Crusades: Legit Response to Muslim Aggression?

Great Debates
21

Based on your examples, I would have to say that Europe was also under a serious attack by the followers of the Norse gods who were attempting to conquer Europe for the same reasons. Sacking cities, overrunning islands, taking slaves.

I realize that you will prefer your source to what I have presented, but I am less inclined to simply “give more weight” to an historian who has his own agenda than the accumulated information from dozens of other historians.
Even your example demonstrates that there were hundred of years between separate attacks by widely diverse peoples.

Note that I did not say that there was no reason behind the Crusades. The combination of the sudden oppression of Levant Christians and pilgrims beginning around 1071, when added to the call for help from Constantinople certainly provided a reason for war. However, the notion that it was simply a counterattack against a single ever-present enemy involved in a 400 year campaign of conquest (as opposed to the natural conflict of cultures sharing borders with many disparate groups involved at different times and for different reasons) is not supported by any facts presented by either you or Madden.

22

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
I realize that you will prefer your source to what I have presented, but I am less inclined to simply “give more weight” to an historian who has his own agenda than the accumulated information from dozens of other historians.
[/QUOTE]

Are you familiar with the term “poisoning the wells?” 'Cuz that’s definitely what you’re doing here.

23

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
Are you familiar with the term “poisoning the wells?” 'Cuz that’s definitely what you’re doing here.
[/QUOTE]
You made an appeal to authority, linking to an Op-Ed piece that provided no facts to support the assertions in it.

I have rejected that appeal to authority.

24

I’ve only recently begun studying the crusades, so I am not sure if this is the case but…

I think that 9.11.1565 was the last real push the Ottomans made into Europe, when they were held off at Malta by the Knight’s Hospitaller.

http://op-for.com/2006/09/september_11th_1565.html

As for the Crusades. You are making one fatal flaw in assuming a greater unity amongst crusaders than there really was.

You can look at it sociologically, and it makes more sense than really looking at it as two solid sides. The likelihood of going to war is significantly higher with your close neighbors than foreigners. The reason being that you deal with your neighbors all the time and have property disputes that can boil over and gain support of entire clans.

One of the ways to keep clans from infighting is to raid across the bigger border to invade the mutual foreigners. It was a great way for Rome to unify people under a single banner, as it was a way for various Muslim Sultans and Caliphs to unify people under a single banner. It was a way for nobles to increase their prestige. Whether you are a lowly lord or Duke who gets elevated to become a higher station through your fighting in the crusades, or a King who cannot rise in rank, it behooves you to bring honors to your name and to your title that you can then pass on as part of your estate.

The crusades were often a legitimate excuse to fight wars of conquest for honor, by assaulting the ‘other’. Both religions argued for their own primacy, and conquered many other religions in the process. They just happened to be powerful enough to but heads without a major fluctuation in the ownership of territory. The Christians had taken over Rome, and the Muslims had taken over Persia, essentially.

It costs a lot of money to raise and maintain a standing army, more expensive the further you get from home. It is hard to sit outside a rich city like Constantinople, watching your riches go down the drain, with an army that expects to get paid, and not see the jewel in front of you as an attractive solution to your problems. You can increase your own wealth, while providing some of the spoils to your troops. All the while, there is tension between these armies and the Byzantine rulers because the Byzantines had to help provide for the army crossing its land.

It was because of things like this that the Knights Templar became necessary, because they protected pilgrims and acted as a bank for the European nobles, in their trips to the holy land. Much like the Military Industrial Complex of today, the Chivalric orders developed power in their own right, and a purpose had to be funneled to them. That purpose came from the Crusades.

‘The Crusaders’, didn’t really sack Constantinople. ‘Some Crusaders’, sacked Constantinople. What those religions provided for was a larger scope as to who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’, in the evolution of our tribal matrix through feudalism on into nationalism and corporatism, which spand beyond ethnic grouping. It’s just the same old tribal behavior on a larger scale.

25

[QUOTE=mswas]

I think that 9.11.1565 was the last real push the Ottomans made into Europe, when they were held off at Malta by the Knight’s Hospitaller.

http://op-for.com/2006/09/september_11th_1565.html

[/QUOTE]

The last real push the Ottomans made into Europe was in 1683, when they besieged Vienna. They were defeated there, and then later at Mohacs and Zenta, and their losses led to the loss of most of their European territory to the Hapsburgs.

26

[QUOTE=Kinthalis]
England, and France, and other kingdoms, I would imagine didn’t care all that much about Aragorn’s or castille’s troubles, or those of Constantinople.
[/QUOTE]

Heh, Aragorn is from Lord of the Rings. Aragon is the Spanish region. :smiley:

27

It’s important not to forget the differences inside Muslim nations, either. Before the First Crusade, muslim rulers of Jerusalem had been pretty loose and tolerant. This was fine by the Christians - as long as they could make pilgramiges and were left alone, no problem. Along with the other general issues raised, the major spark was the conquest of Jerusalem by Arab barbarians. In contrast to earlier Muslims, they were feircely intolerant and actively oppressed non-Muslims (although not Jews very much).

This same group (more or less; different conquerors but same ethnicity) eventually hit many places around the Med, and did considerable damage to Muslim, Pagan, and Christian nations. They also tended to cause counter-reactions, of which the Crusades were one.

The issue also gets complicated because Europe was in the middle of defining itself and had too many young nobles with ambitions and few prospects. The Crusades, in that sense, were indeed a way of redirecting internal strife outward. The same events went more productively in Eastern Europe.

28

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
The last real push the Ottomans made into Europe was in 1683, when they besieged Vienna. They were defeated there, and then later at Mohacs and Zenta, and their losses led to the loss of most of their European territory to the Hapsburgs.
[/QUOTE]

Ahh yes, how could I forget the siege of Vienna? The Duchess of Qwghlm was rescued there!

29

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Along with the other general issues raised, the major spark was the conquest of Jerusalem by Arab barbarians.
[/QUOTE]

I think you mean the Seljuk Turks, who were not Arabs.

30

[QUOTE=Kinthalis]
The crusades were a response to growing muslim power in the Iberian peninsula and the eastern kingdoms.
[/QUOTE]

Ah, but Muslim power wasn’t growing in Spain - it’s peak passed with the dissolution of the ( Spanish, Second ) Umayyad Caliphate in 1031. In the east the Seljuqs did seem like a rising power, though they too were in disarray by the time the Crusade finally launched. It was really more the Fatimids of Egypt with their persecutions that was the main impetus towards retaliation.

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
By the time of the Norman invasion in the eleventh century, Christianity had been completely exterminated in Sicily; not a single church was standing.
[/quote]

Actually the northeast remained significantly Greek Orthodox. Western Sicily was pretty much entirely Muslim, the southeast largely so. And of course both those brands of Abrahamic religion were in due course squeezed out by Catholicism.

Otherwise I’d say your corrections are accurate enough, though they don’t entirely invalidate tomndeb’s point. The high tide of Islam as a unified threat had certainly passed by the time of the Crusades and really I’d say the fighting in southern Italy ( never really conquered in toto ) was, most often, a lot of skirmishing and raids. Hence the incredibly prolonged conquest of Sicily and for that matter the Norman conquest that followed wasn’t much different.

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
The last real push the Ottomans made into Europe was in 1683, when they besieged Vienna. They were defeated there, and then later at Mohacs and Zenta, and their losses led to the loss of most of their European territory to the Hapsburgs.
[/QUOTE]

Mostly regained in 1739 with the treaty of Belgrade after Austria got thrashed. Probably the Ottomans’ last major victory in a war for quite some time to come.

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
I think you mean the Seljuk Turks, who were not Arabs.
[/QUOTE]

I imagine he is referring to the Fatimids who were responsible for the desecration of the Holy Sepulcher and were largely Arab and Berber ( though they soon adopted the practice of using Turkic troops ).

I made a post on the subject of Christian harassment in Jerusalem ( that tomndeb mentioned above ) some time ago here : http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=2172785&postcount=10

As to the OP -
[QUOTE=MichaelQReilly]
But putting myself in the shoes of a European Christian circa the 11th century, who could look back on 400 years of Muslim assualt on formerly Christian lands, I can at least sympatize with the general idea behind the Crusades. And I think that it probably is intellectually dishonest to view them outside of the context of the previous 400 year’s history.
[/QUOTE]

I think that’s fair enough, though tom’s point about the disjointedness of that conflict after a certain point stands. That there was a certain level of universal antagonism between Islam and Christianity in that period I think is a given. That it was more abstract for most ( figures like the Pope definitely excepted ) is probably also the case. Both Christian and Muslim were more than ready to ally with each other against co-religionists for gain in the right circumstances. Indeed in the above example of Sicily, both the invading Arabo-Berbers in the 9th century and Normans in the 11th were both called in by factions on “the other side” to help with domestic disputes.

But yeah, I’d say the Crusades were more traumatic to Muslims as a very unexpected demonstration of the fracturing of the Pax Islamica than anything else.

31

I want to point out that the Pope’s goal in calling for the Crusades was to keep Constantinople from being destroyed. Here’s an extract from his sermon:

There’s no question that this goal ended up sidetracked, but it wasn’t the Pope’s fault. At least, not intentionally.

32

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
You made an appeal to authority, linking to an Op-Ed piece that provided no facts to support the assertions in it.

I have rejected that appeal to authority.
[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately, the authority you reject is not a single historian “with an agenda.” It’s the consensus of historians who specialize in the subject.

33

[QUOTE=Tamerlane]
I think that’s fair enough, though tom’s point about the disjointedness of that conflict after a certain point stands. That there was a certain level of universal antagonism between Islam and Christianity in that period I think is a given. That it was more abstract for most ( figures like the Pope definitely excepted ) is probably also the case.
[/QUOTE]

I think that’s about as fair as any answer to this is going to get. Whether the Crusades were a series of strategic maneuvers intended to deflect Muslim aggression (real or perceived), or whether the crusades were an attempt to re-conquer formerly “Western” lands, or both, or neither, is unknowable. It hinges upon the internal processes of those few persons at the time for whom such concerns were more than abstract, and their own words to the faithful cannot be trusted. Of course, the inevitable (and eye-rollingly tiresome) observation that the Crusades were simple wars of expansion and plunder does nothing to simplify the issue, as such an exercise or excuse is hardly preclusive of a deeper strategic intent.

But I don’t think it beyond reason to credit a few popes, princes, and kings with sufficient education to understand that: a) in a time not all that long ago, the Levant was considered an undisputed part of Christendom, and b) if war is inevitable better that it be on the adversary’s turf rather than your own.

34

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
You are attacking a straw man. He never said that. He just asked if wars of conquest are always wrong.
[/QUOTE]

And the difference is?

35

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
You are attacking a straw man. He never said that. He just asked if wars of conquest are always wrong.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know how they do it where you come from, but where I come from, if you launch a war of conquest and you don’t kill people or take their property, you’re doing it wrong! :smiley:

36

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
Your chronology is sadly lacking. The Muslims conquered Sicily and southern Italy in the ninth century in a series of campaigns that lasted more than seven decades, and these were not mere raids or skirmishes. In 846 the Muslims conquered and sacked Rome, killing thousands of priests and nuns and razing the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul in what was clearly a blow aimed at the heart of Christendom. They weren’t fully driven out of Sicily until almost the end of the eleventh century, only a few years before the first Crusade. By the time of the Norman invasion in the eleventh century, Christianity had been completely exterminated in Sicily; not a single church was standing. For that matter, you seem oblvious to the later Turkish invasions of central Europe.

It is quite clear that Muslims meant to subdue the Christian world. Their grasp exceeded their reach, but the fact remains that Muslims quite clearly regarded Christian nations (and for that matter, all non-Muslim countries) as their lawful prey, and a great many still do today. You are trying to spin the facts to make Islam seem benign. I trust you’ll forgive me if I give more weight to the views of an actual historian who specializes in the subject than to yours.
[/QUOTE]

I realize that Wikipedia must be taken with a grain of salt, but these articles have references. And you provided no sources for your story.

About the Saracen sack of Rome in 846 (one of the several sacks of Rome):

Hardly the lurid account you provide.

Concerning the extermination of Christianity in Sicily.

Muslim rule in Spain was preceded by Byzantine rule & ended by Normal rule. The Sicilians enjoyed no independence in these centuries.

I’ve discovered several “lists” that agree with your version of history. (This list uses your phrase: “to attack the heart of Christendom.”) But they also lack documentation. And those sites have definite axes to grind.

Please, supply some more details.

37

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
You made an appeal to authority, linking to an Op-Ed piece that provided no facts to support the assertions in it.

I have rejected that appeal to authority.
[/QUOTE]

But when the authority in question is an expert in the subject area, is it necessarily fallacious to appeal to him?

38

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
Unfortunately, the authority you reject is not a single historian “with an agenda.” It’s the consensus of historians who specialize in the subject.
[/QUOTE]

Professor Madden is a well-known scholar on several historical subjects.

He has also published numerous “popular” articles for various conservative publications, using his own interpretations of the facts. www.thomasmadden.org/articles.html

39

[QUOTE=Bridget Burke]
…Muslim rule in Spain was preceded by Byzantine rule & ended by Normal rule. The Sicilians enjoyed no independence in these centuries. …
[/QUOTE]

…ended by Norman rule!

40

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
I think you mean the Seljuk Turks, who were not Arabs.
[/QUOTE]

My mistake. You are correct; I was confusing them with a different group which emerged from Arabia.