These trends in nineteenth-century European culture impacted the Islamic world. Sometimes this influence was quite direct. He paid to have it rebuilt, thus helping encourage modern Islamic appreciation of Saladin. Sometimes the European influence was more diffuse. Modern crusading histories in the Islamic world began to be written in the s, when the Ottoman Empire was in crisis.
After the Ottomans, some Arab Nationalists interpreted nineteenth-century imperialism as crusading, and thus linked their efforts to end imperial rule with the efforts of Muslims to resist crusading in previous centuries. It would be reassuring to believe that nobody in the West has provided grounds for such beliefs, but it would not be true.
Sadly, the effects of the crusading movement—at least, as it is now remembered and reimagined—seem to be still unfolding. Additional resources Dr. Susanna A. Sign up for our newsletter! It evolved into a Frankish-Norman expedition to capture Jerusalem, which had changed hands four times in the preceding three decades. So were the crusades really about controlling land? By the late 14th century, crusades focused on halting the Ottoman advance into the Balkans — suggesting that the crusades were about defence against an apparently unstoppable enemy.
We could compare the crusades to Nato, since crusades involved the co-operation of many nations in an operation of mutual benefit. But these comparisons quickly break down under scrutiny. It would be truer to say that we still live with many of the developments encouraged by the crusades: systems of state taxation, magnificent castles, and the kind of services performed by the likes of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, now the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which undertakes charitable work around the world.
In the modern era, western nations have often looked back with enthusiasm to the crusades, and crusading language has been used by many politicians and movements to justify their actions. In the 19th century, European powers used pseudo-crusading and para-crusading rhetoric to justify their imperial and colonial wars. In the 20th century, crusades were depicted in political cartoons during the First World War. More recently, certain American movements — for the abolition of slavery, the war against Mormon polygamy, the prohibition of alcohol, and the civil rights movement headed by Martin Luther King — have been cited as examples of modern crusades.
Yet almost all medieval crusades except the first were ultimately failures, unsuccessful in retaking Jerusalem or maintaining the crusader states. For that reason, and others, the crusades continue to affect how the east views the west today. Yet many Muslims do not view the crusades, which they believe they won, as markedly special events, since Islam and Christianity have frequently been at odds since the seventh century — long before the First Crusade — Hence the crusades are, rather, just one expression of a long-standing rivalry between east and west, Muslim and Christian.
It is that legacy with which we are still living today. Rebecca Rist is professor in medieval history at the University of Reading, and author of Papacy and Crusading in Europe, — Continuum, Confronted with the message, propagated by both the European and Anglophone extreme right and Islamic jihadist groups, that we live in an age of renewed conflict between Islam and the west, many people may understandably conclude that we have inherited an ancient legacy of holy war.
We have — though not in the way that many imagine. The legacy of the crusades today is not due to the continuity over time of any medieval crusading institution. After all, the crusade indulgence offered by the church — a central element of the architecture of these holy wars — had effectively disappeared by the 17th century.
In all, eight major Crusade expeditions occurred between and The bloody, violent and often ruthless conflicts propelled the status of European Christians, making them major players in the fight for land in the Middle East. By the end of the 11th century, Western Europe had emerged as a significant power in its own right, though it still lagged behind other Mediterranean civilizations, such as that of the Byzantine Empire formerly the eastern half of the Roman Empire and the Islamic Empire of the Middle East and North Africa.
However, Byzantium had lost considerable territory to the invading Seljuk Turks. After years of chaos and civil war, the general Alexius Comnenus seized the Byzantine throne in and consolidated control over the remaining empire as Emperor Alexius I. This marked the beginning of the Crusades. Those who joined the armed pilgrimage wore a cross as a symbol of the Church. The Crusades set the stage for several religious knightly military orders, including the Knights Templar , the Teutonic Knights, and the Hospitallers.
These groups defended the Holy Land and protected pilgrims traveling to and from the region. These groups departed for Byzantium in August In the first major clash between the Crusaders and Muslims, Turkish forces crushed the invading Europeans at Cibotus. Another group of Crusaders, led by the notorious Count Emicho, carried out a series of massacres of Jews in various towns in the Rhineland in , drawing widespread outrage and causing a major crisis in Jewish-Christian relations.
When the four main armies of Crusaders arrived in Constantinople , Alexius insisted that their leaders swear an oath of loyalty to him and recognize his authority over any land regained from the Turks, as well as any other territory they might conquer. All but Bohemond resisted taking the oath.
The city surrendered in late June. Despite deteriorating relations between the Crusaders and Byzantine leaders, the combined force continued its march through Anatolia, capturing the great Syrian city of Antioch in June Having achieved their goal in an unexpectedly short period of time after the First Crusade, many of the Crusaders departed for home. To govern the conquered territory, those who remained established four large western settlements, or Crusader states, in Jerusalem, Edessa, Antioch and Tripoli.
In , the Seljuk general Zangi, governor of Mosul, captured Edessa, leading to the loss of the northernmost Crusader state. After Louis and Conrad managed to assemble their armies at Jerusalem, they decided to attack the Syrian stronghold of Damascus with an army of some 50, the largest Crusader force yet.
Some of the warriors who fought in the Crusades were undoubtedly simple hypocrites, while others were almost certainly completely convinced by their own religious rhetoric. So if we insist on making the Crusades, in all their strange, messy historical complexity, a simplistic lesson about anything, it might as well be for that truism that the most enthusiastic participants in any mission often started out as dirt-encrusted freeloaders with an enthusiasm for sacking the temples they claimed to protect.
Nick Danforth is a Ph. He writes about Middle East maps, history and politics at Midafternoon Map. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy. Sorry, your comment was not saved due to a technical problem.
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