"Book: An Unapologetic Defense Of The Crusades" Topic

Might be of interest to some. I'll probably read it. Sounds like a different perspective.

An Unapologetic Defense Of The Crusades

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Forward by VDH. Looks great; I shall get it.

Yes, the first thing to say about the Crusades is that they were a COUNTER-attack.

Ibrahim is a long time critic of Islam, and a protege of Victor Davis Hanson. His polemics are only taken seriously by the credulous.

"His polemics are only taken seriously by the credulous."

Ahhh so you won't be reading it then?

I'm not his target audience, no.

While there probably should be more of a balance to the reporting of the time period – After reading the link – I will take a pass on this

Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages, Mark Cohen 1994, is a useful comparison to Ibrahim's panegyric.

Great video contrasting the Islamic wars of conquest over centuries with the fairly short and failed Crusades.

YouTube link

Thanks for the video link. Very informative. I was a product of the view from the 1990's. But I would point out that it was a CRUSADE that really destroyed the Eastern Roman Empire. It managed to regain its capital in 1261, but it was never really re-united as prior to 1204.

Yep, 4th Crusade was a "blue on blue" where they sacked Constantinople, a huge betrayal motivated by human greed. Let's not forget that during the rise of Islam and during the "Golden Age" there were some 6 different "Fitnas," or dynastic civil wars that saw cities sacked.

Perries0707

I would say the Crusaders helped put the finishing nails in the coffin, but the Muslims had already built the coffin, put the corpse in it and put the finishing nail in at the end. The Byzantine Empire was a shell by the time the Crusaders contributed to their end. We can also always add the Bulgars and some others into that mix. Let us not exempt the Byzantines from their own demise.

If you don't know that the Crusades were a response to a violent and bloody Islamic invasion of the Byzantine Empire and the Levant, you don't know medieval history at all.

wish I could find this essay, interesting take on how the rise of Islam precipitated the Dark Ages in Europe. Islamic conquests weren't just a "normal" conquest in which the new ruler leverages their new territory more or less within an existing economic system.

No, Islam is a complete religious, political and economic system that is exclusive of other systems. When Islamic armies conquered a new territory it completely up-ended the social order and replaced it with a new, more restrictive system. So when Syria was conquered it was completely stripped out of the "Western" world -- European cultures lost all of the trade and intellectual inputs of Syria.

When Egypt was conquered, not only did the intellectual and trade inputs get stripped away, Europeans also lost access to affordable paper -- and ended up using animal skins (Vellum and Parchment).

Waves of Islamic raids across the Mediterranean made maritime commerce risky, so more and more goods had to be shipped overland at greater cost and lower quantities, further restricting economic activities.

So the Islamic conquests, in very short order, completely destroyed the Mediterranean and Levantine commerce system, crushing the economies of Europe, and then by the 710 large scale invasions of Europe proper by invading Islamic armies further pushed Europe into a relative Dark Age.

These conquests also fueled Islam's "Golden Age" as the conquerors inherited the knowledge that survived the sack of the great knowledge centers of Damascus, Alexandria, and so on.

"Yep, 4th Crusade was a "blue on blue" where they sacked Constantinople, a huge betrayal motivated by human greed."

I don't think this is the proper way to view this period. The world was not bi-polar as in Muslim vs Christian, at that time. There was Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Sunni, Shia, pagan, etc. Just in Eastern Europe! They interacted, made alliances, and traded with each other.

If looked at cultural, i.e. East vs West, I think it would be closer to say the 4th Crusade was 'blue on blue'. The problem was that no one at that time viewed the world that way. They looked at it the first way and often saw a fellow Christian or fellow Muslim state in trouble as an opportunity.

Hey 35th! I am not sure about your assumption. The Komnenian Restoration had gone a long way towards reinvigorating the "corpse". Certainly the Turks had been pushed back significantly from many of the most commercially viable parts of Anatolia, and the revived army was feared by all the major players in the Levant including Zengi and Saladin. BUT losing Constantinople was the death blow in my opinion. Constantinople was the central hub of the Empire, and the main thing making the members of the Empire "Roman". Losing it caused a fragmentation that no Muslim force had ever been able to achieve. Trebizond and parts of the Greek peninsula were never recovered to the Empire after 1261. Combined with losses of key islands to Italian powers, the Empire had no chance economically to recover. Just my opinion mind you.

The website it is posted on (The Federalist) has a history of misinformation, I'll be giving this a miss.
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That review is collectivist garbage. I hope the book is better, but with a recommendation like that I won't be buying it.

I think Dn Jackson has already identified the core mischaracterization here:

The world was not bi-polar as in Muslim vs Christian, at that time. There was Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Sunni, Shia, pagan, etc. Just in Eastern Europe! They interacted, made alliances, and traded with each other.

The linked website only goes to an essay review on the book itself.

I consider myself pretty well read and up-to-date on Crusader academia, so I'll be reading this book along with the other couple dozen I've read, with a variety of perspectives.

I researched the book's author and publisher. Bombardier books is a conservative publisher. Then again, there are liberal publishers, too, and I've read their books.

The author, Raymond Ibrahim is Egyptian-American (both parents immigrated from Egypt), and fluent in Arabic, which allows him to use primary Arabic sources. His resume would indicate he is knowledgeable on the topic. He's coming at the topic from a pro-western standpoint, which is only bad if you're one of those who believe the west is wrong and you don't want to hear another argument.

Raylev3 +1

a violent and bloody Islamic invasion

Aren't most invasions violent and bloody? I seem to recall Christians being as violent and bloody as anyone else in this regard.

Perris0707 Fair enough. A different analysis. I do not see the Crusaders as a main contributor to the end, just another contributor. But we can both have our views. Just our opinions. 🙂

Same with the book, a different analysis of the events of the crusades .

The Federalist is an excellent website. The wiki article is a hit piece. The Federalist proved correct on COVID, for example.

", Islam is a complete religious, political and economic system that is exclusive of other systems. When Islamic armies conquered a new territory it completely up-ended the social order and replaced it with a new, more restrictive system. "

So exactly like the European colonisation of the Americas then?

Yes, also like the Aztec did in Mexico or the Zulu's did in South Africa. What is your point?

My point is a foreign invader completely changed the status quo in the New World. Wars of colonisation are always bloody affairs, but the Americas were brutal genocides.

You know this, you're just being obtuse.

Surely the religiously motivated Western Crusades are just another chapter in a much longer story of cultural clashes at the 'border'. Before current monotheism even began, the Persians had a well recorded flex to their West against the Greek city states – just one example.

The history of Eastern Europe is a series of struggles where 'east' meets 'west' even up to very recent times (Bosnia 1990s). The Russian peoples have been clashing with the Turks/Ottomans for hundreds and hundreds of years. The west returned to the same region in the 19th century colonial period. If you prefer to ignore the Spanish peninsular and just focus on the eastern Mediterranean you might even view the modern state of Israel as the latest Western enclave which relies on western support similar to the Crusader states of old.

It's never ending – regrettably.

Something Wicked…I'm not sure what the European colonization of north America has to do with this…oh, it doesn't. You're just deflecting. You're just taking an anti-western point of view. That's OK. But let's not give others a pass, as you seem to infer.

ALL of us are descended from people who, at one time or another, were victims of genocide. Also, we are all descended from people who committed genocide on others. Native Americans were just as guilty of "genocide" against other American tribes. Europeans did it to each other. African tribes did it.

But don't give Islam a pass because they were somehow victims. They were one of the greatest slave-holding cultures in the world. In the name of Islam they conquered the Middle East, North Africa, southern Europe, eastern Europe, and India…

I don't condemn them for it…they were no different than any other nation/culture of their time. But, they weren't victims.

Raylev3

Read what I wrote again, 'Americas', north, south and the bit in the middle. I didn't infer anything, it was a comment, infer what you wish but you'll be wrong.

I'm not giving anyone a pass, all atrocities are atrocities regardless of the perpetrators.

I'd be careful about slavery. In 1860, of a population of 30 million, 4 million were slaves. In the United States.

I only inferred what you intended.

And we're all aware of the slaves in the US.

"The website it is posted on (The Federalist) has a history of misinformation, I'll be giving this a miss."

I just have to say, the above quote was posted by someone with the screen name, "Sandanista". I find that hilarious.

"My point is a foreign invader completely changed the status quo in the New World. Wars of colonisation are always bloody affairs, but the Americas were brutal genocides."

I have to say, I think you're the one being obtuse here Something Wicked. The conversation was on the Crusades and European warfare. When the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople, they didn't convert everyone to Catholicism, enforce special taxes on those who wouldn't convert, or kill the leadership/ruling class. The Muslim were different to the general rules of warfare in Europe.

As to the New World…the colonization was no more brutal than the local wars were before Europeans arrived. I've been reading quite a bit about the early years of the English colonization of New England. They were scrupulous about honoring the treaties they signed with the locals and even executed their own citizens for murdering a Native American. They were expanding almost from the second they landed in 1620, but the locals were in the midst of expanding, retreating, and assimilating when the English arrived. Same in Virginia. The Aztecs were fighting Flower Wars, the goal of which was to capture enemies so they could cut their hearts out in sacrifice. The locals happily took each other and colonists prisoner in order to sell them into slavery.

While the conquest of the New World was brutal and vicious at times, it was hardly a genocide. All you have to do is look at the South and Central Americans alive today to know it wasn't a genocide. They are clearly the descendants of the Aztecs, Maya, Inca, etc.

DnJackson +1 I'll add that much of the Spanish force conquering the Inca and Aztecs, was heavily made up of Indian Allies who were more than happy to obtain revenge on both the Incas and Aztecs. in addition, probably the majority of Indian deaths were from smallpox and other diseases brought in by the Europeans.

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The first story was an interesting watch.

"That's the story we've all been taught. But nothing is forever. When recent construction in Lima uncovered a grave site full of bodies with interestingly damaged skulls, the anthropologists called in the forensics experts, who called in the historians. A remarkable tale unfolded.

By proving what weapons crushed the skulls of the dead warriors, experts discovered new alliances and uncovered a fact that the conquistadors had hoped to keep secret forever: they didn't defeat the Incas all by themselves, but with help from an alliance with warring Inca tribes."

Subject: Nova – The Great Inca Rebellion – TV – Review – The New York Times


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The method of the destruction of the Erie Nation and the time it took are in dispute, but the Iroquois did obliterate the tribe.

A few versions on the web.

"When the news spread that Onondaga was burned at the stake, the Iroquois Confederacy sang their war-songs took the warpath under their two war chiefs, and took off in their canoes on the lake to attack the Eries. As the Iroquois approached, the Eries fell back, and withdrew into the western forests gathering together until there was only one band. They fortified into forts and felled trees, and waited as the invaders approached. Estimates say that there were about 2000 Erie Warriors plus women and children.

Dressed as Frenchmen, the two Iroquois chiefs approached the Erie fort, and told the Erie to surrender. One of the chiefs which had been baptized by Father Le Moyne, shouted to the Eries, that if they did not surrender soon, they would all be dead men, for the Master of Life was on the side of the Iroquois. The Eries shouted back, "Who is this master of your lives?" The Iroquois replied, "our hatchets and our right arms are the masters of ours." The Iroquois ran an assault, but showers of poisoned arrows killed and wounded many of them, and drove the rest to retreat. The Iroquois attacked again. This time they carried their bark canoes over their heads to protect them from the arrows. The Iroquois then used their canoes as ladders to scale the Erie fort. Few of the Eries were able to escape, and no prisoners were taken. It was a fight to the finish.By the time the conflict was over, the Erie as a nation no longer existed. Even for the victors it was no easy victory.the Iroquois spent two months in Erie so that they could bury their dead and tend to their wounded. The area now belonged to the Seneca of the Iroquois confederacy, but they refused to live there. They very seldom even visited the land that once belonged to the Erie people."

Subject: Erie people – Wikipedia


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Pretty much anywhere the Europeans fought and subjected the Indians, they always had enemy tribes willing to help them in those conquests.

Even the Crook/Gobbon/Custer expedition had numerous allied scouts

"During the three-pronged Plains campaign of 1876, George Crook's force of 1,300 included 260 Crow and Shoshone scouts; John Gibbon's 400-man column included almost 30 Crow scouts, and George Custer's 7th Cavalry included almost 30 Arikara and a half-dozen Crow scouts.

There is no question that at the time of the First Crusade, there was a sense of crisis in Christendom. At the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the battle of Manzikert in 1071 had seen the defeat and capture of the Emperor Romanos IV by the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan, and at the western end the Castilian advance south of Toledo had been checked by the intervention in al Andalus of the Almoravids from Morocco In 1086 Alfonso I of Castile was defeated at Sagrajas (Zalaka), checking the 'reconquista' (not a contemporary term) for a generation

The defeat at Manizikert had prompted the 'Byzantines' to appeal for assistance from western Christendom in resisting the advance of the Turks further into Anatolia. It was Pope Urban II who in 1095 then converted this into an appeal to seize back the Holy Places of Palestine from the infidel (Jerusalem had been occupied by the Turks shortly after Manzikert).

In 1063, Pope Nicholas II had already granted the status of holy war to Christian campaigns against the Muslim kingdoms of al Andalus. Urban promised the remission of sins and the protection of the church for the families and property of those who took up his call.

However, despite the sense of crisis that may have pervaded Christian consciousness in the late C11th, the arrival of a Christian army in the Middle East in 1099 coincided with a dissolution of power in the Abbasid empire after the creation of a rival caliphate in Cairo by the Fatimids and the usurping of power in Baghdad by the Seljuk sultans. In 1071 Seljuks had taken Jerusalem from the Fatimids. This distraction enabled the Christians, against all odds to fight their way through to take first Antioch and then Jerusalem.

However that is long way from the trite image of barbaric and religiously inflamed Frankish knights from the cold north bearing down on peace-loving Arab poets and farmers who only wanted to spend their days drinking sherbert and tending their date palms in between their five daily devotions and inventing astronomy and algebra…

I'm currently reading "Sword and scimitar" also by Raymond Ibrahim, as the book at top of thread, was checked out.

Yes the Muslims were anything but peace loving, from the very beginning. But I have never been under the assumption that they ever were peace loving or any different than any other conquerors driven by some sort of zealotry. 🙂

So exactly like the European colonisation of the Americas then?

So you consider the Islamic Wars of Conquest to be Wars of Colonization? Hmmm…come to think of it – you're right! The Colonizing Jihadis turned Egyptians, Syrians, Byzantines Spaniards and all into subjects with few legal rights, imposed a new hostile religion on them, imposed a new and restrictive economic system, enslaved them by the millions and destroyed their native cultures.

Thanks for pointing that out!

The Colonizing Jihadis turned Egyptians, Syrians, Byzantines Spaniards and all into subjects with few legal rights, imposed a new hostile religion on them, imposed a new and restrictive economic system, enslaved them by the millions and destroyed their native cultures.

That wouldn't be true of the situation in the Muslim take ove in Iberian peninsula.

42nd

Are you talking the initial invasions or the latter occupation? The initial invasions were bloody and many made into slaves and sold all over the Muslim territories. This was especially true of women and boys. The latter occupations of course are a different matter.

Read the chapter on the conquest in "Sword and scimitar". Interestingly many modern histories sanitize this. Not sure why. Medieval times were bloody and barbaric, especially wars of religion.

Actually wars of religion are almost always bloody and especially nasty.

I have read quite widely on the topic. From what I have seen doubt Ibrahim's polemic will add much to my understanding.

Research has indicated that one of the reasons the peninsular was occupied so quickly was that the AD711 invasion was as much a coup as a conquest and once Roderic was killed and his army defeated the population were pleased to see the backs of their Visigoth rulers, opening the gates of the cities to the invading Arab and Berber forces. By the C9th century a significant proportion of the Muslim population were converts from the original Hispanic community, so much so that this was undermining the fiscal principal of taxing the Jewish and Christian dimmi.

As I understand it, the slave population consisted to a considerable degree of people traded from the pagan border of Europe- though the link between the words 'slave' and 'Slav' may well be folklore.

I might suggest you read the "Sword and Scimitar", if for nothing more than the chapters on the conquest of Spain and the re-conquest.

@42 Scandinavians have the same words and they mean both. LOL I guess they will be changing that in a couple of years.

So exactly like the European colonisation of the Americas then?

So you consider the Islamic Wars of Conquest to be Wars of Colonization? Hmmm…come to think of it – you're right! The Colonizing Jihadis turned Egyptians, Syrians, Byzantines Spaniards and all into subjects with few legal rights, imposed a new hostile religion on them, imposed a new and restrictive economic system, enslaved them by the millions and destroyed their native cultures.

Thanks for pointing that out!

This is what's so funny. There are all these "anti-colonialist" ideologues right now who claim that colonialism was the worst thing ever, slavery was the worst thing ever (even though late 19th Century colonialism basically ended slavery around the world!), etc.
But when it comes to the Muslim conquests which were just a very brutal form of colonialism, there's suddenly all this apologism on how great and advanced Muslim culture was (which was precisely the later European colonialists' ideology), and how many people willingly converted to Islam (taxation so heavy that some people had to sell their children into slavery may have had something to do with it…).

If looked at cultural, i.e. East vs West, I think it would be closer to say the 4th Crusade was 'blue on blue'. The problem was that no one at that time viewed the world that way. They looked at it the first way and often saw a fellow Christian or fellow Muslim state in trouble as an opportunity.

As always, there's the moral way of doing things, and there's the self-serving way of doing things. The Western Church's official ideology during the Crusades very much saw the Eastern Church as an ally needing help (that was the core of Pope Urban's speech), but greed, especially of the Italian city states, would interfere with goals like that.
And people seem to almost intentionally forget that the Fourth Crusade was excommunicated.