Murder in the Rose Pavillion
The Assassination of an Emir
The 1100’s were a violent time. Heck, who are we kidding: it is always a violent time. However, politically, violence would be more likely to pay off in the 1100’s.
One person who took advantage of this was Shihab al-Din Mahmud, the lord of Damascus.
The People
In 1137, there was an emir named Bazwaj. ‘Emir’ means ‘command’ and indicates a noble, someone with military or political office, or prince. These days, people generally use the word to mean prince, but they were more general 1000 years ago. What we are saying is that Bazwaj was somebody high in the hierarchy.
He had done something to irritate Shihab al-Din Mahmud. They ran in a tiny clique of Armenian Christians, Mamluks, and eunuchs, and ruled in tumultuous times, so maybe Bazwaj was threatening his hold over the group. Or he was personally obnoxious. Mahmud didn’t say why he wanted Bazwaj dead, just that he did.
The Act
Mahmud invited the target of his rage to the Rose Pavillion in his palace, and then told some Armenian Shamsiya to kill him the second he was without his attendants. The Shamsiya were followers of a Mesopotamian religion that worshipped the sun that lasted until the 1600’s, and a group of them made up part of Mahmud’s cortege.
The Shamsiya isolated the unfortunate Bazwaj on the way to the Rose Pavillion and overpowered him. They wrapped his dead body in a cloak and buried him in a tomb built for his wife.
The Fallout
So, the irritant was gone. However, things continued to be politically uncertain, and in June of 1138, a trio of slaves that had been entrusted to sleep in the same room as Mahmud killed him in his sleep. (It was standard practice in the Middle East and Europe for some trusted servants to sleep in the same room as a lord to keep him safe, but you can see why that didn’t always work.)
The trio, named Yusuf, Albaghash, and al-Kwarkawi, were nearly caught when a fourth groom who slept near him gave the alarm, but they killed him too.
Then they hightailed it out of the citadel.
Albaghash slipped into obscurity, leaving his home to be looted, but the other two were promptly caught and crucified on Damascus’s city wall.
And things continued to be unruly, politically speaking.
Maybe tense election days aren’t so bad after all.
Sources:
www.medievalists.net ‘Murder and Political Drama in Medieval Syria and Egypt’ by Steve Tibble