CHRISTIANS … CRUSADES … RELIGION … HISTORY
on 02/04/2010 at 09:04 AM
The psychosis of some religions, and its use as a tool for personal acquisition of power has always disgusted me.
Simply beyond belief how it was twisted throughout the ages.Turtler, where are you? This posts begs for one of your detailed essays.
It still amazes me that so many people are just so misinformed about the Crusades. Yes, they were terrible, merciless war, with all kinds of torture and mutilation and horror. Which was EXACTLY how all wars were fought in those days. By all sides. All over the earth.
The main point that has been buried in the West is that the Crusades were defensive offense. Prior to the rise of Islam, under the Byzantine Roman Empire, the Christian world went from Scotland east to Moscow, and south down to and all around the Mediterranean. From the Straits of Gibralter in Spain, all through France, Italy, around into Greece, down the Dalmatian Coast and back past the Caucuses, through Constantinople and into Turkey and all around the Black Sea, down the entire Levant and eastwards through Babylon to the Persian border, all through Egypt, south into Ethiopia, and west across northern Africa through Libya, Carthage, and back to Gibralter in Morocco north of the Atlas Mountains.
In the 450 years from the onset of Jihad, nearly all that southern territory had been lost. Muslims, called Saracens in those days, sacked ROME in 846. It took the Normans until 1100 to throw the muzzies out of Sicily and Italy (they had to take a break to conquer England around 1066). The Crusades were a SMALL attempt to fight back. Retaking the Levant, the Holy Land, would split the Islamic world in half, and cut off the land supply route into Europe. It was a tactical move as well as a religious one.
The war against the Moors lasted more than 500 years, lead to the creation of the nation of Spain (Ferdinand and Isabella joined up around 1492 and achieved victory). The only reason that Columbus went for a sail was because the trade routes to India and China had been cut off by the fall of Byzantium.
You’ve read the blog called Gates of Vienna. It was given that name because that is how far Islam pushed into Europe. To Vienna. In Austria. NORTH of Italy. Just to the east of Switzerland.
When it was all over, the north shore of the Med was Christian, eastwards beyond Greece to a bit past Budapest. The whole south shore was firmly under the green banner, and remains that way today, 500 years later.
And it’s pretty easy to argue that it wasn’t really over in the Renaissance era.The US Navy and Marine’s first job was to fight the Barbary Pirates, who were stealing our ships and exacting tribute on us, in the name of Islam, at the turn of the 19th century. George Bush was NOT wrong to call for a Crusade: in the larger picture, the peace of the 19th and 20th centuries was just a small break in the battle that has been going on for more than 1400 years.
I’ve read several of Napier’s books. He does the historical fiction barbarian empires thing, and writes pretty well.
Now we have invited the barbarian amongst us and pay for him to outbreed us with welfare. The death throes of Europe are going to be an ugly affair.
Yes that old saw about ignoring history and being destined or doomed to repeat it does hold up it seems. It wasnt until the moors/saracens/mussies/moslems got oil money to spread around that they began anew. More politicly and through immigration and education but anew never the less.And so the world turns.
Please don’t correct me here, I dont have time to write dissertations,just short statements are all I have time for.Rich, why would we correct you when you’re exactly spot-on?
Oil money funds the Second Diaspora, and that group’s very high birthrate makes it seem that the Long War may be lost from within. In a way I am glad for terrorism. It keeps the rest of us aware of the problem. Given the West’s brain dead policies of immigration, terrorism is entirely unnecessary. Muslims could simply sit back and have babies for the next 50 years, at which point they would control most of the earth other than China.
Turtler, where are you? This posts begs for one of your detailed essays.
Right HERE!
Honestly, the most unbelievable thing I can see about these books is the claim that they have been “traditionally” been painted as a “noble mission.”
Maybe in the Medieval era to the Renaissance, but such beliefs have been almost unanimously rejected in the modern era, as anyone who knows anything about modern historical studies would recognize.
Firstly, regarding the errors I noticed:
‘They took away only the young girls and nuns, whose faces and figures they found pleasing, and beautiful young men’.
Not entirely true. The armies of the Caliphs were not merciful by any measure, but they were not immune to the sporadic and almost random mercy that afflicted most medieval forces. In reference to what that excerpt was talking about (the Peasant’s Crusade), the captives were mostly very young children, and by all accounts they were treated quite well by their captors (indeed, one of the Muslims who actually WAS found to be attempting to sodomize one of the children was subjected to death by burning, which was a very grave insult indeed).
Naturally, this was the exception rather than the rule, but I am obliged to zealously root out every little possible historical error.
By 715 they had conquered most of Spain, and soon they had got as far as Northern France, only stopping with their defeat at Tours by Charles Martel.
This isn’t so much of a historical error as it is a personal irritant of mine. While Charles Martel’s role in preventing Islamic expansion into France cannot be denied, it was hardly the only turning point, and indeed it was easily of comparatively secondary importance to the Second Seige of Constantinople, which was by far a greater blow to the Umayyad caliphate, and did far more in arresting Muslim expansion.
In 850, Caliph al-Mutwakkil forced all Christians and Jews in his territory to affix wooden images of devils to their houses, and to wear only yellow garments to mark them out.
True, but I am obliged to point out that this was by no means uniform amongst the Muslim caliphs (hey, somebody has to play devil’s advocate).
Indeed, the great Muslim leader Saladin still enjoys a reputation for chivalry, in contrast to the brutish Europeans - yet this wasn’t always the case.
It is absolutely correct about the fact that Saladin could be VERY nasty, but it is worth noting that part of the reason for his positive reputation was, sometimes, his willingness to use such brutality (again, different times, different measuring sticks).
Other than that, I will testify to the accuracy of the article. As for you yourself, Drew…
The war against the Moors lasted more than 500 years,
Not entirely true. The fighting was very much on-off, and indeed there were a few alliances between Christian and Muslim powers (indeed, one of El Cid’s earlier battles was as support to his liege Sancho the Strong’s Muslim vassal, the Taifa of Zaragosa, against his Christian rival Ramiro of Aragon). It was only in the last half of the Moorish occupation that it really took the character of a religious conflict.
The only reason that Columbus went for a sail was because the trade routes to India and China had been cut off by the fall of Byzantium.
Not so. That was PART of the reason, but the other was that the Italian city states largely dominated the alternative land routes (and indeed, sometimes had cut deals with the Muslim powers regarding the Spice trade). Indeed, the First battle of Diu in 1509 (which solidified Portuguese control over the Indian Ocean) saw technical advisers from the Italian states of Ragusa and Venice aid the Muslim fleet to try and protect their interests from the encroaching Portuguese.
And secondly, there was no peace in the 19th or 20th centuries, only less continuous conflict, as the Turks in WWI, the history of Madhist Sudan, the Saudi conquests in Arabia, and the chaos of the Middle East showed.
Posted by Turtler
02/04/2010 at 05:25 PM
Sadly it will come to a fight, I dont see the English, when the sand lets go of their heads, not fighting for their country, 1939 is not that long ago, best thing would be to identify and send to Saudi all muslims, that would fix it. Oddly the Iraqis might be, as an islamic nation, moving on, both sunni and shi’ites have openly called themselves Iraqi forst and islamic second, as it should be.
A thousand years ago the world was a brutal place, it is insane to apply our new fangled cowardly moral ways to history.Posted by Chris Edwards
02/04/2010 at 08:54 PM
Thanks for the clarifications Turtler. Always a good thing to have a scholar around to help straighten out the bends of memory.
I’d forgotten about the Madhi, General Gordon, and the siege of Khartoum. That was religious warfare. Or at least a religious excused power grab? Hmm, I think I’d say the motivations were primarily Islamic. Same goes for the genocide in Armenia done by the Turks. The Armenians were mostly Christians, and even though they were true dhimmis and paid the jizya - which should have afforded them the protection of Islam, right? - they were starved and slaughtered because of their faith. A million died, maybe more.
The myth of a tolerant Ottoman empire dates to the 19th century and was a European creation, designed to prevent Russia from expanding southwards under the pretext of protecting the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire.
I don’t know anything about what the house of Saud did back then, I’ll take your word for it, but I have heard of the pogroms and riots run by the Mufti of Jerusalem and the never ending troubles there. It ought to be classified as religious warfare, especially since it was engineered and organized, but the scale of the latter was small enough so that it slips under the radar. No grand armies of tens of thousands meeting in a clash of arms, just neighborhood level murder and arson.
In my culturo-centric mindset I mistook “lack of armies battling in central Europe” for “two centuries of peace”.
Drew, EUreferendum (or maybe their other blog defense of the realm) gave a good insight of the entire afghan situation, the entire thing being a tribal conflict exploited by the Russians and English, only lately has islam been a factor and that too plays on tribal differences.
Posted by Chris Edwards
02/05/2010 at 08:38 PM
