Note III — The Advance From the Two Casals to Ramlah
The Frank writers give no precise date for the advance of the host in 1191 from “between the two Casals” to the neighbourhood of Ramlah. Ambrose says they reached the former position on the eve of All Saints, and stayed there “full fifteen days or more” (Est., ll. 7199-209). The Itin., 289-90, agrees with him. This should mean that they set out again on November 15 or 16. Ambrose, according to the printed text of the Estoire, says the journey to the next encampment took two days: “L’ost erra par mi la plaine, Sor les biaus chevals peus d’orge; Vint en deus jors entre Seint Jorge e Rames; la s’allerent tendre Por plus gent e vitaille atendre” (ll. 7464-8). Thus they would arrive there—i. e. between Lydda and Ramlah—on November 17 or 18. The poet further says that the weather afterwards compelled them to take shelter within the two towns, “e fumes la bien sis semaines” (ll. 7471-7; Itin., 298-9, says the same). We presently find that they made their next advance—to Beit Nuba—on January 3. Thus we arrive at November 22 as the date of entering Lydda and Ramlah, and the encampment “in the plain” appears to have lasted five or six days (November 17 or 18-22). Our best Arab authority, Bohadin, unluckily does not mention the matter. Ibn Alathyr (Rec. Hist. Or., II. i. 54) says “the Franks set out from their camp at Jaffa for Ramlah on 3 Dulkaada” = November 22; the same date is given for their “advance in the direction of Ramlah” by Abu Shama (ib., v. 48), but without any clue to his authority for the statement. Ibn Alathyr gives this same date, 3 Dulkaada, as that on which “the Franks advanced from Ramlah to Natroun” (l.c.); this is doubtless a confusion, made either by author or scribe, between “Dulkaada” and “Dulheggia,” as Richard—though, indeed, not the host—did remove to Natroun on December 22 or 23 (= 3 or 4 Dulheggia). The Frankish and the Arab authorities may be partially reconciled by taking the “six weeks” of Ambrose and the Itinerarium as covering the whole period spent not only within the towns, but also “between” them. In that case, however, the stay between the two Casals must have been more than fifteen days; it could not have been less than twenty days, indeed twenty-two seems a more reasonable reckoning, for it is hard to see how two days can possibly have been spent in marching even from Casal of the Plains (the more remote of these two Casals) to either Lydda or Ramlah, a distance of less than eight miles. One writer does expressly mention “twenty-two days” in his account of this part of the Crusade; but he does so in connexion with the sojourn, not between the Casals, but between Lydda and Ramlah. Ambrose’s lines, 7464-8, quoted above, are in the Itinerarium (298) represented as follows: “Exercitus noster fixis tentoriis inter S. Georgium et Ramulam sedit viginti et duobus diebus, ut gentem expectaret venturam et annonam.”
To me this passage in the Itinerarium suggests a possibility of reconciling practically all the dates and notes of time given by all our authorities, Arab and Frankish, relating to this matter. It is not inconceivable that the original authority—whoever he may have been—for the “twenty-two days” had through a confusion of memory substituted the duration of the stay between the two Casals for that of the stay near and in Lydda and Ramlah, and vice versa. In that case the correct dates would stand thus: Between the two Casals, twenty-two days, November 1-22; in the plain between Lydda and Ramlah, “full fifteen days,” November 23-December 8; retirement into the two cities December 8, and further advance (to Beit Nuba) on January 3, “six weeks” from the date of encampment between them. Whether these coincidences are merely accidental, and the “twenty-two days” a sheer blunder due to the Latin “translator” having misread “vint en deux jors” as “vint e deus jors,” in Ambrose’s line 7466, or whether in that line as we now have it en is a scribe’s error for e, and ll. 7464-6 should be read as a single sentence, with a parenthesis stuck into the middle of it for the sake of rime—“E l’ost erra par mi la plaine (Sor les biaus chevals peus d’orge) Vint e deus jors entre Seint Jorge e Rames”—whether the “translator” rendered erra in l. 7464 by sedit because he thought thus to make better sense of his version of l. 7466, or whether the poet meant that the host roamed about the plain in which its camp was set, and perhaps even shifted the camp about, in vain efforts to avoid the enemies and the rain (see ll. 7469-75, especially l. 7473, “Iceles pluies nos chacerent”); these are questions involving too many other questions for a discussion of them to be attempted here.