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Just as there was not one dominant Christian leader of the First Crusade, so the Latin expedition faced a series of Muslim enemies rather than a single foe. Lacking an obvious, primary antagonist, many Latin observers singled out Kerbogha as the crusade's most dangerous opponent, styling him, to some extent at least, as their anti-hero. [...] All in all, Kerbogha comes across in Latin sources as an arrogant but formidable general. Perhaps more importantly, observers in the crusader camp believed that he was the officially appointed representative of the Seljuq sultan of Baghdad - in the Gesta Francorum he is described as 'commander-in-chief of the army of the sultan of Persia'. In a sense he is portrayed as the sanctioned champion of Islam[...,] but his image as the 'official' leader of Sunni resistance to the crusade is deeply misleading. If we piece together the evidence provided by the limited corpus of Arabic sources for these events, a strikingly different picture emerges. Kerbogha had risen to power in Mosul, far to the east of Mesopotamia, on the back of his reputation as an astute and merciless military commander, and although he was sultan of Baghdad's ally, he was not his puppet. Kerbogha harboured his own ambitions for northern Syria, and the advent of the First Crusade presented the perfect opportunity for their realisation. Under the cloak of a sacred struggle to annihilate the ravening Frankish horde, he hoped to occupy Antioch and large swathes of Syria. If successful, he himself might be able to challenge for power in Baghdad. Kerbogha spent six months carefully laying the military and diplomatic foundations for his campaign, piecing together an immensely intimidating coalition of Muslim forces. Drawn across the Abbasid world, armies were committed from Damascus, Harran, Homs, Mardin, Samosata and Sinjar, among other places. Most came not for religious duty or deep-felt hatred of the crusaders, but rather out of fear of Kerbogha. They knew that he might one day rule the Seljuq world, and they chose now to be his ally rather than his enemy. Only Ridwan of Aleppo resisted the call to arms, staunchly refusing to renounce his independence.

Thomas Asbridge (The First Crusade: A New History: The Roots of Conflict Between Christianity and Islam, pages 202, 203-204)

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