I’d be happy to take my turn at this, Maeglin, but within one minute of coming in the door after working for fifteen hours, I break a glass and cut my hand. I’ll have to elaborate tomorrow on beneficial aspects on the Arab side after the Minneapolis Dopefest (and on crops, too- I’m looking forward to covering that topic).
I’ll just say now that I wish my spring breaks were as eventful as Scylla described.
No, I’m not being sarcastic. Perhaps exagerating. But the mafia really is an example of a modern day fuedal system, right? Those nobles were mostly parasites. I’m sure there were some nice ones, but most noblemen were pretty much vicious extortionists.
It is my understanding that the Crusades which had their goal as the freeing of Jerusalem from the “infidels” (ie Muslims) created a xenophobic and vigilant society from what had previously been a neutral, minding-their-own-business society. If this is what the modern-day Fundies are after (turning formerly neutral people against them with their intolerant, self-righteous antics), they are well on their way, IMO.
The Crusades also gave Islam cause to unite against a common foe, it made them militant and far lss tolerant than they previously had been - for the standards of their day.
That schism caused by the crusades is with us today.
Unn, casdave, kinda what I just said. My apologies if I wasn’t very clear in my post.
I’ll try to contain my remarks on Arab perceptions of the Crusades to the impact and aftereffects.
Ah, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd. A quick primer on their impact:
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) had an encyclopedic knowledge of medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy. Building off of Aristotelian philosophiy, he developed and passed on to the West the notion that there are two intelligibles- the concept of an object, such as a chair, and the logical concpet of a chair in relation to its abstract universal concept. He taught that the idea of a chair existed before the chair was created, and that in each chair existed the idea of chair and that from many chairs came the idea of chair. (Certain researchers today are trying to determine just how our brains recognize that a chair is a chair, even if we’ve never seen the specific chair in question before. There was an article on cnn.com about this less than a month ago; unfortunately, I can’t seem to find it.)
Ibn Rushd was one of the last classical Muslim philosophers of Spain. He stated that active human reason and possible reason or knowledge are one and present in everyone. His commentaries on Aristotle were more popular and influential in Christian Europe than they were in the Muslim world.
Advanced mathematics came back to Europe as well- Muhammad al-Khwarazmi (from whom we get the world ‘algorithm’) wrote extensively on the solution of quadratic equations, and we get the word ‘algebra’ from the title of one of his books (al-jabr: ‘integration’, ‘to put together’).
Anyway, I’d like to emphasize that the Muslims were far more adversely affected by the Crusades than the typical Western European. This is really a common sense thing, too- the Crusades were a one-way invasion- and I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to say that they were an all-in-all good thing for the Arab and Turkish world.
It’s also extremely difficult to make any generalizations about Middle Eastern reactions, as there was no one dynasty or country that composed the area. (This was one of the reasons why crusades had succeeded- internecine warfare in Syria and Palestine made a united front impossible, and the Shi’i Fatimids further south cared little about stopping the invasion that was just taking lands from Sunni rulers). Arabs were no longer dominant- Berbers in North Africa, Persians and Kurds in modern-day Iraq, Iranian and Turkish cultures in Anatolia and elsewhere, et cetera. These peoples gradually adopted Islam and learned Arabic and Persian, but there was not the cultural cohesion that Europe enjoyed.
Yes and no. Islam was already radically expansionist- from 632 to 711, it spread across Africa and Central Asia, and as Maeglin stated earlier, were on the verge of conquering France until Charles Martel won a decisive victory in 732.
However, the Crusades did reinforce a negative perception in Muslim minds. They became convinced that the Westerner was a ruthless soldier, semibarbarous, ignorant, and uncivilized. There are still vestiges of this today- political and religious leaders of the Arab world refer to Saladin, to the fall of Jerusalem, and its recapture in 1187. Israel, to some, is regarded as a new Crusader state. In President Nasser’s successful days, he was regarded as a modern-day Saladin, who, like him, had united Syria and Egypt.
The Crusades didn’t necessarily engender a response in kind, but there was a very strong response from a growing Arab world. By 1453 Constantinople fell. (Why did Constantinople get the works? Nobody knows but the Turks.) In 1529 their cavalry was encamped outside of Vienna.
The point there is that the Crusades did not turn a society that was willing to live-and-let-live against them. They did, however, act as a catalyst and an inspiration for Islamic expansion towards Europe.
Anyway.
As stated above, there was no political unity at the time of the First Crusade. However, in response to this growing threat from Christendom, the Ayyubids and then the Mamluks successfully united Muslims from the Tigris to the Nile, creating a very real example of the ‘monolithic Islam’ that certain Europeans feared.
It allowed Sunnite Muslims to repress the attempts of various Shiite groups to gain control, although by no means did Shiism disappear from the Middle East. (Depending on your perception, minimizing religious conflict may be a good or a bad thing.)
Economic prosperity, especially in the twelfth century, resulted in some areas (clearly not those razed by the Franks), although this was stymied by infighting among Seljuk rulers.
Generally, innovations in science and technology flowed from the Islamic world to Europe, and not vice versa. However, there were some innovations where European thought was brought into the Middle East. Clock design was one of the few areas where Muslims adopted European technology- determining proper time for prayer necessitated advanced timekeeping.
The arts flourished as well- Umar Khayyam, Nizami, Jalal al-Din Rumi, Sadi of Shiraz, Hafiz, and on and on were influenced to a greater or lesser extent by the Crusades.
Stable institutions were introduced, but did not necessarily stick. At the time of the Crusades, the power of Western monarchs was governed by principles that were not easily circumvented. Ibn Jubayr wrote the following about the last days of his journey in the Middle East:
Don’t take that to read that the Franks acted out of a primitive sort of “white man’s burden” – far from it. There’s the popular perception of a crusader storming into a town and putting everyone to the sword. This is true; look at the conquest of Jerusalem in 1098. However, after the conquest, you’ve got a few hundred Franks in a state with thousands of Muslims. If you want to stay in power, you put down the sword and make some concessions. Although the Franks behaved execrably, and certain aspects of their ‘justice’ could be barbaric, their society had the advantage of being a distributor of rights. By no means was there a modern (or classical) concept of ‘citizen’, but everyone - landowner, knight, clergy, bourgeoisie, peasant - had well-defined rights. This is in contrast to the Arab East, where judicial procedures were more rational, but the local prince had unbounded arbitrary power.
My god, I’ve gone on for far too long, and I didn’t even get to crops. I’ll put it briefly- apricots, aubergines, scallions, oranges, watermelons, the list goes on.
As Maeglin said, there is plenty, plenty more. I’ll summarize all of the above to ensure that no one misreads me:
From a Muslim of the time’s perspective, Crusade == Bad. From a historian of today’s perspective, Crusade == Bad, but there were a couple of good things, but by no means did they justify or excuse the Crusades.
And to think, I previewed that post multiple times …
Threads like this one is why SDMB rocks.
Whoda thunk I could get such great information on a topic that I, until today, never gave much thought to --in a Pit thread. Makes me feel sorry for the posters who say they never come here.
I’m sorry. Carry on. I’m especially looking foward to the Muslim view of the Crudades.
How do you get a tan through all that armour?
I always want to say this:
In the Crusades, the Muslims dervishes kicked pompous, hypocritical, greedy, tyrannical, child-abusing Christian ass!! Ha ha!!