from the Islamic
year dot. Battles over authority and legitimacy have been fought within the
community of Muslims, with words and other weapons, since the fourth
decade of the Islamic era.
‘The legacy of imperialism,’ Arab nationalists (there are still a few left)
would say. But nearly every attempt at unity in the post-imperial age has
failed, usually because of inter-Arab suspicions and squabbles. One Arab
commentator, in a post-mortem on the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, wrote that
‘The Arabs would have won the battle for Palestine had there not been
something false and rotten in themselves’. That ‘something’ was mutual
distrust, resentment and fear. It was the rottenness of bad blood, and it has
bubbled up time and again through Arab history.
xiii
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

Of course, disunity is hardly an Arab monopoly. Much of the map of


Europe was a crazy paving of statelets well into the modern age. That
German reunification of 1990, itself part of a contrary process that frag-
mented the Soviet Union, was a return to a unity that was then a mere two
lifetimes old. During those lifetimes, Europe had been the epicentre of wars
that blasted apart the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires and led to
the gentler meltdown of the British empire – but out of which came the
United Nations and the European Union (those well-known bastions of
unanimity). All the world’s a crucible in which once-stable compounds are
continually breaking down and new ones forming. If there were no such
change, there would be no history. Union and division are part of the same
process. Hence the first epigraph to this book, from Lane’s Arabic-English
Lexicon:

Sha’b: . . . Collection, or union; and also separation, division, or disunion


. . . A nation, people, race, or family of mankind . . .

(Things become slightly clearer when we see how this apparent contradiction
in terms works: as well as a ‘people’ and all these other things, a sha’b is also a
cranial suture, the place where the bones of the skull both meet and are sepa-
rated; the bones themselves are called qabilahs, otherwise meaning ‘tribes’ . . .
It is as if the human head, with its ‘peoples’ and ‘tribes’, provides an Arabic
anatomy of humankind itself.)
And yet the Arabs always seem a special case. Don’t we, and they them-
selves, usually call them just that – ‘the’ Arabs, as if they were a discrete and
clearly identifiable body of people? If they are, then who are they? And
why do they seem so particularly fissile, so reactive? Should there not be at
least an Arab Union, or even a United Arabian States? . . . Come to think of
it, there was a United Arab States (UAS), forgotten by most histories: it was
a confederation formed of the United Arab Republic (UAR) – itself a polit-
ical union of Egypt and Syria in the brief heyday of pan-Arabism – joined
by the then Kingdom of North Yemen. The UAS and UAR lasted all of
forty-four months, from 1958 to 1961.
There is no reason why political unity should be a good thing per se. But
I believe there is a case for claiming that unity in at least a general sense –
that of harmony, the absence of strife, peaceful coexistence and cooperation
– is better for human society than fragmentation and violent competition.
xiv
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

On a small planet with too many people and too few resources, and particu-
larly in crowded countries like Syria, Egypt and Yemen, it seems to hold out
the only hope.
Unless we kill each other and start all over again.

Histories of Arabs tend to begin with Islam; perhaps with a prefatory nod to
what came before. Islam certainly furnishes an identifiable body of people,
unified for a great moment in history. But it was a unity that was apparent, not
real. According to traditional accounts, the tribes of Arabia came together
in 630−1, the Year of Delegations, when tribal representatives visited the
Prophet Muhammad and paid allegiance to him and the state he had founded.
Within two years, on the death of Muhammad, most of those tribes had gone
back to their old independences and old squabbles. At first the splits were
patched up, and the extraordinary conquests that took Arabs out of Arabia
forged among them an esprit de corps that seemed miraculous – indeed,
God-given. But the underlying tribal divisions were never healed. Within 300
years united Arab rule was only an elaborately cherished memory, and for the
next thousand years or so Arabs, with few exceptions, were themselves
divided and ruled by Turks, Persians, Berbers, Europeans and others. Their
own empire had been amputated; the pain would subside in time, but the
memory of it would remain, like that of a phantom limb.
The historiographical upshot of this is that political histories of Arabs
by modern writers nearly always turn, when they reach about AD 900, into
histories of Arabic culture, then – while Arabs themselves all but disappear
from the picture – morph into histories of other peoples’ empires. Part of
the problem is the word ‘Arab’ itself. Like any name, it is not identical with
the thing it denotes, but is a label placed on that thing. Labels are useful but
confusing. They can cover up a multitude of differences and can hold splits
together; they can tell lies. In time, a label fades and gets over-written, while
its original meaning – if it ever had just the one – is forgotten. In reality, we
are all like old-fashioned travelling trunks, covered with many labels,
geographical, genetic, linguistic and so on (inter alia, I am British/English/
Scottish/Anglo-Saxon/Celtic/European/Indo-European/Yemeni/
Arabian/Arab(ic) . . .); few sections of humanity are as belabelled as the
long-travelled people known as Arabs. But, in the end, most of us get stuck
xv
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

with just one label, and adhere to it, as it does to us. The broader it is, the
harder it sticks.
‘Arab’ is a label that is very broad, very sticky (it has been around for
almost 3,000 years), and yet very slippery. It has signified different things to
different people at different times. The meaning has shape-shifted, expired
and resurrected so often that it is misleading to talk about ‘the’ Arabs, and
that is why this book does not. To do so would be to try to pin down Proteus.
All one can say is that, for more of known history than not, the word has
tended to mean tribal groups who live beyond the reach of settled society.
That is probably what Arabs were during much of the long period up
to Islam; it is certainly what they were throughout most of the second AD
millennium. During both periods, there is good reason for transliterating
them as a common noun, in italics, not as a ‘proper’ people: as ’arab, not
‘Arabs’. What is surprising is that those peripheral, mobile, numerically
insignificant people – people without a capital letter, let alone a capital city –
have been so central to an identity. From Greek city-states in the fifth century
BC, through imperial China, to recently colonial Europe, societies have
defined and simplified themselves in contradistinction to the nomad, the
‘uncivilized’, the ‘barbarian’. Arabs, however, take not only their name but
also their only consistent defining feature, their language, from the epitome
of nomadism and footlooseness, those tribal ’arab.
The people we know today as Arabs are an ethnic compound. The
two main founding elements, nomadic or semi-nomadic ’arab tribes and
settled South Arabian peoples, may both have originated in the Fertile
Crescent to the north of Arabia in prehistoric times; their languages
descended from the same old ‘Semitic’ family. But over time their tongues
had forked and split, and so too had their lifestyles: the South Arabians had
developed settled societies based on irrigation systems and agriculture (they
may well have inherited these systems from older, indigenous peoples
already established in the Arabian south, with whom they intermingled);
’arab, in contrast, practised pastoral transhumance, their wanderings
directed by wells, rains and raids. Mutual interests, both commercial and
political, meant that these two founding elements began to come together in
the centuries before Islam. In early Islamic times, the shared experience
of empire-building made the compound more cohesive for a time – but
also more complex, as peoples from beyond the Arabian Peninsula were
assimilated to the mix. Throughout this long process, tribal ’arab were part
xvi
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

of – indeed, at the heart of – Arabs in the wider sense; they still are, despite
their tiny numbers. But they themselves have always complicated Arab
history from the inside. For the tensions between the settled and unsettled
elements of the compound have generated great strengths, but also fatal
instabilities. We will examine these strengths and weaknesses in the coming
chapters.
One force above all has brought the compound together, and held it
together: language – not everyday speech, but the rich, strange, subtle,
suavely hypnotic, magically persuasive, maddeningly difficult ‘high’ Arabic
language that evolved on the tongues of tribal soothsayers and poets – has
long, perhaps always, been the catalyst of a larger Arab identity. Shared
language is important to any ethnic identity. It is an attempt to reverse the
divinely inflicted disunity of Babel, that babble of misunderstanding that
prevents people from coming together. For Arabs, it has acted not just as an
ethnic marker, but as the ethnic genius: ‘It is said,’ goes an adage that was
already old in the ninth century AD, ‘that wisdom descended from the
heavens on three organs of the people of the earth: the brains of the Greeks,
the hands of the Chinese, and the tongues of the Arabs.’
For this reason, while history is often seen as a succession of men of
action, Arab history is as much, or even more, a series of men (and some
women) of words – poets, preachers, orators, authors; notably, the author
(or, for Muslims, the transmitter) of the first Arabic book, the Qur’an. They
and the words they have used will be prominent in this book. They are the
ones who have formed identity, forged unity and forced the march of history.
From time to time, therefore, for a page or two, we will take stock of how
language has impelled progress, and at times impeded it. Progress and
regress continue. Recent events, not least the ‘Arab Spring’ and its messy
aftermath, have shown how words – slogans, chants, propaganda, mis- and
disinformation, the old mesmerizing magic both white and black – still
shape the course of the Arab world.
Or, rather, the Arabic world, the Arabosphere. Language is still its
defining feature and its genius, and ‘the Arabs’ are really arabophones. To
call everyone from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Strait of Hormuz ‘the
Arabs’ would be like calling all North Americans, South Africans,
Australasians, Irish and British, regardless of origin, ‘the English’ – or even
‘the Angles’, another group of wandering clans whose language was to end
up as the tide-wrack of a long-ebbed empire.
xvii
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

To explore the origins of the shared identity that – despite everything – has
led Arabs to chase the mirage of unity, we must therefore listen to their
language. We must also go back way beyond Islam. The pre-Islamic past is
certainly less well known and much less knowable. But in terms of written
history it is as long as the period since that fateful Islamic eruption from
Arabia. The first known ancient inscription mentioning Arabs dates from
853 BC; I am writing the first draft of these words in AD 2017; according to
tradition, the boy Muhammad was first recognized as a prophet in AD 582 –
the precise mid-point between that inscription and now.
Islam began with such a flash that it tends to blind us to what was there
before. Equally, the flash has cast its own powerful illumination over all
subsequent history, throwing much into shadow. We need to look at the
whole historical picture, and in a more even light; to give a stereoscopic
view, one that sees what has happened since the Islamic year zero as only
half of a panorama that goes back at least as far again.
What did begin with Islam, and gives the impression that a unified Arab
narrative begins then too, was Arabic information technology – in other words,
new ways to use and control language, and thus to shape identity. Before Islam,
literature, culture, history, identity were largely oral. From Islam onwards,
new technologies have underlain most of the major developments in Arab
history. We will look more closely at them as they crop up over time; for now,
a summary will give an idea of just how important they are to the story. In the
early seventh century, the first, belated, Arabic book appeared – the Qur’an:
overnight, in the terms of our 3,000-year timescale, it made a language and the
various people who used it legible, visible. Suddenly they were there on their
own page, in black and white. They already had a past; now they entered their
historic present, and with an energy that won them a vast empire.
In about 700, a snap decision to ditch the inherited Greek and Persian
languages of imperial administration in favour of Arabic also arabicized
that whole empire and its peoples with amazing speed: Arabic became the
new Latin. In the later eighth century, Arab paper-making stole a long
march on a Europe still wrapped up in an age of parchment, and released an
outpouring of Arabic words and ideas. Seven centuries later, with printing,
Europe stole its own march; cursive Arabic script never worked happily as

xviii
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

moveable type, and typeset Arabic was long viewed in its homeland rather
as tinned spaghetti is in Italy. When at long last, in the nineteenth century,
Arabic presses did grind slowly into action, so too did an Arab renaissance,
the Nahdah or ‘awakening’. Another hundred years on, and a new and
thrilling pan-Arab nationalism was broadcast by the border-defying tran-
sistor radio. A generation later, Arabic typesetters finally found the antidote
to the cursive curse – word-processing; at the same time satellite TV took
off, and the words flew further and faster. Most recently, the social media of
the early twenty-first century began to subvert old rhetorics and air alterna-
tive truths . . . until the reactionaries got on to Facebook too. Now digital
dinosaurs do their best to dominate media and minds.
And yet the pre-Islamic half of history had its social media, its domi-
nating voices; words flew then, too. Most of them flew away on the wind.
But some were caught – on stones, in memories – and we can and must still
try to listen to them.

A distinguished historian who begins in the middle, with Islam, is Albert


Hourani. He draws the reader into his subject with a portrait of the great
fourteenth-century Arab historian, Ibn Khaldun. After decades lived in the
thick of intrigues and warring factions, Ibn Khaldun took himself off to a
fortified village in rural Algeria and went into a period of intense intellectual
retreat. He looked hard at what was going on around him and, with ‘words
and ideas pouring into my head like cream into a churn’ as he put it (lucky
man!), came up with a model for the rise and fall of dynasties. In short, the
model explains how a nomad tribe can be united by what he calls ’asabiyyah,
literally something like ‘bindedness’ but often translated as ‘group soli-
darity’, and thus gain in military strength. The tribe takes over the rule of a
settled state by force, and its leaders become a new dynasty: the once periph-
eral and footloose become the central and settled. In time, however – usually
three generations – the energy of the dynasty is sapped by easy living, and
the dynasty falls to a new one that still enjoys the old nomad vitality. (‘Clogs
to clogs,’ as they used to say in Lancashire of a parallel kind of social
mobility, ‘is only three generations.’)
Hourani was an academic, a library man writing from the purlieus of St
Antony’s College, Oxford. With his academic eye, he viewed Ibn Khaldun
xix
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

as a figure who represented an age and a culture. Rereading both authors in


my tower-house in Yemen, I had a realization: here, in the thick of it, kept
awake by mortars and missiles (my third major conflict) and bombarded by
slogans and sermons and poems – political, not lyrical, poems – all day, I
saw Ibn Khaldun as a fellow observer, sitting in his isolated redoubt in
Algeria as I sit here in San’a, while tribes and dynasties make war and deals
and plots and more war around us, both of us forming our philosophy of
history from direct experience. While Hourani used Ibn Khaldun as a
literary device, I find myself unintentionally impersonating him. In other
words, I am experiencing history in situ. Its detritus lies beneath me, for my
little tower stands on the tail-end of a ruin-mound built up of bits of pre-
Islamic San’a – one of the great cities of Saba, or Sheba – as well as of the
Abbasid governor’s palace and God knows what else. In situ, and in real
time: the raw materials of history are there, outside my window. (A group
of small children has just gone past, shouting ‘Death to America!’ They are
accompanied by the rat-tat-tats of drumbeats and firecrackers, and are
followed by a red box, born aloft, containing yet another martyr. The box is
pitifully small.)
The raw materials these days seem to be mostly steel and lead. Stuck
recently with a flat battery and a kind fellow motorist but no jump-leads, we
had a simultaneous lateral thought – and stopped a couple of tribesmen. We
borrowed their AK47 assault rifles, and used them to join the batteries. The
car started first go. Only connect! ‘So they do have positive benefits,’ I said
brightly, handing the guns back. ‘Their benefit,’ one of the tribesmen
replied, ‘is killing.’
What can one say? In my first book I wrote that, in Yemen, I felt like
both the guest at the feast and the fly on the wall. Nowadays I feel more like
the skeleton at the feast and the fly in the soup. But one has to try to
make light of it. Seeing the land I live in and love falling apart is like watching
an old and dear friend losing his mind and committing slow, considered
suicide.

I find that Ibn Khaldun’s model, his elegant paradigm, still works. But I
believe it can be further tuned in ways that make its workings clearer still,
and more clearly applicable over the three millennia or so of recorded Arab
xx
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

history. The most important feature is still ’asabiyyah, that collective poten-
tial energy that catalyses a short-lived unity:
’asabiyyah, in time, builds the momentum for
. . . a successful raid, conquest or, mutatis mutandis, coup d’état;
. . . as a result of the raid/conquest/coup, and of the group’s
resulting monopoly of resources (camels, taxes, oil and gas), the group
prospers;
. . . either the resources are not enough for the group as it increases in
size, and/or its leaders fall out over the division of wealth, so . . . unity
fragments.
Eventually a new ’asabiyyah will form, and the process will repeat
itself.
I find also that Ibn Khaldun was right to see ‘nomads’ as the reservoir of
change, and I believe – strange though it sounds – that in a sense this is still
true today, even though the number of Arabs who actually live from
nomadism is now infinitesimally small. Ibn Khaldun’s two basic systems of
human society are still in place:
hadari, or ‘settled’, political society, a (relatively) static system charac-
terized by the related word hadarah – often translated as ‘civilization’, in the
sense of people living together in a settlement, a town (Latin civitas, Greek
polis); and
badawi, or ‘bedouin’, apolitical society, a dynamic system in which
people live beyond the civil polity, and in which the basic ‘institution’ is that
of the ghazw or raid (or conquest or coup d’état).
My point is that, while actual Bedouin are now a dying breed, there are
still plenty of major players in the Arab game whose actions accord perfectly
with that second, ‘bedouin’ system. The two systems, settled ‘peoples’ and
bedouin ‘tribes’, are mentioned in a famous verse of the Qur’an, from which
I take part of the subtitle of this book:

O mankind, We have created you from male and female, and made you
into peoples and tribes, that you may know one another.

The duality has been in place since the beginning of recorded Arab time,
and it has not always been a question of opposition. That first mention of
Arabs in 853 BC concerns the employment by the Assyrian state of a trans-
port contractor, a certain Gindibu (‘Locust’), an Arab chieftain who owned
xxi
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

vast herds of camels: settled and bedouin societies benefited mutually.


Moving to the mid-point in Arab history, part of the Prophet Muhammad’s
success was due to his combining elements of both the settled and bedouin
systems to set up the original Islamic state. In recent times, the almost total
failure of the popular democratic revolutions of 2011 has been bound up
with a reassertion of the ‘bedouin’ system over the settled. The Yemen I see
outside my window, for example, was considered until the summer of 2014
to be a success story of the Arab Spring, of the aspiration to build a settled,
civil society. Since then, the northern part of the country has been seized in
an armed raid – the resurgence of an old faction that had ruled for a thou-
sand years – a civil war has raged, and the neighbouring states (all ruled by
what Ibn Khaldun would class as ‘Bedouin’ dynasties) have weighed in.
History, as I said, in real time. Wars are the worst of history, and civil wars
are the worst of wars: they are waged not just within, but against civil
society. Ibn Khaldun had no doubt who the main culprits were: ‘civiliza-
tion’, he wrote, ‘always collapsed in places where the Bedouins took over’.
Nowadays, it is not that actual nomads on camels undermine state insti-
tutions, hijack democratic uprisings or ignite civil conflict. But it does seem
clear that the central nomad institution – the raid, the ghazw – is still very
much alive. That, perhaps, is why the image of camel-borne regime loyal-
ists causing mayhem among the Tahrir Square protesters in Cairo in 2011
was so potent. Elsewhere, the latest Toyota pick-ups mounted with heavy-
calibre machine-guns are potent enough.
‘Raiding’ is a loaded word, of course; it smacks of the piratical, the
barbarian, the uncivilized in its pejorative sense. But raiding is also an estab-
lished institution, in that it is a long-accepted means for the redistribution,
sometimes more equitable, of wealth. The means by which it is pursued may
not be regarded as acceptable in some peoples’ ethical systems, but, looked
at coldly, they are rational: you have a surplus, I have a deficit, therefore I
will take your surplus. It is important to remember that different cultures
have different rationalities; even cannibals, as cultural commentators from
Montaigne to Marshall Sahlins have explained, have their own rationalities.
People may be essentially the same the world over, but they go about being
the same in different ways.
For much of Arab history, two rationalities have coexisted, those of the
‘settled’ and of the ‘bedouin’, the peoples and the tribes, seemingly in
perpetual duality, clashing yet embracing, loving and hating, yin and yang.
xxii
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

But which rationality is the more ‘Arab’? Herein is a great dilemma of Arab
identity: the term ‘Arab’, as I have said, has most often been applied to tribal
groups who live outside settled society, beyond the pale and the politics of
civil institutions. In one sense, therefore, the more Arabs submit to civil
society, the less ‘Arab’ they become; they lose something of their ethos. In a
globalized, urbanizing world of blurring identities, the prospect of losing
that ancient aspect of arabness, of becoming part of the global blur, is painful.

There is more to the story than peoples and tribes. Draw back, look at
the bigger picture on the map and over time, and it becomes clear that the
cycle of unification and fragmentation sketched out above has been in
motion within a context of empires – Assyrian, Roman, Persian, Byzantine,
Ottoman, British, American. It is a cycle that has teeth, but is not necessarily
vicious: sometimes the teeth have meshed with imperial interests at the
points of contact – the two Fertile Crescents (more on them later), Egypt
and Iran; at other times they have clashed. In both cases there is friction,
heat, conflagration: the cycle is a wheel of fire, both creative and destruc-
tive, melding, melting and remoulding Arab identities over 3,000 years.
In telling the Arab story, this book will look more at that seemingly
eternal and often tragic round of unity and fragmentation, and also at that
force that feeds the fire, fuels revolutions and has, more than anything,
defined Arabs across a history of shifting and regrouping identities: the
Arabic language. Language is what ties together all those key historical
developments based on information technology, from the word of God
captured in writing, to word-processing, and on to mind-processing by
newly reactionary regimes. Language is the thread that all would-be Arab
leaders have tried to grasp: their aim has always been to create ’asabiyyah,
that ‘bindedness’ or unanimity – to ‘gather the word’ of their peoples and
tribes, as Arabic also puts it.
This is a history of Arabs, not of Arabic. But to follow the linguistic
thread through it is to explore the deepest strand of ‘being Arab’ in all its
different senses. That thread is the only bond that has ever been able to keep
Arabs together, to give them identity and unity; even the unity brought
about by Islam was based, ultimately, on words. For modern Europeans
and their heirs, as Thomas Carlyle pointed out, gunpowder, printing and
xxiii
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

Protestantism underlay power; for Arabs and theirs, it has been words,
rhymes and rhetoric.
The problem is that words can blow apart as well as bring together. That
is what is happening now, both where I live and in many other Arab lands,
and it is why unity remains a mirage. How all this has come about, over
the entire known Arab timescale of nearly three millennia, is the subject of
this book.

One last word of my own before the gathering of the Arab word. As well as
listening to people and their voices, we will occasionally examine things.
What might be called tangibilia are a good way of getting a grasp on the
past; they can act as metaphors for time or times, handles on complexity.
They can be as big as a whole building assembled from fragments – a mosque
that salvages both pagan and Christian materials – or as small as an Arabic
coin minted by King Offa in the English Midlands; they can be charged with
enigma, like a talisman with Allah on one side and Krishna on the other, or
loaded with irony, like a Colt revolver inscribed by a Cold War president
of the United States. They are rather like what Jorge Luis Borges, minting a
new meaning for an old Arabic coinage, called ‘the Zahir’: a visible and
haunting object that takes on different shapes in different places and ages.
Other, more literary metaphors are useful too for the story to come. The
wheel of fire is one; the allusion to legendary sufferings – of Ixion, subverter
of divine order, of King Lear, tragic divider of his own realm, both of them
‘bound / Upon a wheel of fire’ – is not coincidental. Wheels, moreover, are
good vehicles for histories: they travel along an ever-extending line – time
– yet their own motion is cyclical; they combine the constant and the vari-
able. But, for Arab history, they are not the only image to keep in mind.
In my first book I wrote that, in Yemen, the past is ever present. I didn’t
realize at the time that Harold Ingrams, the imperial administrator and
Arabian traveller, had also written in his Yemen book, ‘This is a country
where the past is ever present’.
A generation and a revolution or two separated our statements, but the
past we wrote about was the same, still present. It is present now, another
generation and a few more revolutions on. And it is not only the Yemeni
past as seen by British observers that is inescapable. Near the beginning of
xxiv
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

his sprawling book on Stasis and Change, the Syrian poet and critic Adonis
writes of the tendency across the Arabic world ‘to make the past ever
present’. This ever-present past was what led that astute observer, Jan
Morris, to call the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ‘an antique autocracy’ in 1955,
only two years after its founding autocrat had died.
We must all be stating the blinding obvious. What only becomes obvious
with time is how that ever-present past also contains the future – contains in
both senses: comprises, but also confines. An ever-present past can have
positive effects, for it keeps societies rooted in themselves. Equally, it can
entrap those same societies and stifle their futures. It can be an incubus, an
undead weight. The recent and obvious example is that of the Arab Spring,
the rolling revolution that began in 2011 and gave expression to a younger
generation’s aspirations – only to be smothered, almost everywhere, by the
reactionary forces of the Arab past.
Exploring Arab history thus means stepping now and again off the
time-line; looking ahead as well as back. ‘Time present and time past,’ as
Eliot knew,

Are both perhaps present in time future,


And time future contained in time past.

This complexity is the bane of all historians, but maybe most of all for histo-
rians of Arabs: years and pages turn in sequence; but not necessarily action
and reaction, cause and effect. Causes, factors, tragic flaws may remain
latent for centuries, even millennia, until they work themselves out, if they
ever do. An extreme though trifling instance is one in which, in the mid-
twentieth century, a village shaykh (chief ) demanded that the British colo-
nial authorities in Aden should pay for an old well to be dug out and rein-
stated. His argument was that the well had been filled in by a Roman
expeditionary force in 26 BC, and that the Romans and the British were
both species of ‘Frank’ – that is, European. A more serious instance is that
concerning the transfer and nature of power in the post-Muhammadan state:
the problem has boiled up intermittently but bloodily over the past 1,400
years. Clearly, the wheel alone, trundling steadily along its time-line, is not
always enough. We need another image, repetitious yet arbitrary.
As often, poets have the answer. The Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani saw the
ever-present Arab past as
xxv
THE WHEEL AND THE HOURGLASS

the hourglass that swallows you


Night and day.

That past is the sand in the bottom of the glass, waiting for the next turn of
events. Qabbani knew that history is no mere timepiece or pastime, but a
player in its own right, often malevolent. It is the hourglass, squatting there,
marking time, not measuring it – until it is turned once more, and then you
see the grains are human lives, or human deaths, for the people are both the
quicksand and its victims.
You can count the grains: 6,660 civilians killed by the war in my adoptive
land; at least 50,000 dead combatants, many of them no more than boys;
perhaps 85,000 younger children, infants under five, starved quietly to death
by war’s old ally, poverty. These are the stark statistics – so far – from the
UN, ACLED and Save the Children, as I let go of this book at the end of
2018. Would those who turned the hourglass have done so if they’d known,
or even if they could have guessed?

xxvi
Land over 2,000m
0 500 km

0 500 miles

Constantinople

Ankara
Asia Minor

Ti
gr
is
Eup
Oront

Mediterranean hra
tes
Sea
es

Bekaa Valley Northern Ferti


Golan Damascus Mesopotamia e
l I R A N
al-Anbar Ctesiphon
al-Jabiyah al-Namarah Cr
Jerusalem Babylon es
Gaza Jordan Valley al-Hirah
Alexandria al-Sawad c
Ghassanids
en

Negev Lakhmids
E G Y P T Desert Petra Persepolis
t

Sinai Dumah
a

Strait of
N a j d
Nil

Dedan Hormuz
l-
e

Bahrain Arabian/Persian
H

Hegra/Mada’in Salih Gulf


R

Yathrib Arabian
j
e

Peninsula al-Jabal al-Akhdar


a
d

Kindah
Mecca
er
Qaryat Dhat Kahl
a rt
S o al-
S

Qu
ty
ut Sarah

he
Emp
e

rn
Najran
a

t t
Fe r en
Sabaeans tile Cresc maw
rad
Ran

San'a Ha
Marib
ge

Himyaris
Axum Zafar
Muza Socotra
Aden
Bab al-Mandab
Strait
Horn of
E T H I O P I A / Africa
A B Y S S I N I A
I n d i a n
O c e a n

1 The Arabian Peninsula and adjoining regions before Islam.


xxvii
Paris

Atlantic F R A N C E
Venice
Ocean
Crimea

Pyre Black
nee
León s
Aragón
L

Constantinople
UGA

Castile
Toledo Anatolia
P ORT

al-Andalus Calabria
Amorium
Murcia Palermo
Cordova
Seville Sicily
r Granada
i
q uiv Algiers Tunis
dal Gibraltar TUNISIA
GuaTangier
Tahart
ain s al-Qayrawan Mediterranean
Mo unt Sea
At Fez las ALGERIA
MOROCCO
Damietta
Alexandria
Cairo Negev
al-Fustat
E G Y P T Sinai

Ea
S A H A R A

ste
Nil

rn
e
MAUR I TA NIA Qus
Upper

Des
Egypt

ert
Tarsus
al-Raqqah
Antioch Aleppo Siffin
t

Euphrat
es
al-Ma’arrah
S Y R I A
n

Hims
a

0 100 km

Beirut 0 100 miles


Damascus Lake Chad
v
Palestine

Golan
al-Yarmuk
e

Caesarea
Sea of Galilee
Jordan
Valley
L

Khirbat al-Mafjar
Jerusalem Qusayr Amrah
Jericho

2 The Arab empire.


xxviii
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
sepmainnez qu’il furent sus l’aige, il ne peurent prendre terre à
Chierebourch, là où il tiroient et tendoient à ariver.
Li roys de France, qui estoit enfourméz de l’armée dou roy
d’Engleterre et des alliances qu’il avoit au roy de Navarre, fu adonc
si consilliéz parmi bonnes gens qui s’en ensonniièrent, et par
especial li cardinaux de Bouloingne, que on les mist à acord. Et fu
ensi dit au roy de Franche que il valloit trop mieux que il se laisast à
dire et refrennast son coraige que donc que ses royaummes fust
nullement foulléz ne grevés.
Si descendi adonc li roys de France à l’ordonnance de ses gens,
et fist paix au roy de Navare. Et li pardonna li roys de France, par
samblant, tous ses mautalens. Et dubt li roys de Navarre adonc, par
paix faisant, deffiier le roi d’Engleterre; mais il n’en fist riens et s’en
seut bien dissimuler. Fº 100.
P. 136, l. 11: en mer.—Ms. B 6: sur le rivière de Tamisse. Fº 473.
P. 136, l. 12: deus mil.—Ms. B 6: trois mille. Fº 473.
P. 136, l. 12 et 13: quatre mil.—Ms. B 6: dix mille archiés et cinq
mille hommes de piet, Gallois et aultres, quy ont usaige de suir les
gerres. Là estoient des seigneurs englès avecques le roy, le duc de
Lenclastre, son cousin, et ung des filz du roy, que on appeloit Jehan
conte de Richemont, et povoit estre en l’eaige de seize ans, le conte
de Pennebrucq, le conte d’Arondel, le conte de Northonne, le conte
de Kenfort, le conte de Cornuaille, le conte de la Marche, le sires de
Persy, le sires de Ros, le sires de Grisop, le sire de Noefville,
mesirre Richart de Bennebruge, l’evesque de Lincolle et chilz de
Duren, le sire de Monbray, le sire de Fillvastre, mesire Gautié de
Mauny, le sire de Multonne, mesire James d’Audelée, messire Pière
d’Audelée frères, le sire de Lantonne et pluiseurs aultres barons et
chevaliers, bien en point de servir le roy.
Sy se partirent du havre de Londres sur la Tamise et vinrent à
chelle prumière marée gesir à Gravesaindez, et lendemain au soir à
Mergate. Quant il se furent de là desancrés à l’autre marée, il
entrèrent en mer et costioient Engleterre et Boulongne et tout le
Pontieu, en approchant de Normendie. Bien estoient veu des costes
de Franche, mès mies ne sçavoient quelle part il volloient traire.
Dont ces nouvelles furent raportées au roy de Franche et à son
consail que le roy d’Engleterre, à plus de deux cens vaissiaulx, que
uns que aultres, et estoit sur mer, et prendoit le chemin de
Normendie. Sy vinrent aulcun grant seigneur de Franche, telz que le
duc de Bourbon, messire Jacques de Bourbon frères, le duc
d’Athènez, connestable de Franche, le conte d’Eu messire Jehan
d’Artois et pluiseurs aultres grant seigneur du conseil du roy qui
seurent les couvenenches et les traitiés qui estoient entre le roy
d’Engleterre et le roy de Navare. Sy considerèrent que parmy chel
acord le roialme de Franche pouroit estre destruit. Sy parlèrent au
roy Jehan et ly remoustrèrent tant de raisons souffisans qu’il convint
qu’il s’enclinast à leur conseil, combien que che fust contre son
coraige. Fos 473 à 475.
P. 136, l. 15: Stafort.—Mss. B 4, 5: Stanfort. Fº 156 vº.
P. 136, l. 15: le Marce.—Ms. B 3: la Mare. Fº 168.
P. 136, l. 16: Hostidonne.—Ms. B 3: Antiton.
P. 136, l. 23: Symons de Burlé.—Mss. B 3, 5: Symon Burlé.
P. 137, l. 4: à l’encontrée de.—Ms. B 4: à l’encontre.—Ms. B 5: qui
est contre. Fº 364.
P. 137, l. 15: li pooit.—Ms. B 3: le pourroit.
P. 137, l. 15: ou cas que.—Ms. B 3: si d’aventure.
P. 137, l. 16: possessoit des villes et des chastiaus.—Ms. B 3:
mettoit les Anglois ès villes et chasteaux.
P. 137, l. 17: valoit.—Ms. B 3: seroit.
P. 137, l. 18: laissast à dire.—Ms. B 3: envoiast.—Ms. B 4: se
laissast à dire.
P. 137, l. 21: conception.—Le ms. B 3 ajoute: et qui jà estoit.
P. 137, l. 22: aïr.—Ms. B 3: ire.
P. 137, l. 23: se rafrena.—Ms. B 3: refrena.
P. 137, l. 23 à 25: et laissa... Navare.—Ms. B 3: embesoigna de
ses gens devers le roy de Navarre.
P. 137, l. 25: Chierebourch.—Le ms. B 4 ajoute: devers le roy de
Navare.
P. 137, l. 25 et 26: li evesques de Bayeus.—Ms. B 6: li
archevesques de Sens. Fº 475.
P. 137, l. 32: retournées.—Ms. B 3: remoustrées.
P. 138, l. 3: d’Engleterre.—Ms. B 6: Tant fut traitié et parlementé
entre le roy Jehan de Franche et le roy de Navare que une journée
fut prinse de faire l’acord entre Paris et Evreus, et convint adonc que
le roy de Franche venist hors de Paris pour parlementer au roy de
Navare. A che parlement fut acordet que le roy Jehan renderoit au
roy de Navare toute[s] les terres qu’il avoit devant donné à
monseigneur Charles d’Espaigne: pour quoy il fut ochis, et dont le
haine venoit, et ly rendy tous les hirtaiges et les proufis que il et le
roy son père en avoient levet pas l’espasse de vingt ans, qui povoit
monter plus de six vingt mille florins. Et parmy chou bonne pais, et
devoit estre le roy de Navare establis de donc en avant au roy Jehan
et au royalme de Franche et contremander les couvenanches du roy
d’Engleterre toutes telles que il les i avoit. Et encores avoecq che, le
roy de Navare et ses frères povoient chevauchier par tout le royalme
de Franche à tout cent bachinés ou cent glaives, sans meffaire, s’il
leur plaisoit. Et, toutes ces choses ordenées et confermées et
saillées, le roy de Franche retourna à Paris, et le roy de Navare et
ses frères retournèrent à Evreus. Fº 476.

§ 347. P. 138, l. 11: Quant li rois.—Ms. d’Amiens: Li roys


d’Engleterre fu enfourmés de celle paix, qui gisoit sur mer à l’ancre à
l’encontre de l’ille de Grenesie; si se retraist adonc vers Engleterre;
mès pour ce que il avoit ses gens assamblés, il lez vot emploiier et
fist tourner toutte se navie à Calais, et là ariva. Si yssirent li Englès
de lors vaissiaux et sen vinrent logier à Callais, et li roys ou castiel.
Ces nouvellez vinrent en Franche que li roys d’Engleterre et ses
hoos estoient arivet à Calais, et suposoit on que il feroit une
chevauchie en France. Si envoya tantost li dis roys de Franche grant
fuisson de gens d’armes à Saint Omer, desquelx messire Loeys de
Namur et li comtez de Porsiien furent cappittainne; et fist ung
coumandement par tout son royaumme que touttes gens fuissent
priès as armes et as chevaux pour resister contre leurs ennemis.
Encorres envoya li roys de Franche grant gent d’armes à Arde, à
Bouloingne, à le Montoire, à Bavelingehen, à Oudruich, à Hamez et
ens ès garnisons françoisses sus lez frontierres de Callais.
Quant li roys d’Engleterre et ses gens se furent cinq jours reposet
et rafresci à Callais, il s’ordonnèrent pour partir et de chevauchier en
Franche. Si se departirent de Callais en grant arroy et grant fuisson
de chars et de sommiers, et estoient environ deus mil hommes
d’armes et quatre mil archiers. Si prissent le chemin de Tieruanne, et
coururent li Englès le premier jour jusques à Moustroel sus Mer et
environ Saint Pol et Tierrenois. Si ardirent tout le pays là environ,
puis retournèrent à leur grant ost. Fº 100.
P. 138, l. 19 et 20: les dangiers.—Ms. B 3: le dangier. Fº 168 vº.
P. 138, l. 28: ou.—Le ms. B 5 ajoute: aillieurs. Fº 364.
P. 138, l. 29 et 30: vesteure.—Ms. B 3: vestemens.
P. 138, l. 30: ostilz.—Ms. B 3: choses.—Ms. B 4: estas. Fº 157.
P. 139, l. 2: au lés.—Ms. B 3: du cousté.
P. 139, l. 10: Lyons.—Ms. B 4: li uns.
P. 139, l. 18: Sallebrin.—Ms. B 3: Salebry.
P. 139, l. 23: le Montoire.—Ms. B 3: la Motoire.
P. 140, l. 2: où que fust.—Ms. B 3: en quelque part que ce fust.
Fº 169.
P. 140, l. 2: fust.—Ms. B 6: Et sceult (le roi de France) tantost par
ses garnisons de Boulongne et d’ailleurs que le roy d’Engleterre
estoit arivés à Calais; lors fist ung moult grant mandement à yestre à
Amiens, car il voloit aller à l’encontre du roy d’Engleterre et
deffendre son pais. Sy envoia le dit roy monseigneur Lois de Namur
son cousin à Saint Omer à tout deux cens lanches pour estre
capitaine de la dite ville et des frontières par delà. Et envoia son
marisal, messire Ernoul d’Audrehem, en le bastille d’Ardre, à tout
deux cens armés de fer, pour le garder et deffendre à tous venans.
Et envoia le jouene conte de Saint Pol en la chité de Terouane, à
tout deux cens lanches pour le garder, et les garny bien et
soufisanment, et Boulongne et Monstreul, Heddin, Saint Pol et
toutes les fortresses de là entour. Et le roy meismes se party de
Paris et le duc de Normendie son filz, le duc d’Orliens ses frères, le
duc de Bourbon, le conte de Pontieu, le conte d’Eu, le conte de
Dammartin, le conte de Tancarville, le conte de Vaudemont et de
Genville, le conte de Monpensé et de Ventadour, le conte de
Nerbonne et pluiseurs aultres barons et seigneurs; et chevauchèrent
devers Amiens. Et d’autre part vinrent de l’Empire messire Jehan de
Haynau, sire de Bieaumont et de Chymay, en très grant aroy, car le
roy Jehan l’amoit durement et avoit en luy très grant fiance. Et y vint
le conte de Namur nomé Gillame, le conte Jehan de Nanso, le conte
de Clèves, l’evesque de Més, l’evesque de Verdun et grant foisons
de chevaliers d’Alemaigne. Et, d’autre part, se asambla le roy de
Navare ly troisième de frères, messire Phelippes, messire Lois, à
tout grant foisons de saudoiers, pour venir [à] Amiens où le roy de
Franche faisoit son mandement.
Sy se party le roy d’Engleterre de Calais en moult grant arroy et
avoit adonc avecques luy deus de ses enfans, monseigneur Lois et
monseigneur Jehan, et le duc de Lenclastre son cousin, le duc de
Norhantone et de Herfort, le conte d’Arondel, le conte de
Pennebourcq, le conte de Kenfort et le plus grant partie des contes
et des chevaliers qu’il avoit, quant il cuida ariver en Normendie sus
le povoir du roy de Navare. Et estoit connestable de toute son armée
le conte de la Marche, et marescal le sire de Noefville et messire
Jehan de Bieaucamp.
Sy vint le roy englès ce prumier jour entour Fiènes; et y eult ung
très grant assault au castiel, mais riens n’y fourfirent, car il estoit
bien garny de bonnes gens d’armes qui bien le tinrent et deffendirent
tant qu’il n’y perdirent riens. Adonc s’en partirent les Englès en celle
entente que pour venir devant le chité d’Arras et le assegier, se le
roy n’ot aultre[s] nouvelles. Sy chevauchèrent l’endemain devers
Saint Pol en Ternois, et coururent les coureurs des Englès environ
Monstreul, mais point ne passèrent la rivière. Et s’en vint le roy
englès à tout son ost logier à Blangy de lès Heddin, et là se tint tout
cois sans aler plus avant, car il entendy que le roy de Franche estoit
[à] Amiens et faisoit là sen asamblée de gens d’armes. Fos 478 à
480.
P. 140, l. 5: Pikardie.—Le ms. B 3 ajoute: en la conté de
Boulonnois. Fº 169.—Les mss. B 4, 5 ajoutent: en le conté de
Boulongne. Fº 157.
P. 140, l. 9: y assist.—Ms. B 3: assigna.
P. 140, l. 15: especial.—Le ms. B 3 ajoute: devers.—Le ms. B 4
ajoute: à.
P. 140, l. 24: du Maine.—Ms. B 5: d’Auvergne. Fº 364.
P. 140, l. 32: Poitiers.—Ms. B 3: Ponthieu.—Ms. B 4: Pontiu.
P. 141, l. 5: tanisons.—Mss. B 3, 5: ennuy.—Ms. B 4: merveilles.
P. 141, l. 7: les.—Mss. B 3, 4: ses.
P. 141, l. 8: trente mil.—Le ms. B 3 ajoute: hommes.
P. 141, l. 14: avoient.—Ms. B 3: avoit.
P. 141, l. 21 et 22: entrues.—Ms. B 3: cependent.

§ 348. P. 141, l. 31: faisoient.—Ms. B 3 ajoute: grande. Fº 169.


P. 142, l. 3: resongnoient.—Ms. B 3: ensonnyoient. Fº 169, vº.
P. 142, l. 5: vasselage.—Ms. B 3: vaillance.
P. 142, l. 7: sept.—Ms. B 5: huit. Fº 364 vº.
P. 142, l. 7: des.—Ms. B 3: devant les.
P. 142, l. 14: Lancastre.—Ms. B 6: Sy s’avisa ou prumier il feroit
son enprise et s’en descouvry à son serouge qui sa seur il avoit, le
conte de le Mare, et à ung sien cousin, monseur Archebault
Douglas, vaillant homme; et leur dist qu’il avoit aviset d’esquieller et
de prendre par fait d’armes, tout en une nuit, le bonne chité de
Bervich et le castiel de Rosebourcq qui jadis fu de leur yretaige. Chil
deus chevaliers et messire Robiert de Versy avecques yaulx sy
s’acordèrent. Et deult le dit messire Guillaumes Douglas et messire
Archebaus son cousin avecques leur route venir à Bervich, et le
conte de la Mare et messire Robert de Versy allèrent à Rosebourcq
en celle meismes nuit. Et sy s’ordonnèrent si bien leur besoigne et
sy couvertement que il vinrent de jour en leur embusque. Et le dit
messire Guillaumes et son cousin messire Archebaut se boutèrent
en ung bosquet assés près de le cité de Bervich, sans che qu’il
fuissent de nuluy aperceut et là se tinrent jusques à bien avant en la
nuit; et pooient [estre] environ trois cens hommes de guerre. Sy se
partirent de leur embusque environ minuit et vinrent tout coiement
jusques à Bervich. Et envo[ièrent] devant trois de leurs varlès pour
sçavoir se chil de Bervich faisoient point de gait sur les murs; il
raportèrent à leur mestres que nanil. Adonc s’avanchèrent il et
vinrent sur les fossés et avoient eschelles cordées. Sy passèrent
oultre les fossés, en portant leurs eschelles, au plus foible lieu et où
il n’i avoit point d’iaue. Et jettèrent leurs eschelles et montèrent
contremont, et entrèrent en la ville environ deux cens. Et vinrent tout
coiement à la porte que cil de la cité ne s’en perchurent riens
jusques à tant que de haches et de cuignies il busquèrent au flaiel
pour le coper. Aulcuns gens qui estoient en leurs lis se esvillèrent
pour le busquement. Sy se levèrent et vinrent à leur fenestre et se
commenchèrent à estourmir; mais anchois qu’il fussent levés et
armet ne asamblé, le porte fut ouverte par forche, et tout les
Escochois entrèrent dedens la ville. Et decopoient tous cheulx qui
encontre eulx venoient à main armée. Et fyrent tant qu’il furent
maistre de la cité et que les bourgois se rendirent à yaulx, saulve
leurs vies et leurs biens; mais il ne porent avoir le castiel qui est
assés près, car le gait oy la noize. Sy esvilla le castelain et les
compaignons qui gardoient ledit chastiel; et jamais de forche les
Escochois ne l’euissent eut.
Or vous dirons de leurs aultres compaignons qui devoient
Rochebourch esceller. Il ne demora mie en leur defaulte qu’il ne
fesissent leur aproches saigement; mais il fallirent, car le gait du dit
chastiel villoit et s’apoioit à crestieaulx qu’il les virent sus les murs du
dit chastiel. Sy entendy le bruit des Escochois murmurer ensamble;
sy coury moult tost esvillier le chastelain et les compaignons de
laiens et se pourveirent de leur fait et vinrent as garites. Quant les
Escochoiz les virent, il retournèrent arière tout esbahy, et virent bien
qu’il avoient fally à leur emprinse. Sy se retirèrent devers Bervich et
trouvèrent messire Guillame Douglas et leur compaignie qui tenoient
la cité comme le leur. Si en furent tous joieulx; sy prirent consail
ensamble qu’il asegeroient le dit chastiel. Sy l’asegèrent de tous
costés, car à l’un des lés il marchist à le ville. Ches nouvelles vinrent
en Engleterre que les Escochois avoient reprins Bervich. Sy en
furent les Englès moult courouchiés, mais amender ne le peurent
tant que à celle fois. Fos 481 à 484.
P. 142, l. 18: siet.—Ms. B 3: est assis.
P. 142, l. 24: cremeur.—Ms. B 3: crainte.
P. 142, l. 27: Bervich.—Le ms. B 5 ajoute: qui siet sur la dicte
rivière. Fº 364 vº.
P. 142, l. 28: assenèrent.—Ms. B 3: essaièrent.
P. 142, l. 32: quoique.—Ms. B 3: et qui.
P. 143, l. 7: puisqu’il.—Ms. B 3: puisque les Anglois.
P. 143, l. 8: mancevi.—Ms. B 3: advertiz.—Ms. B 4: manchevi.
Fº 157 vº.
P. 143, l. 9: Escos.—Le ms. B 3 ajoute: dont toute la marce estoit
en doubtance, et point n’y avoit gens au pais pour faire un siège ne
resister aux Escos.—Le ms. B 4 ajoute: de quoi toute le marche
estoit en grant doubtance, et point n’y avoit gens ou pais pour faire
siège ne resister as Escos. Fº 157 vº.
P. 143, l. 10: Bervich.—Ms. B 3: Vervich. Fº 169 vº.
P. 143, l. 12: Grastoch.—Ms. B 3: Grascop.—Ms. B 4: Grascok.
Fº 157 vº.
P. 143, l. 13: gouvernance.—Mss. B 3 et 4: gouvernement.
P. 143, l. 17: Guillaumes Douglas.—Ms. B 3: Jehan de Douglas.—
Ms. B 4: Guillaumes de Douglas.
P. 143, l. 17: menères.—Ms. B 3: conducteur.—Ce mot manque
dans le ms. B 4.

§ 349. P. 143, l. 22: Tant ala.—Ms. d’Amiens: A l’endemain


chevauça li roys d’Engleterre et vint logier à Blangi, à deus lieuwez
de Hedin, et point ne passa adonc oultre, et dist qu’il atenderoit là le
roy de Franche.
Li roys de Franche estoit avaléz à Pieronne en Vermendois, et
avoit fait ung si grant mandement partout que merveilles seroit au
deviser, et s’en vint en le chité d’Arras, et touttes mannierres de
gens le sieuvoient, et avoit bien soissante mil hommes. Là estoit
dallés lui messires Jehans de Haynnau o grant routte de gens
d’armes, et ouvroit li dis roys de France en partie par son consseil.
Or avint que messires Bouchicaus, ungs chevaliers de Poito, qui
pour le tamps estoit prison au roy d’Engleterre, et l’avoit li dis roys
recreu sus sa foi le tierme de huit mois, si s’en revenoit messires
Bouchicaus deviers le roy d’Engleterre pour li remettre en se prison,
enssi que couvens portoit, et vint ung soir à Blangi, là où li roys
englès estoit logiés. Quant li roys le vi, se li demanda tout en hault:
«Et dont revient Bouchicaux?»—«En nom Dieu, dist il, sire, de
France et de deviers le roi de Franche.»—«Et que dist ly roys de
France? ce dist li roys d’Engleterre; me venra il point
combattre?»—«En non Dieu, sire, dist il, de cela ne sai je riens, ne
je ne sui mies de son consseil si avant.»
Adonc musa li roys d’Engleterre ung petit et puis dist: «Messire
Bouchicau, je poroie avoir de vous deus mil ou trois mil florins, se je
volloie; mès je lez vous quitteray, se vous volléz aller deviers mon
adverssaire, vostre roy, et lui dire de par my que je l’atens droit chy,
et l’ai attendu et attenderay encorrez trois jours, se il voelt traire
avant pour combattre, et de ce me venrés vous faire le
responsce.»—«Saint Jorge! sire, dist messires Boucicaus, vous me
offrés grant courtoisie, et je le voeil faire et di grant merchis.» Chilx
soirs passa; l’endemain au matin, il monta à cheval et vint à Arras, et
là trouva le roy de Franche; se fist son message bien et à point.
Li roys de Franche respondi et dist: «Messire Bouchicaux, puisque
en couvent avés de raller par delà, vous dirés à nostre adverssaire
que nous nos partirons, quant bon nous samblera, et non pas par se
ordonnance.» Fº 100.
P. 143, l. 21: ensiewant.—Ms. B 6: Or revenons au roy
d’Engleterre, qui estoit à Blangy delés Heddin. Entreus que le roy
englès estoit à Blangy, coururent ses marisaulx ens ou pais de
Ternois et d’Artois et vinrent à Saint Pol. Et y eult ung jour moult
grant assault; mais chil qui dedens estoient le gardèrent bien et
vaillanment et tant que les Englès ne firent point de damaige.
Fº 484.
P. 143, l. 23: Blangis.—Ms. B 3: Blangy. Fº 169 vº.
P. 143, l. 30: entrues que.—Ms. B 3: cependent que.
P. 143, l. 30: vint.—Ms. B 6 ajoute: sur ung soir. Fº 484.
P. 143, l. 31: bons.—Ms. B 3: vaillant.
P. 144, l. 2: de le.—Ms. B 3: dès la. Fº 170.
P. 144, l. 3: et.—Le ms. B 3 ajoute: y.
P. 144, l. 6: restre.—Ms. B 3: revenir.
P. 144, l. 7 à 20: Cilz.... logiés.—Ce passage manque dans le ms.
B 5, fº 365.
P. 144, l. 10 et 11: tout.... langage.—Ms. B 3: tant par son beau et
doulx langaige.
P. 144, l. 11: apparilliet.—Ms. B 3: plaisant que par ses autres
prouesses.
P. 144, l. 14: grant cière.—Ms. B 3: bonne chière.
P. 144, l. 15: estoit.—Le ms. B 3 ajoute: en la grace du roy et son.
P. 144, l. 21: se trest.—Ms. B 3: se tira.
P. 144, l. 22: devant.—Ms. B 3: dedens.
P. 144, l. 23: luite de deux Bretons.—Ms. B 5: luitier deux Bretons.
Fº 365.
P. 144, l. 24: l’enclina.—Ms. B 3: se enclina.
P. 144, l. 26: Jehan.—Le ms. B 3 ajoute: de France.
P. 145, l. 3: temprement.—Ms. B 3: en brief.
P. 145, l. 4 à 13: Li rois... vous.—Ce passage manque dans le ms.
B 5.
P. 145, l. 5: cou.—Ms. B 3: ce.—Ms. B 4: chou. Fº 158.
P. 145, l. 16 et 17: deus ou trois mil florins.—Ms. B 6: trois ou
quatre mille escus. Fº 485.
P. 145, l. 22: combatre.—Ms. B 6: et se response vous me lairés
savoir par ung hirault des nostres, que je vous cergeray à vostre
departement. Fos 485 et 486.
P. 145, l. 22: message.—Le ms. B 3 ajoute: bien à point, vous me
ferez service, et je vous quicteray vostre prison.
P. 145, l. 24: resjoïs.—Ms. B 3: esjoy.
P. 145, l. 30: yaus.—Ms. B 3: luy.
P. 145, l. 31: mesnie.—Ms. B 3: compaignie.
P. 145, l. 32: retour.—Ms. B 6: ung hirault o luy que on apelloit
Faucon. Fº 486.
P. 146, l. 9: leviers.—Ms. B 3: louyer. Fº 170.—Ms. B 4: leuiers.
Fº 158 vº.—Ms. B 5: louier. Fº 365.
P. 146, l. 12: avés.—Le ms. B 3 ajoute: premier.
P. 146, l. 14: ennemis.—Ms. B 6: la response du roy fu telle par
Faucon le hirault, qui le aporta arrière, que c’estoit bien l’intencion du
roy de Franche que de aller devers ses ennemis et plus avant, mais
que ses gens fussent tout venus qu’il avoit mandet. Fº 486.

§ 350. P. 146, l. 15: Ensi demora.—Ms. d’Amiens: Sus cel estat se


parti messires Bouchicaus, et vint arrière à Blangi et recorda au roy
d’Engleterre le responsce que vous avés oy.
Quant li roys entendi ce, si eult sur ce avis, et dounna à
monseigneur Bouchicau congiet et le quita de sa foy et puis se
desloga dedens un jour apriès et retourna vers Saint Omer. Et
entrèrent ses gens en le comté de Fauckenberghe; si le ardirent
moult villainnement. Et enssi que li Englès chevauchoient, messires
Hernoulx d’Audrehen, marescaux de Franche, à deux cens armurez
de fier, les costioit et leur porta plusseurs dammaiges.
Quant li roys de Franche sceut par monsigneur Bouchicau que li
roys d’Engleterre estoit deslogiés et qu’il s’en ralloit vers Callais, si
se departi adonc à grant esploit de le chité d’Arras, et chevaucha
viers Saint Omer et vint gesir à Tieruane. Et li roys d’Engleterre ce
jour vint à Eske sus le rivierre, et là se loga. Et l’endemain li roys de
Franche le poursui. Et li roys d’Engleterre s’en rentra dedens Callais.
Fº 100 vº.
P. 146, l. 15: cel.—Ms. B 4: tel. Fº 158 vº.
P. 146, l. 23: lui retraire.—Ms. B 3: se retirer. Fº 170.
P. 146, l. 27: Leueline.—Ms. B 3: Laueline. Fº 170 vº.—Ms. B 4:
Leveline. Fº 158 vº.—Ms. B 5: Liveline. Fº 365.
P. 146, l. 27: devers.—Ms. B 3: à.
P. 146, l. 28: Faukemberghe.—Ms. B 6: Sy tost que le roy de
Franche sceut que le roy Englès estoit deslogiet et qu’il se tiroit et
retraioit arière, il se party de la ville d’Amiens et s’en vint à Aras et
fist commandement que toutes manières de gens à cheval et à piet
le sievissent. Et envoia devant son connestable, messire Jaques de
Bourbon, en le chité de Terouane, à tout trois cens lanches, pour le
garder contre les Englès, se nul assault y fasoient. Le roy Englès et
son host, yauls party de Heddin et de là environ, chevauchèrent et
passèrent assés priès de Terouane, mais point n’y assallirent, car il
entendirent que elle estoit garnie de bonnes gens d’armes. Se
passèrent les Englès oultre et vinrent logier droit à Alekine et sus
celle rivière qui keurt desous le castiel de Maunier et qui vient à
Arques. Et messire Ernoul d’Audrehem, marisal de Franche, à tout
cinq cens compaignons bien montés, les poursievy et se logea celle
nuit moult près d’ieaulx sus le mont de Herfault, et tant qu’il veoient
bien l’un l’autre. Et l’endemain se desloga le roy et passa desous le
mont de Herfault et s’en vint devers Fauquemberghe, qui estoit une
bonne ville et grose et où on faisoit grant draperie. Sy fu la dite ville
prinse des Englès, car il n’y avoit point de deffense, et fu toute pillie
et robée et à leur departement toute arse. Et le roy de Franche s’en
vint che mesme jour à Terouane, et tout son ost, et avoit bien cent
mille hommes, que uns, que aultres. L’endemain, se party le roy
englès de Fauquemberghe et passa à Licques et desoubz Ardre, et
fist tant qu’il rentra en Calais. Fos 487 et 488.
P. 147, l. 2: o primes se desloga il.—Ms. B 3: et qu’il se deslogeoit.
Fº 170 vº.
P. 147, l. 3: sur.—Ms. B 3: contre.—Ms. B 4: sur. Fº 158 vº.
P. 147, l. 7: Tierenois.—Mss. B 3 à 5: Tiernois.
P. 147, l. 8: Tieruane.—Ms. B 3: Therouanne.—Ms. B 4:
Tierewane.
P. 147, l. 8 et 9: estoient... Faukemberge.—Ms. B 5: avoient passé
Fauquenbergue. Fº 365.
P. 147, l. 11: Liques.—Mss. B 3 et 5: Lisques.—Ms. B 4: Licques.
P. 147, l. 14: costiiet.—Ms. B 3: coustoié.
P. 147, l. 15: dessouchier.—Ms. B 4: deffouchier. Fº 158 vº.—Ms.
B 3: bouger pour poursuir les Anglois.
P. 147, l. 19: en le kewe.—Ms. B 3: à la queue.—Ms. B 4: à la
keue.
P. 147, l. 19: le bastide.—Ms. B 3: la bastille.
P. 147, l. 20: chapitains.—Ms. B 6: Che prope jour, vint le roy de
Franche à Fauquenberghe et là se loga sur la rivière, et cuidoit que
les Englès fussent là environ, et les avoit tout le jour poursievy à
l’avis des fumières qu’il faisoient.
Or advint que, entreulx que le roy de Franche et les seigneurs
estoient là logiet, ung grant remous et moult felle s’entreprist entre
les gens de monseigneur Jehan de Haynau et le commun de
Tournay. Et fu la chose bien ordonée de mal aler, car il furent rengiés
ly uns devant l’autre. Et y eult pluiseurs de chiaulx de Tournay ochis
et blechiés, dont il estoient moult ayret. Et encores euissent il rechut
plus grant damaige, se ly rois n’y eust envoiet et mis deffense sur
yaulx et yaulx appaisiet, car grans foisons de bons chevaliers et
escuiers se tournoient et tiroient devers monseigneur Jehan de
Haynau à l’encontre de cheaulx de Tournay. Sy fu la chose ensy
departie: qui plus y eult mis plus y eult perdu. Chil de Tournay
plouroient leur damaige: che fu le reconfort qu’il en eurent.
Assés tost après ceste advenue, vint le marescaus de Franche,
messire Ernoul d’Audrehem devers le roy, et ly dist que les Englès
estoient entrés à Calais. Quant le roy de Franche entendy che, sy
eult consail de luy retraire à Saint Omer et se party à tout son ost et
s’en vint en sa bonne ville de Saint Omer et là se tint. Et demanda
conseil à monseigneur Jehan de Haynau, en quy il avoit fiance,
coment il poroit perseverer à son honneur de ceste armée; il luy dist:
«Sire, se vous envoierés quatre chevaliers à Calais devers le roy
d’Engleterre, et luy manderés que vous l’avés poursievy au plus
hastivement que vous avés peult depuis les nouvelles que vous
eustes de messire Bouchicault et qu’il vide hors de Calais, et vous
luy baillerés plache là où il le voldra prendre et eslire, et là le
combaterés.»
A che consail le roy entendy vollentiers. Et furent les quatre
chevaliers nommés et ordonnés qui yroient ce messaige faire; et
furent messires Ernoul d’Audrehem, messire Guichart de Biaugeu,
messire Bouchicault et le sire de Saint Venant. Et cheulx y alèrent et
ung hirault avecques eulx jusques à Calais pour parler au roy
d’Engleterre. Quant il furent venus assés près de Calais, il
envoièrent leur hirau dedens la ville dire et senefier au roy englès
que là estoient quatre chevaliers franchois pour parler au roy
d’Engleterre de par le roy de Franche, mais que il eussent
sauconduit. Le roy respondy au hirault qu’il n’avoient que faire de
entrer en la ville de Calais; mais il envoiroit de son consail pour
parler à y aulx et sçavoir quelle chose il volloient dire. Sy i envoia
son cousin le duc Henry de Lenclastre et messire Gautier de Mauny
et deux aultres chevaliers. Sy chevauchèrent tant que il vinrent là où
les quatre chevaliers de Franche les atendoient. Sy les saluèrent
courtoisement et leur demandèrent qu’il leur plaisoit. Messire Ernoul
d’Audrehem prist le parolle et dist qu’il estoient là envoiet de par le
roy de Franche pour requerre au roy d’Engleterre qu’il volsist yssir
hors de Calais et venir en ung biel camp, car il se volroit combattre à
luy. Le duc de Lancastre respondy que ly roy Jehan avoit eut assés
tamps et losir de venir jusques à yauls, s’il volsist, car il avoit
sejourné au pais de l’Artois bien onze jours, où le roy son seigneur
l’avoit atendut et luy avoit mandé bataille «par vous monseigneur
Bouchicault qui chy estes presens. Sy vous respondons de par le
roy nostre seigneur qu’il n’est pas consilliés de faire che que vous ly
requerés, car jà le moitié de ses gens en sont rallet leur voie, et ly
aultres sont moult travilliet. Se ly venroit mal à point de combatre au
plaisir et à l’aise du roy de Franche et à tous les bons poins.» Là
endroit furent pluiseurs raisons dites entre yauls, dont je m’en tais,
car riens n’en fut accordé. Sy se partirent atant les chevaliers de
Franche et vinrent à Saint Omer raporter au roy de Franche leur
response, et ly chevaliers d’Engleterre s’en ralèrent à Calais. Fos 488
à 492.
P. 147, l. 26: li Englès estoit.—Ms. B 3: les Anglois estoient.—Ms.
B 4: ly Englès estoient.
P. 148, l. 3: royaus.—Ms. B 3: roialle.
P. 148, l. 5: chevaucie.—Ms. B 3: chevauchée.
P. 148, l. 13: pièce de terre.—Ms. B 3: terre.
P. 148, l. 20: Arde.—Ms. B 3: Ardre. Fº 171 vº.
P. 148, l. 23 et 24: havene.—Ms. B 3: havre.
P. 148, l. 24 et 25: Bervich.—Ms. B 3: Vervich. Fº 172.
P. 148, l. 26: Rosebourch.—Le ms. B 3 ajoute: et fally.
P. 148, l. 27: pensieus.—Mss. B 3, 5: pensif.
P. 148, l. 28: Grastoch.—Ms. B 3: Grastop.—Ms. B 4: Grascok.
Fº 159.—Ms. B 6: Grisep. Fº 492.
P. 149, l. 3: eussent... songniet.—Mss. B 3, 4: eussent esté bien
soigneux. Fº 172.
P. 149, l. 3: songniet.—Ms. B 6: Adonc se mirent les seigneurs
d’Engleterre entre le roy et le chevalier, et dirent: «Monseigneur, il
sera bien amendé.» Lors soupa le roy moult petit et fist là venir tout
son consail après souper en sa chambre. Sy fu dit et ordonné que, à
heure de minuit, quant la marée venroit, que il entraissent tous en
leurs batieaulx et s’en yroient en Engleterre; et ne dormiroit jamais
en une ville que une nuit, sy seroit venu devant Bervich. Ensi fu il
segnefiet et criet parmy la ville de Calais. Et fu tout toursé, et les
chevaulx mis en ès batieaulx devant minuit, et à chelle heure le roy
entra en son batiel et toute[s] ses gens; et furent l’endemain, à heure
de prime, à Douvres. Sy dessendirent et mirent tout leur baghes
hors, et puis montèrent à cheval, et prirent le chemin de Londres. Et
fist commandement le roy par toute son ost que nulz ne presist
aultre chemin que chely d’Escoche. Fº 493.
P. 149, l. 6: tel.—Ms. B 3: tellement. Fº 172.—Ms. B 4: atourné
telle paix.
P. 149, l. 7: sist.—Ms. B 3, 4: fut. Fº 172.

§ 351. P. 149, l. 16: Quant messires.—Ms. d’Amiens: Et li roys de


Franche vint logier sus le mont de Sangate, et envoya à Callais
monseigneur Ernoul d’Audrehen parler au roy d’Engleterre pour
atraire hors; mès il s’escuza et dist que il n’en feroit pour celle saison
plus. Enssi se desrompi ceste chevauchie, et retourna li roys Jehans
en Franche. Fº 100 vº.
P. 149, l. 17 et 18: l’enclinèrent.—Ms. B 3: s’aclinèrent. Fº 172.
P. 149, l. 18: bien.... point.—Ms. B 3: bien honnestement.
P. 149, l. 27: la bataille.—Ms. B 3: batailler.
P. 149, l. 31: finable.—Ms. B 3: finale.
P. 150, l. 11: en sès.—Mss. B 3 et 4: en ses.
P. 150, l. 13 et 14: le bastide d’Arde.—Ms. B 5: la ville d’Ardre.
P. 150, l. 21: Valenchiènes.—Ms. B 6: delés le boin conte
Guillaume de Haynau son frère: Dieu leur faiche pardon! Car le
gentil chevalier resgna moult vaillamment et fu en son vivant moult
amés de ses amis et redoubtés de ses ennemis. Sy s’en rala son
hirtaige, tout che qu’il en tenoit, as enfans monseigneur le conte
Loys de Blois, qui furent filz de se fille, et qui adonc estoient moult
jouene: Loys, Jehan et Guis. Chil resgnèrent moult honnourablement
et moult loyaument, si comme vous orés recorder chy avant en ceste
matère. Fº 494.
P. 150, l. 25:—Guis.—Le ms. B 5 ajoute: de Blois. Fº 365 vº.

§ 352. P. 151, l. 1: à cent.—Ms. B 3: avec cent. Fº 172 vº.


P. 151, l. 13: emprise.—Ms. B 3: entreprinse.
P. 151, l. 18: Gautiers.—Ms. B 6: avecques luy soixante
compaignons bien montés et bien armés. Fº 495.
P. 151, l. 19: Bervich.—Ms. B 6: et se bouta ou chastel qui se
tenoit Englès et qui siet delés la cité. Et adonc messire Thomas Kol
estoit chastelain. Quant le sire de Mauny fut venu jusques à là, il
avisa et ymagina comment le plus tost il pouroit faire ouvraige qui
apparust pour constraindre cheaulx de Bervich. Il avoit avec luy sept
mineurs de l’esvesquiet de Liège, car toudis les menoit il vollentiers
avoecq luy, puis qu’il pensoit à faire siège ne assault à une fortresse.
Si les appella et leur dist: «Regardés entre vous se par mine nous
porimes entrer en ceste cité.» Il respondirent: «Sire, oil.»—«Or vous
aparliés et vous esploitiés, adonc dist le sire de Mauny. Mettés vos
hostieus en euvre, car se nous poons entrer par mine, je vous feray
tous riches.»
Adonc se ordonnèrent et commenchèrent à miner à l’endroit de
une grose tour qui estoit sur les murs et respondant à le cité et
servoit à l’encontre du dit castiel. Et commenchèrent à fouir mouvant
en l’enprise du chastiel. Il n’eurent gaire minet ne alé avant quant il
trouvèrent bieau[x] degrés bien assis et bien machonnés et une
croute, toute vautée à manière de ung chelier, qui s’en aloit vers le
cité de Bervich par desous les murs.
Advint, entreuz que ces mineurs minoient, chil de la cité s’en
perchurent bien. Et bien savoient ly aucuns anchiens hommes que là
en che contour il devoit avoir crouste et chelier qui aloit de la ville ou
castiel. Sy se doubtèrent et esmaièrent durement qu’il ne fussent par
là pris, et le remoustrèrent à aulcuns chevaliers d’Escoche qui là
estoient pour garder la cité; et leur dirent qu’il s’avisaissent, car il
estoient en grande volenté que de yaus rendre à monseigneur
Gautié de Mauny, et anchois que le roy englès y peuist venir ne qu’il
fust pris par forche.
Quant les Escochois qui là estoient entendirent che langaige et
perchurent le coraige des bourgois de Bervich, sy se doubtèrent que
mauls ne leur en venist. Si se consillèrent et avisèrent entre yaulz
sur che, et toursèrent tout che qu’il pourent et qui leur estoit, et se
partirent ung jour et rentrèrent en leur pais. Et à l’endemain, ung
traitiet se fist entre cheaus de Bervich et monseigneur Gautié de
Mauny qu’il se rendroient, sauve leurs corps et leurs biens. Et les
devoit le sire de Mauny parmy tant apaisier au roy d’Engleterre, ensy
qu’il fist; car le roy i entra le second jour après à grant joie. Fos 495 à
497.
P. 151, l. 29: Asneton.—Ms. B 3: Anreton. Fº 172 vº.—Ms. B. 4:
Ameton. Fº 159 vº.
P. 151, l. 32: sente.—Ms. B 3: sache.
P. 152, l. 15: perilz.—Ms. B 3: dangiers.
P. 152, l. 16 et 17: toursèrent.—Ms. B 3: troussèrent.
P. 152, l. 19: vaghe.—Ms. B 3: vuide.—Ms. B 4: vage.
P. 152, l. 28: vasselage.—Ms. B 3: vaillance.
P. 152, l. 29: menestraudies.—Ms. B 3: menestriers.—Ms. B 4:
menestreux. Fº 159 vº.
§ 353. P. 153, l. 11: Aindebourch.—Ms. B 3: Andebourg. Fº 173.
P. 153, l. 12: tèle.—Ms. B 3: tellement.
P. 153, l. 13: estant.—Ms. B 3: estat.
P. 153, l. 16: aforains.—Ms. B 3: forains.
P. 153, l. 23 et 24: Haindebourch.—Ms. B 6: la souveraine ville
d’Escoche. Fº 498.
P. 153, l. 23 à 26: en approçant.... fourer.—Ms. B 5: et en
approchant Haindebourc, couroient les fourriers, mais ilz ne
trouvoient neant. Fº 366.
P. 153, l. 26: fourer.—Ms. B 3: fourrager.
P. 153, l. 29: li rois.—Ms. B 6: en le souveraine abeye dehors la
ville, et le plus grant partie de ses gens en la ville, car elle n’estoit
point frummée. Mais il y a ung chastel, qui siet au desoubz sur une
roche haulte et belle, et est très bien fruméz; et adonc y avoit
dedens de bons chevaliers et escuiers pour le garder. Fº 498.
P. 154, l. 3: nostre.—Ms. B 5: vostre.
P. 154, l. 8: il.—Ms. B 5: le roy d’Escoce.
P. 154, l. 10: en remunerant les.—Ms. B 3: pour remuneration des.
P. 154, l. 16 et 17: uns.... offisces.—Ms. B 3: une belle office.
P. 154, l. 21: nostre.—Ms. B 5: vostre.

§ 354. P. 155, l. 2 et 3: pourveances.—Ms. B 6: et se navire, qui le


devoit sieuvir par mer, mais point ne vinrent, car ilz eurent vent
toudis sy contraire qu’il ne porent oncques à celle fois aprochier
Escoche. Quant le roy englès vit che que ses pourveanches ne
venoient pas, ne le grant engien dont il devoit assallir Handebourch
et les aultres fortresses, sy eut consail qu’il retourneroit en ardant le
plat pais d’Escoche. Fº 499.
P. 155, l. 3 à 13: dont... vivre.—Ce passage manque dans le ms. B
5, fº 366 vº.
P. 155, l. 10: ens ès gragnes.—Ms. B 3: dedens les granges.
Fº 173 vº.—Ms. B 4: ens ès granges. Fº 160.
P. 155, l. 15: le Hombre.—Ms. B 3: le avre.
P. 155, l. 22 et p. 156, l. 19: Entrues... Dalquest.—Cet alinéa est
résumé en une phrase dans le ms. B 5.
P. 155, l. 29: le.—Ms. B 3: au.
P. 155, l. 32: plus especiaulz.—Ms. B 3: principale.
P. 156, l. 4: retournoit... fois.—Ms. B 3: repairoit aucunes fois.
P. 156, l. 12: respirer.—Mss. B 3 et 4: respiter.
P. 156, l. 17: fois.—Ms. B 6: Et le fist le roy reconduire jusques à
Dalquest par deux de ses chevaliers, le seigneur de Montbray et le
seigneur de Noefville: et fu commandé au deslogier que nulz, sur le
hart, ne boutast le fu ne aultrement à le ville de Haindebourch.
Fº 499 et 500.
P. 156, l. 27: Arcebaus.—Mss. B 3 et 5: Archambault. Fº 173 vº.
P. 156, l. 29: Asneton.—Mss. B 4, 5: Assueton. Fº 160 vº.

§ 355. P. 157, l. 24: malaisiu.—Ms. B 3: malaisé. Fº 173 vº.—Ms.


B 4: malaisieu. Fº 160 vº.
P. 157, l. 30: froit.—Ms. B 6: ensy que il fait en yvier envers le
Noel. Fº 500.
P. 158, l. 7: soutilleté.—Ms. B 3: subtilité. Fº 174.—Ms. B 4:
soustilleté. Fº 161.
P. 158, l. 9: aise.—Ms. B 3: aiseement.
P. 158, l. 10: Tuydon.—Ms. B 3: Tuyde.—Ms. B 5: Tuydein.
Fº 366 vº.
P. 158, l. 14: se fin.—Ms. B 3: la fin.—Ms. B 4: le fin.
P. 158, l. 16: Li contes Douglas.—Ms. B 6: messire Guillaumez
Duglas, maris à le contesse dessus dite, qui se faisoit chief de tous
les Escochois et estoit moult vaillant et saiges. Fº 500.
P. 158, l. 21: rués.—Ms. B 3: boutez.
P. 158, l. 22: arroi.—Ms. B 6: Alors fu le duc de Lanclastre très bon
chevalier, et bien le couvenoit, et y fist de la main mainte apertise
d’armes. Fº 501.
P. 158, l. 24: ce.—Ms. B 3: ceste.
P. 159, l. 2: menèrent.—Ms. B 6: jusques à quinze bons
prisonniers, dont il eurent des chevaliers de Brabant, et les aultres
furent Englèz; et s’en retournèrent en la forest et entre les
montaignes, de coy il faisoient leur fortresse. Fº 502.
P. 159, l. 5: esvanui.—Ms. B 3: esvanoys.
P. 159, l. 7: Baudresen.—Ms. B 3: Andrehen.—Ms. B 4:
Baudresem. Fº 161.
P. 159, l. 9: six.—Ms. B 3: unze. Fº 174.

§ 356. P. 159, l. 11: Depuis.—Ms. d’Amiens: Et envoya (le roi


Jean) une partie de ses gens d’armes avoecq son connestable,
messire Jaqueme de Bourbon, devers le Langhe d’ock; car li
prinches de Galles y estoit entrés à tout grant fuisson de gens
d’armes de Gascoingne et d’Engleterre: de laquelle cevaucie nous
parlerons maintenant, car elle fu moult honnerable et de grant
emprise.
Li prinches de Galles, en celle saison, estoit yssus de Bourdiaus à
deus mil lanches, Englès et Gascons, et quatre mil archiers et grant
fuisson de gens de piet. Et vint passer le Garonne à Bregerach, et
fist tant que, sus le conduit dou seigneur de Labreth, qui là estoit
parsonelment, dou seigneur de Pumiers, dou seigneur de
Muchident, dou seigneur de Lespare, dou seigneur de Courton, dou
seigneur de Cendren, dou seigneur de Rosem et de cesti de
Landuras et dou captal de Beus, il entra en France et vint passer au
Port Sainte Marie dallés Toulouse, et entra ou pays toulousain.
Fº 100 vº.
P. 159, l. 11: avenue.—Ms. B 3: aventure. Fº 174.
P. 159, l. 21: grant et estoffet.—Ms. B 3: grandement estoffé.
P. 160, l. 15: de Labreth.—Ms. B 3: d’Albret. Fº 174 vº.
P. 160, l. 17: Aymemon.—Ms. B 3: Aymond.
P. 160, l. 18: Tarste.—Ms. B 6: Tharse. Fº 503.
P. 160, l. 18: Aymeri de Tarste.—Ms. B 3: Aymon de Castre.
P. 160, l. 18 et 19: Mucident.—Ms. B 6: le sire de Condon, messire
Jehan de Caumont. Fº 503.

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