The Truth about the Crusades

Ah yes, the art of propaganda.

Say, does this mean that if I open a family bank here in the USA I can get a fair shot at, for instance, handling some of the "contracts" that currently all run through the BIS?
 
The change was the Turks invading and moving in.
Also, the Mongols destroyed many of their centers of learning and devestated the land. Made Sherman's march to the sea look like a Boyscout camping trip.
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You hit it spot on.

Turks aren't now and never have been terribly religious, though. I've been told by some that Wahhabism didn't start out as an anti-american movement; it started out as an anti-Turk movement to get the pork-eating, business-suit wearing Turks out of Arabia.
 
Faraway hit the nail on the head.

The Crusades were a very confused times and events with a host of interesting characters involved. Even strange alliances like the Mongols and Christians occured in order to fight Islam.
 
ESPECIALLY Judaism and Christianity, because they are people of the same God. It also says Muslims are to leave other people alone unless they are attacked first.
So something went awry along the way.
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What went awry, most likely, is that they started to lose ground, starting in 1715 at Carlowitz. It's been a downward spiral, in regard to prestige and economics, since. After WWI, the US, and Wilson's "14 Points", was seen by many Middle Easterners as their greatest hope for independance. The King-Crane Commission was created to gauge Middle Easterners' interest in self-rule, but was dismissed by the old imperial powers, Britain and France, who carved up the Middle East for their own purposes.
Might help to remember the Islamic tax structure...
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Do you refer to the protection, a toll in lieu of military service, offered to non-Muslims by Ottoman law? or something else?

Thomas F. Madden is the History Department chair at St. Louis University. He doesn't seem to be a random hack.
 
The Crusades were a very confused times and events with a host of interesting characters involved. Even strange alliances like the Mongols and Christians occured in order to fight Islam.
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That alliance didn't occur. There were confused stories in the west that the mongols were lead by the decendant of the fabled Prester John. There was a papal mission sent to Kublai. I don't remember if it got there. There were also some Nestorian (?) Christians in Kublai's court - one of the sects of Christianity persecuted (violently) by the pope.
When the mongols first appeared in the middle east (a scouting force of about 50K) they devestated a bunch of muslim countries, raising hope that they were indeed Christian. But then they over ran Georgia, shattered the Hungarian forces (considered one of the strongest in Christiandom), and devestated Poland.

One hold up of the alliance was that the Pope insisted that the Khan swear fealty to him. There may have been some Venetian merchants used as intermediaries.
 
Britain and France, who carved up the Middle East for their own purposes
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With the huge influence of that admired and respected statesman, Winston Churchill. No relation to Ward. :) But I digress.
 
When the mongols first appeared in the middle east (a scouting force of about 50K) they devestated a bunch of muslim countries, raising hope that they were indeed Christian.
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I believe it was the "Golden Horde", under Hulegu, that sacked Baghdad in 1258, killing all residents, including the last Abbasid Caliph. Interestingly, the Jews and Christians of Baghdad were spared, according to one eyewitness account.

That probably lent creedence to Christian-Mongolian alliance rumors.
 
I believe it was the "Golden Horde", under Hulegu, that sacked Baghdad in 1258, killing all residents, including the last Abbasid Caliph.
They came back later and destroyed Baghdad. There was an inconvenient death in the ruling family in the meantime that slowed things down. Baghdad at that time would have been one of the largest libraries before the looting and fires. The empire that was in the area of Persia and east (I forget the name) was already destroyed by the Mongols.
The Khans came closer to sending an area back to the Stone Ages than Kissenger managed.
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If you get the chance you might look for a book printed about 150 years ago called "The Madness of Crowds and other Popular Delusions", might be slightly off on title.

Has a number of interesting things to say about Crusades. Not all of them nice.

Islam and Mongols, apparently one good ol boy selectively misinterpeted Koran to allow him to steal from Mongols for two years running. Third year Gengis Khan brought his version of Societal Reformation and Islamic society got knocked down pretty bad.

What can be said, It only takes a couple of idiots to ruin a good thing.
 
The Crusades

Muslims had already captured two thirds of the old Christian world.
That's what I have been saying for several years. The Christians had to put a stop to Islam. It has been a thousand years and we have another/Terrorist uprising....
 
Madison-
Other than the fact that your comparison is specious, I've taken the liberty of correcting numerous spelling mistakes in your post, lest you be open to further embarrassment.

Think Twice, Post Once.
Rich
 
Many apologists for the current Moslem (yes, I spell it like I learned it 30 years ago) jihaad always point to the Crusades that started in 1066 to show that Christians / Europeans are always at the root of all evil. Why they start there, I don't know, as my 6th grade World History made mention of Charles Martel defeating the Moors (Moslems) in 732 A.D. at the Battle of Tours.

Tours is a French city darn near the middle of France. Spain had already been conquered by the Moors many years before.

Yes, that's right, 330 years before the Crusades, the Moors were halfway up Europe, yet that seems never to be factored in to the eauation of historical animosity.
 
I thought the Crusades started much later than 1066 AD, the year the Normans conquered England. I think the Crusades started more like 1199 AD.

The Muslims started the fracas in the first place, conquering many Christian and non-Christian lands. It took the Christian Spaniards about 700 years to regain all of Spain. The last Muslim (the Moors) Spanish outpost fell around 1492.

The Muslim's conquest is quite an amazing thing. A small religious sect out of Saudi Arabia ends up conquering a good part of the known world and threatening the rest. They built a highly cultivated society, then somehow, stagnated. That is amazing too.
 
Of course, "setting the record straight" is likely the publisher's take on the work.
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Actually, that is pretty much everybody's take on what they write... though some would never admit it.
 
Why believe that either religion has a right to certain pieces of ground? Europe did not start out Christian, nor did the Middle East, North Africa, and Persia start out Muslim. Europe has many native religions, Christianity is not among them. Its origins are in the Middle East.
People invade for resources and power regardless of religious affiliation. Religion is an excuse.
"Putting a stop to Islam" would hardly be a motivation for the English or most in the Holy Roman Empire (Those of the North and East). They had never been threatened. Most of the people of Europe that participated in the Crusades were decendants of immigrants who invaded and took over the area. How is this different from Arabs coming in?
How is the Fourth Crusade explained under this logic?

Charles Martel did indeed stop the Arab invasion at Tours. Charles himself was a Frank, who were not native to the area. They immigrated (invaded) earlier. Those in what is now southern France and Switzerland didn't feel the difference, as Franks killed and looted the area just like the Arabs.
 
Actually the Moors were invited into Spain, by warring factions of Christians.
Didn't work out quite the way they expected. Later on El Cid, was part of the constantly shifting alliances made by the Moors and Spanish principalities.
Also, the crusades were not always a matter of 'defense' of Christian agaisnt Moslim's. The crusaders sacked Constantanople via the machinations of the Doge of Venice. And Constantanople was a Christian city. And part of an empire which had been the main power holding back the expansion of Islam.
And then, good god, the crusades agaisnt the Bulgars and Albigensians (sp), weren't in any way defensive actions against the expansions of Islam. These more a matter of intercine Christian massacres than a crusade. And later, even the Templars (the nee plus ultra of the prototypical crusader knight) were subject to this kind of thing...
And then the goings on between the Mamelukes, Turks and Arabs.
Not a period where either religion held to it's better angels.
 
Might help to remember the Islamic tax structure...
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Non-Muslims paid a tax to be not Muslim.

Looking at my textbook, it appears that the Muslim invaders had made it to about the narrowest point of land between Spain and France, and certainly had controlled all of North Africa. This stretched north about halfway up through Turkey, and east to India.

I believe it was the "Golden Horde", under Hulegu, that sacked Baghdad in 1258, killing all residents, including the last Abbasid Caliph. Interestingly, the Jews and Christians of Baghdad were spared, according to one eyewitness account.
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It started when a caravan traveling under Genghis Khan's protection was killed when it pulled into a Muslim town (the name now escapes me). Khan sent a messenger asking that the govenor be turned over, and they sent the messengers head back to Khan. He collected every male that could fight and devistated all, conqueoring from the Mediterranian and the Black sea to China.

The Mongols did kill the last remaining Caliph, as well as wipe out most of Baghdad. They killed him by wrapping him in a carpet and running him over with horses :eek:

From my lecture notes: The population around Baghdad ~800AD was about 900,000. After the Turkish invaders ~1100AD, the population dropped to around 400,000. After the Mongols in the mid-1200's, the population dropped to about 60,000.
 
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