Weekly “what are you reading” Thread #38

3 - the biggest frickup of the crusades was that they were dependant on powerful monarchs like Louis of the 7th Crusade, and Henry the Lion of the 3rd to swell their ranks with the really good tier troops and not just hobo pilgrims who were armed with sticks, these pwoerful monarchs who took the cross had the best field armies europe could offer, but their attention was always fricking divided between the Crusader front and their home kingdoms, and they rightfully were concerned that their neighbours would have a dig at their lands while they were 2000 miles away, which did fricking invariably occur, and the crusader kings would then frick off back home, usually after a string of glorious victories over islamic forces, and in their absence all the progress they gained would revert back into the caliphate's favor lol

4- Islam did not give a shit about the crusades, during their occurence and for almost 700 years since. The crusades were ocurring in the frontiers of Sunni and Shia strongholds, and only Jerusalem mattered to them, and even then it was only their 3rd most holy City after Mecca and Medina, and usually muslim pilgrims were never barred as long as they brought commerce and taxes/

Men like Saladin were remarkable, but have been lionized beyond reality like Rommel has. Saladin utilized propaganda to make him the supposed unitor of Islam, but that was only his pretext to conquer fellow muslims. By the time he had taken Jerusalem from the crusader states, he had waged 22 months of war on Christians, but like a combined 40 fricking months of war on his fellow muslims in the levant to consolidate power.

He was however a master of the Ayupids, and his mercy did have basis in fame, he would let many christian towns and garisons leave the crusader states unmolested, which aided his strategy of capturing hundreds of towns and dozens of castles each within quick succession - contemporary edidence show this was practically minded, as garisons were more willing to surrender with the past proof of his clemency, and thus Saladin was not bogged down into perpetual grinding sieges, something he could not afford as his coalition of Sunni and Shia muslims were held together with only the force of his personality, and the combined victory he gave them, it was likely his forces would splinter if he didn't obain quick victories before the crucual siege of Jerusalem.

5 - Yet inspite of this, the crusades were still an afterthought for the Islamic continent, they had much bigger happenings in that time, the protracted Sunni and Shia midievan cold wars, the rise of the Mamlukes slave soldiers killing their entire master class in egypt, and the obliteration of the Kwarismians, by the mongols and other precursor tartar groups, the looting of Baghdad and slaughter of its entire half mill population.

The full might of islam did not converge since inter religious and ethnic rivalries kept them at each other's throats, allowing the Franks/crusaders to come and easily siege their palestine cities.

6 - Jihad and religious extremism as we know it today was not at all common in the crusader days, religious fervour took many populations to commit atrocities, but these were no different from the usual midieval wars.

The crusades did not in fact leave upon the Islamic world some massive scar, which affected muslims till the modern age, they simply didn't give a shit, the crusades would only become a propaganda tool for Islamic extremists during the colonial period in which the westerb Europeans would loot the corpse of the Ottoman empire, and cause intense friction upon the local religious populations. Where places like India would develop a Human Rights movement under Ghandi to oppose the Brits, places like Iraq, Iran, Arabia, Yemen would develop a religious undertone in their colonial opposition thinking.

The talk of Christianity and Islam being in this unending struggle for dominancy is a very recent think, it has not been a festering wound for 800 years, but has been developed in the past 150.

Shit like committing suicide bombings to send infidels to death was not at all a common practice during the age of Saladin and the Saracens, whom had similar ideals regarding the sin of suicide, and throwing away the life the Divine gave you. This was a recent extremism within the confines of modern Islam. And while Islan in Saladin's time prided itself in expanding to all corners of the world , in practice few Islamic warlords cared about their own fiefdoms, and the expansionism of Arabs in 600-700s was a thing long in the past for people like Saladin by the time the 3rd Crusade occured, and was only a propaganda weapon to throw the Franks and crusaders back into the sea.

It is debatable whether Islam today is actually MORE extreme than fricking 800 years ago, because of the intensity of self destruction being acceptible to obliterate the enemy and ritual suicide bombings that are so famous today. This of course needs to be taken with several hands of salt, but scholars which study contemporary sources during the time of the Mamlukes or the Cumins and crusader states, show that Islam as an organized religion was not as suffocating as it is currently under the modern concept of Shaira laws are known to be; it is also impossible to compare the life circumstances between the everyman in modern Iran, and back in Saladin's time.

However the point remains the shocking recency in which Islamic extrmism has existed in the past 150 years