an issue of political intrigue and its historical importance in terms of Frankish conquest, as merely one event within a continuous pattern. He attributes the origin to the happenings of 1085-86, when the Franks first invaded Islamic lands in Andalusia, and connects the crusades with the conquest of Sicily in 1091. Ibn al-Athir attributes the political intrigue behind the immediate origins of the crusade to three sources: Roger I, the Fatimids, and the Byzantine Emperor. According to al-Athir, Roger I manipulated the invasion of Syria and march onto Jerusalem by the crusading armies under Baldwin—a compounding of various "Baldwins" of Flanders and Jerusalem. In his account Roger I is said to have "raised one leg and farted loudly" to dismiss the comments of his companions regarding Baldwin's requests to use Sicily as the intermediate station before advancing to conquer Africa. Whatever the plausibility of this account, perhaps ibn al-Athir is indulging in some creative editorial, as even medieval Islamic writers were wont at times to lampoon ones enemy. In Ibn al-Athir's description Roger redirects the Frankish armies under Baldwin to head toward Syria and Jerusalem, instead of North Africa through Sicily, in order to preserve his "annual profit from the harvest," thus demonstrating Roger's political acumen and calculus motivating his decision to launch the first crusade from Antioch. In this case, it is unsurprising that ibn al-Athir characterizes the beginning of the crusades to have occurred with the siege of Antioch in 1097, as the crusades were simply part of a long historical pattern of Frankish conquests and not conceptualized as a distinct event, as contemporary European chroniclers—such as Fulcher of Chartres—tended to do. In addition, Ibn al-Athir refers to Roger's concern with maintaining friendly relations with Muslim rulers in Africa as another reason why he redirected the Frankish armies to Syria. The second source of political intrigue that ibn al-Athir claimed to have shaped the beginnings of the First Crusade was the Shiite Fatimid Dynasty in Egypt. While Ibn al-Athir claims that it is merely "another story," he suggests fairly clearly that the Fatimids had a role in instigating the Franks to invade Syria because they were threatened by the expansion of Seljuk power and wanted to use the Franks to protect Fatimid Egypt from a Seljuk invasion. ibn al-Athir seems to suggest that the Fatimids were not "Muslims," demonstrating how Seljuk Sunni Muslims viewed the "heretic[al]" practices of