Originally posted by menace71
I don't remember learning about this in history. I noticed that the Christians are mostly portrayed in a bad light. Like Hollywood for example. I remember watching that movie "Kingdom of heaven" I admit the way they portrayed Saladin (Spelling) kinda made we side with him. Noble. However I know history sometimes is very blunt compared to a Hollywood movie.
Manny
Out of the Arabic desert they evolved during the 7th century, swords in hands. Islam came to stay. And when we are talking about Islam one has to be thick as a brick to imagine hordes of barbarians aiming to destroy and kill. Of course in the beginning these men fought hard, but when they conquered Persia, Asia Minor and North Africa and they passed in Spain their evolved civilization became as important as the Egyptian, the Greek and the Roman.
Byzantium had a hard time since the 10th century, facing severe unsolved internal problems and corrupted centers of power. The Arabs called the city Konstantiniye, and it was still the guardian of the European gates, but in order to become able to bring up the rabbit the Byzantine emperors had to get the hat from the Europeans.
By that time Europe was socially pathetic, cut in pieces by countless dukes and marquises and barons, all of them ready to support their kings during the wars and ready to get the $hit out of their puir people during the short periods of peace. In the cities the vast majority of the citizens were actually slaves; people could not afford to eat meat, they were put to death in case they were captured to hunt in the forests of the “nobles”, they had no property, they were starving, they were dying out of illnesses, they were obliged to see the army taking away their daughters and their wives, they had kings who had amongst else the privilegium protogamie and therefore they could “test first” the brides in case they wanted to do so. In the same time the Catholic Church was making a fortune.
It was hard to cross the lands of these dukes, barons and marquises because the most of them were entire counties and the landlords were causing severe problems to the merchants and to the travelers. The power belonged to the “nobles” and to the higher priests, and the Latin and the German countries were ruled by Christianity; each landlord was offering his land to his first son whilst his second son was becoming a higher priest, and this way the power remained in the same hands for ever and ever.
Back then the Europeans were amazed by the knowledge, the fine arts, the luxury and the goods of the Arabs. About the 10th century the Arabs were not anymore eager to fight because they had everything; and they would definitely lose power if the Turks were not coming aboard. The Turks were extremely strong and they were fighting hard, and in 1055 their leader Toghril Beg, the second ruler of the Seljuk dynasty, took Baghdad. So Islam was divided and two Islam powers emerged, the Turkish and the Arabic. The Turks begun the wars again, and their first victim was Byzantium. Finally Romanos IV Diogenes was defeated by the Seljuk forces under Alp Arslan on August 26, 1071 in the battle of Manzikert and the Turk treated him well during the period he had him imprisoned -but when the Byzantine emperor was released and returned in Constantinople he soon was confronted by Doukas family and was deposed, blinded and exiled to Proti island.
After Manzikert the Turks became unstoppable and the whole Europe was in danger. The Turks took Nikaia from the Byzantines and Jerusalem and Antioch from the Arabs, so their third sultan Melik Sah who died in 1092, the son and successor of Alp Arslan in 1072, ruled the lands from Bukhara to Antioch.
About that time pope Urban II noticed that the Turks became powerful and that the European citizens were not exactly satisfied with the social conditions in their soil. He also noticed that the Spaniards had the Arabs defeated and restrained, and he was aware of the fact that the Arabs were amongst else rich and decent. On the other hand the traditional Arabic Islam, the Abbasids, could hardly tolerate the Turks, which they also were divided in two main branches; the Great Seljuks ruled Iran, Iraq and Syria and their capital was Isphahan, and the Anatolian Seljuks ruled from Konya. The Seljuks adopted the Persian culture and the Sunni Hanefite instead of the Shiite sect, whilst the Shiite Fatimids had the Seljuks just defeated in Syria and Palestine and they were ruling Jerusalem again. Big mess -and Urban II understood he had the chance to attack with great chances the divided Islam. So in 1095 he gathered all the European trolls in Clermont-Ferrand and the game begun. The brilliant bandits shined their armors in the name of God and wore the sign of the Holy Cross, they joined hands with Pisa and Venice and Genoa because they had to cross Med Sea, and along with another notorious scum, the bishop Dagobert of Pisa who later became the first archbishop of Jerusalem, they were set off to conquer the Holy Lands. Quite soon the Fatimids of Jerusalem were defeated and butchered and the city was conquered by the Crusaders.
Methinks the Crusades were missions driven solely by greed. The Crusaders were merely eager to gain power and riches, they dislocated Byzantium further, they brought nothing good. Methinks the Crusaders were a bunch of bandits hidden behind the sign of the Cross
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18 Mar '10 02:34
What Prompted the crusades?
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