Posted on 08/16/2013 12:04:25 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
With the possible exception of Umberto Eco, medieval scholars are not used to getting much media attention. We tend to be a quiet lot (except during the annual bacchanalia we call the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of all places), poring over musty chronicles and writing dull yet meticulous studies that few will read. Imagine, then, my surprise when within days of the September 11 attacks, the Middle Ages suddenly became relevant.
As a Crusade historian, I found the tranquil solitude of the ivory tower shattered by journalists, editors, and talk-show hosts on tight deadlines eager to get the real scoop. What were the Crusades?, they asked. When were they? Just how insensitive was President George W. Bush for using the word crusade in his remarks? With a few of my callers I had the distinct impression that they already knew the answers to their questions, or at least thought they did. What they really wanted was an expert to say it all back to them. For example, I was frequently asked to comment on the fact that Islamic world has a just grievance against the West. Doesn't present violence, they persisted, have its roots in the Crusades' brutal, unprovoked attacks against a sophisticated and tolerant Muslim world? In other words, aren't the Crusades really to blame?
Osama bin Laden certainly thinks so. In his various video performances, he never fails to describe the American war against terrorism as a new Crusade against Islam. Ex-president Bill Clinton has also fingered the Crusades as the root cause of the present conflict. In a speech at Georgetown University, he recounted (and embellished) a massacre of Jews after the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and informed his audience that the episode was still bitterly remembered in the Middle East.
(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...
Makes no difference the attack came from Italy it didn't come from a far away base. The vikings were loyal to Italy as proven when those same troops that removed Islam from Sicily joined the first crusade.
Thomas F. Madden crusades site:freerepublic.com
Oh, boy! Here we go.
Why are The Crusades considered an unprovoked attack on islam? Why aren't the mooselimbs 4 centuries of attacks on Christendom not discussed? Why is it OK for the mooselimbs to assume any land conquered by them will always belong to them even if re-conquered by an opposing force (say the people who originally lived there)? Why don't people understand that islam is not a live-and-let-live "religion"?
Why is it called the religion of peace, when it is really the religion of submission?
The rightful king was forced out of power the crusaders attempted to put him back into power that is why they attacked.
It would be more accurate to call it the religion of domination. All must submit to Islam, which will then dominate the world.
Well, that's one way of looking at it.
The Byzantines, like the Romans before them, never established a solid rule for succession to the throne. So it was always an open question who was the "rightful emperor."
The Angelos dynasty overthrew the Komnenoi dynasty in 1186. The first Angelos emperor (Isaac) was dethroned and blinded by his own brother, who became the second Angelos emperor.
The son of the first emperor (Alexios) fled to the west and cut a deal with the Crusaders. They'd put him back on the throne and he'd pay off their debts to the Venetians and help them retake Jerusalem.
The Crusaders captured Constantinople for him, whereupon he discovered he didn't have the resources to fulfill his pledges. Trying to do so anyway just pissed off his own people by excessive taxation, who dethroned and killed him and put an anti-crusader noble up as the new emperor.
The Crusaders attacked and took the City again, and this time divided it and as much of the Empire as they could grab between themselves and the Venetians.
IOW, the story of the Fourth Crusade is much more complex and interesting than the normal version of evil westerners attacking innocent and peaceful Byzantines.
bkmk
Ping
Nice video. Leaves out the whole bit about the attack on Zara, which was a key phase in the turning of the Crusade away from the East.
What people tend to forget is how poverty-stricken, by modern standards, Europe was at the time. Getting an army of tens of thousands to the other end of the Med in a condition to fight and win was an astonishingly difficult and expensive endeavor at the time. It is quite amazing that the Crusades were as successful as they were.
Will read all later.
More than a bump .. I urge myself to read this with deliberation
Very well said. The post just before yours I posted a video of the same story.
Depends on how you define the Empire.
The western half was of course long-gone before Mo was born. The Eastern Roman Empire was severely damaged by Islam, but still managed to hang on for another 800 years or so.
Much of the rapid spread of Islam in North Africa and the Levant was due to Byzantine political and especially religious persecution of dissenters in those areas. Many of the inhabitants saw Muslim conquest as less oppressive than continued Byzantine rule. So they didn't resist very hard, or even joined the invaders.
And for a while they might very well have been right. But Islam in the long run sucks the life out of everything it touches.
“...and in Jerusalem anyone dressed strangely were identified as Saracens and attacked accordingly...”
True as it went, but the reason Jews & Christians were indistinguishable from Muslims in Jerusalem was the Muslim overlords’ forcing people of all faiths to dress according to Islamic fashions.
The Crusaders breached the walls & found (all men at least) wearing caftans & turbans & they assumed (wrongly) that all were Muslim. The slaughter that ensued was inexcusable, but war is h*** sometimes.
Very true and Bill Warner's video shows how Islam attacked the Byzantine empire economy. They didn't just attack the Byzantine's. All of Europe's trade became nearly none existent which created such a dismal life for people in Europe and why we call it the dark ages.
Islam still uses the same tactic today because that was Mo's mode of Operation as a bandit and chief.
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