Rico's rants: An overview of the Crusades

Rico's friend Kelley, also a history fiend, forwards this from The Federalist, with the comment that "Muslims are always whining about the monstrous injustice that the Crusades inflicted upon them. This article puts it all neatly in perspective":

In light of President Obama’s recent remarks, comparing the brutality of the Islamic State to the Crusades, it might be time to take a fresh look at those events. Were they really the one-sided Dark Ages barbarism we have been taught? Were they an early manifestation of Western imperialism and global conquest?
In his landmark book, God’s Battalions, Baylor University social sciences professor Rodney Stark suggests otherwise. It is a well-researched chronicle, including seven hundred footnotes and a bibliography of about three hundred other works, yet reads like an adventure story full of military strategy and political intrigue.
He begins in the final years of Mohammed, and describes how a newly united Arab people swept through Zoroastrian Persia and the Orthodox Christian Byzantine- controlled areas of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa. (Byzantine refers to the Greek-speaking eastern remainder of the Roman Empire.) Eventually, the Arabs took over control of the Mediterranean islands, most of Spain, and the southern part of Italy, and even reached as far as a hundred or so miles outside of Paris, France before being turned back by the Franks.
The Muslims were brutal in their conquered territories. They gave pagans a choice of converting to Islam or being killed or enslaved. Jews and Christians (other People of the Book) were usually, but not always, treated somewhat better, and allowed to retain their beliefs, under conditions of Shari'a subjugation.
But the Muslim-held territories were not monolithic. Stark writes:

Perhaps the single most remarkable feature of the Islamic territories was the almost ceaseless internal conflict; the intricate plots, assassinations, and betrayals form a lethal soap opera. North Africa was frequently torn by rebellions and intra-Islamic wars and conquests. Spain was a patchwork of constantly feuding Muslim regimes that often allied themselves with Christians against one another.
Not surprisingly, there was intense Christian resistance and determination to take back lost territories. Especially effective were the Normans and the Franks in Spain and Italy.
Western scholars have often characterized this clash of cultures as an Islamic Golden Age versus a European Dark Age, but Stark demolishes this as a myth. He says the best of the Islamic culture was appropriated from the people Muslims conquered: Greeks, Jews, Persians, Hindus, and even from heretical Christian sects such as the Copts and Nestorians. He quotes E.D. Hunt as writing that “the earliest scientific book in the language of Islam was a treatise on medicine written by a Syrian Christian priest in Alexandria translated into Arabic by a Persian Jewish physician.” Stark writes that Muslim naval fleets were built by Egyptian shipwrights, manned by Christian crews, and often captained by Italians. When Baghdad was built, the caliph “entrusted the design of the city to a Zoroastrian and a Jew.” Even the so-called Arabic numbering system was Hindu in origin.
And, while it is true that the Arabs embraced the writings of Plato and Aristotle, Stark comments:

Rather than treat these works as attempts by Greek scholars to answer various questions, Muslim intellectuals quickly read them in the same way they read the Qur’an, as settled truths to be understood without question or contradiction… Attitudes such as these prevented Islam from taking up where the Greeks had left off in their pursuit of knowledge.
Meanwhile, back in Europe, there was an explosion of technology that made ordinary people far richer than any had ever been before. It began with the development of collars and harnesses that allowed horses to pull plows and wagons rather than oxen, doubling the speed at which people could till their fields. Plows were improved, iron horseshoes invented, wagons given brakes and swivel axels, and larger draft horses were bred. All this, along with the new idea of crop rotation, led to a massive improvement in agricultural productivity that, in turn, led to a much healthier, larger, and stronger population.
War technology was also improving, with the invention of the crossbow and chain mail. Crossbows were far more accurate and deadly than conventional archery, and could be fired with very little training. Chain mail was almost impervious to the kind of arrows in use throughout the world. Mounted knights were fitted with high-back saddles and stirrups that enabled them to use more force in charging an opponent, and much larger horses were bred as chargers, giving the knights a height advantage over enemies. Better military tactics made European armies much more lethal. Stark writes:

It is axiomatic in military science that cavalry cannot succeed against well-armed and well-disciplined infantry formations unless they greatly outnumber them…. When determined infantry hold their ranks, standing shoulder to shoulder to present a wall of shields from which they project a thicket of long spears butted in the ground, cavalry charges are easily turned away; the horses often rear out of control and refuse to meet the spears.
In contrast, Muslim warriors were almost exclusively light cavalry, riding faster but lighter horses bareback with little armor, few shields, and using swords and axes. Their biggest advantage was their use of camels, which made them much more mobile than foot soldiers, and gave them the ability to swoop in and out of the desert areas to attack poorly defended cities.
These differences provided Crusader armies with huge advantages, but what would prompt hundreds of thousand Europeans to leave their homes and travel over two thousand miles to engage an enemy is a desert kingdom, especially after the Muslim conquest of Europe had been turned back?
There had been long-festering concern about the fate of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. After his conversion to Christianity in the early 300s, the Roman Emperor Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the site of what was believed to be Jesus’ tomb, and other churches in Bethlehem and on the Mount of Olives. These sites prompted a growing number of European pilgrims to visit the Holy Land, including Saint Jerome, who lived in Bethlehem for the last thirty years of his life as he translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin. By the late fifth century, Stark reports, more than three hundred hostels and monasteries offered lodging to pilgrims in Jerusalem alone.
But, in 638, Jerusalem surrendered to Muslim invaders, and mass murders of Christian pilgrims and monks became commonplace. Stark includes a list of select atrocities in the eight and ninth centuries, but none worse than the some five thousand German Christians slaughtered by Bedouin robbers in the tenth century.
Throughout this period, control of Palestine was contested by several conflicting Muslim groups. Stark writes that “in 878 a new dynasty was established in Egypt, and seized control of the Holy Land from the caliph in Baghdad.” One hundred years later, Tariqu al-Hakim became the sixth caliph of Egypt and initiated an unprecedented reign of terror, not just against Christians, but against his own people as well. He burned or pillaged some thirty thousand churches, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the tomb beneath it.
Soon enough, newly converted Turkish tribes came out of the north to seize Persia and Baghdad by 1045 and press on to Armenia, overrunning the city of Ardzen in 1048, where they murdered all the men, raped the women, and enslaved the children. Next they attacked the Egyptians, in part because the Turks were Orthodox Sunnis and the Egyptians were heretical Shi'ites. While the Turks did not succeed in overthrowing the Egyptians, they did conquer Palestine, entering Jerusalem in 1071. The Turks promised safety to the residents of Jerusalem if they surrendered the city, but broke this promise and slaughtered the population. They did the same in Ramla, Gaza, Tyre, and Jaffa.
Finally, they threatened Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Emperor Alexius Comnenus wrote to Pope Urban II in 1095, begging for help to turn back the Turks. This was remarkable, given the intense hostility between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Perhaps the Pope saw an opportunity to unite, or at least reduce, tensions between the two Christian churches, but he responded with a call to create an army that would go to the Middle East.
I am not going to regurgitate all the battles of the Crusades themselves. It is a fascinating history, well worth studying in part for its parallels and lessons for today. Let’s just say that the Crusaders were extremely effective militarily, often defeating far larger Muslim armies, despite having traveled nearly three thousand miles into an alien desert climate. Their biggest enemies were disease, starvation, and political betrayal. Plus, the Crusades were expensive and home countries grew weary of paying the taxes needed to support them. (Sound familiar?)
The Crusaders ended up establishing their own kingdoms in the Holy Land, which lasted for about two hundred years or, as Stark notes, almost as long as the United States has existed; but without ongoing support from Europe they could not survive constant attacks from the Muslims.
So, what to make of all this?
The current idea that Jews in Israel are usurping the rights of indigenous people is nonsense. This has always been a hotly contested area. In the Old Testament, the Jews wrested control from the Canaanites, then were overrun by the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, then the Persians, then the Greeks, then the Romans. The Romans of Jesus’ time were displaced by the Greek Byzantine Empire, then replaced by the Arabs, then the Egyptians, then the Turks, and finally by the British. For most of human history the wealth of a society was created by conquest and plunder. It is hardly unique to Christians, and certainly not to Jews.
Actually, the Crusaders were unique in that they did not seek to plunder or enslave. They didn’t even try to forcibly convert anyone to Christianity. Their sole interest was to protect the pilgrims and the Christian holy sites. They sometimes sacked cities that refused to provide food to a hungry army, but they didn’t take riches back to Europe. There were few riches to be found. Rather than exploiting indigenous resources to benefit Europe, Europe sent money and resources to the Middle East. Pilgrims were quite lucrative for host countries, just as tourism is today.
War was a nasty and brutal business at the time, and had been for all of recorded history. Cities fortified themselves as protection against invading armies. A siege of a city meant surrounding the area and cutting off supplies until the population surrendered, often by starving. In the Bible, II Kings 6:24-33 relates the story of the siege of Samaria, in which two starving women agree to kill and eat their sons.
The rule of war at the time was that, if a city surrendered, the population would be spared, but if it resisted and the invading army had to take it by force, all the inhabitants would be killed or enslaved. But Stark notes that Muslim armies often violated even this rule, promising sanctuary, then slaughtering the population that surrendered. (Before we get too smug and condescending about the savagery of these ancients, let’s not forget the rocket bombing of London, the firebombing of Dresden, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a mere seventy years ago.)
One way in which Muslim fighters today have advanced over their forebears is that, during the Crusades, they did not adopt new tactics to counter the technological advantage of the Europeans. They never used crossbows or shielded infantry, even after several hundred years of fighting. Today, Muslim warriors quickly evolve to make the most of Western technology, although they still never seem to develop anything of their own.
One final thought on this. As Stark indicates, there is, in too many Muslim countries, a sense of obedience that precludes robust debate or new ideas, let alone technological innovation. In his classic book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman quotes Osama bin Laden as saying:

It is enough to know that the economy of all Arab countries is weaker than the economy of one country that had been part of our Islamic world when we used to truly adhere to Islam. That country is the lost Andalusia. Spain is an infidel country, but its economy is stronger that our economy because the ruler there is accountable. In our countries, there is no accountability or punishment, but there is only obedience to the rulers and prayers of long life for them.
Friedman confirms that this is based on a 2002 report, the first Arab Human Development Report. This report, written by Arabs, found that Spain had a larger gross domestic product than all twenty-two Arab states combined.
I think Stark is closer to the mark than bin Laden. The problem is a cultural way of thinking that starts with the Qur’an and the Prophet and emphasizes unquestioning obedience. The very name of the religion, Islam, means “submission”. The thinking of bin Laden that emphasizes punishing poor rulers is a complete misunderstanding how progress is made. European cultures place a high value on questioning everything, even the divinity of Jesus Christ. Certainly there have been exceptions to this but, in the sweep of history, it is an unmistakable trait.
So we have perhaps the starkest conflict of world views imaginable: on one hand, a robust and virtually unlimited spirit of inquiry, and on the other a fervent dedication to universal obedience and submission. How this plays out is the story of our times.