“Actually they are mentally locked in the 11th century ~ that’s when the Turks took them over and turned all the Arabic, Berber and Kurdish speaking areas in the Middle East into an enormous tax farm.”
Dates, Muawiyah. The Turks prevailed against the Maluks and Persians in 1516. Until then, they were just a big power in Turkic-speaking regions. To be fair, the Mamluks and their predecessors were no big bargain, either.
They spent the next 600 years under the Turkish boot ~ and then finally some Europeans moved in to liberate them.
Please. The Europeans might have incidentally paved a road or two and built an occasional hospital, but the last thing on their minds was liberating anyone. They wanted oil. They wanted geopolitical hegemony. They wanted to screw each other. There were some Arabs in the area where they wanted hegemony, oil, and all that, and since there were a lot of them, they thought it wise not to screw them, but instead let them screw the Jooos! to whom they’d promised a homeland, but “liberate” the Arabs? They simply picked out which aristocratic families could screw which peasants, where. The Saudis got the Hijaz. The Husseinis got Iraq, “Trans-Jordan” and didn’t get what was left of Syria because the French got that, and their adolescent nephew Haj Amin al Husseini got Jerusalem, provided he incited enough anti-Jewish riots. Liberate? Please.
The specific cause of the Crusades was the Seljuk occupation of Egypt (and other places) and the cessation of the pilgrimages to the holy land, etc.
That's all 11th and 12th century stuff.
The Turks and the Europeans were not at all interested in the oil resources at the time.
Napoleon came with a number of ideas ~ from the French Revolution, over 200 years ago. That was before the internal combustion engine was a big deal. Actually trains were still a novelty.
Do not take 20th century issues with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and extend them back into the 1700s and 1800s ~ it was a whole different game then, and the Arabs were not their own men at the time.
Actualy the Mamluks were Turkic in origin and the Ilkhanate Empire ruling Persia was Mongolic-Turkic
Well,Napoleon wanted to gain control of Suez and cut the British off from India. Oil did not begin to come into the picture until after 1912, and that in a limited way. American was the world’s great oil producer until after WWII. In thr 19th Century the Euopean powers,, simply overwhelmed the old Turkish empire as they did the antique power of China.
Well,Napoleon wanted to gain control of Suez and cut the British off from India. Oil did not begin to come into the picture until after 1912, and that in a limited way. American was the world’s great oil producer until after WWII. In thr 19th Century the Euopean powers,, simply overwhelmed the old Turkish empire as they did the antique power of China.