On July 15, 1099, a few thousand European soldiers broke through the walls of Jerusalem and massacred its garrison. At the time, everyone involved saw this moment in apocalyptic terms, and the memory won't go away. Nine centuries later, for example, former President Clinton recalled the massacre as a way to contextualize 9/11. The crusade story, he said in November 2001, "is still being told today in the Middle East, and we are still paying for it."
Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of President Clinton's argument, without 9/11 we probably wouldn't care about 1099. Barely anyone remembered it, for example, on July 15, 1999, the 900th anniversary of the battle for Jerusalem, when there were almost no commemorations, favorable or otherwise, of the First Crusade. (The major exception was the Christian "Reconciliation Walk," from Cologne to Jerusalem, organized as an apology for the crusade.)
For better or worse, we remember the First Crusade now. But how should we do so? What did the battle of Jerusalem mean in 1099, and why should we care today?
Let's begin with the actual battle. By the time the crusaders reached Jerusalem, they were primed for a bloodletting. Most of them had been marching for almost three years, having endured unimaginable suffering and unspeakable horrors. Their very survival seemed miraculous, proof that God had endorsed their cause.
When they captured the city on July 15, they killed so many Muslims, according to eyewitnesses, that the streets ran ankle deep with blood -- perhaps a mass hallucination, but not the only one that day. Many crusaders swore that their dead companions had accompanied them into the city, joining in the battle. Other eyewitnesses claimed to have seen a rider on a white horse, as foretold in the book of Revelation, galloping from the Mount of Olives. One observer even said that the blood flowed as high as the horses' bridles.
The carnage was prodigious, but the crusaders did not in fact kill all of Jerusalem's defenders. One large contingent of Muslims took refuge in the city's main citadel, conventionally called the Tower of David, and negotiated a ransom. They left the city, apparently without incident.
Another group of Muslims had sought refuge atop al-Aqsa mosque and were likewise negotiating their release with a crusader prince. Before payment could be made, however, a contingent of Christians discovered the prisoners on July 16 and killed them all to a man, woman and child.
This second massacre led to a crisis. One Christian prince had collected his ransom; another had lost his. Still other crusaders were holding more prisoners who had also escaped July 15. What to do with them? After one more day of consideration, the leadership decided to kill every surviving Muslim.
Thus began a general slaughter whose brutality traumatized even some of the executioners. In the words of one contemporary, who otherwise celebrated the crusade, "The Christians gave over their whole hearts to the slaughter, so that not a sucking little male child or female, not even an infant of one year would escape alive the hand of the murderer."
We don't know how many people died during this three-day butchery. One 12th century Arab historian put the figure at 70,000, an obvious exaggeration. The lowest estimate (coming from another Muslim observer) is 3,000, which would make the death toll roughly equal to 9/11. The actual figure is probably between these two numbers, and toward the lower end of the spectrum -- perhaps around 10,000.
And the smell of death lingered, literally. On Christmas 1099, a Christian pilgrim reported that he had to cover his nose upon reaching Jerusalem. The stench of unburied corpses turned his stomach.
One can debate the military necessity of these actions. One can even debate their morality, since they followed something like the medieval rules of war. Attackers were expected to spare a city only if it surrendered during a siege, not if it was captured due to military action. In practice, though, this rule usually led to mass ransoms and property forfeitures, not mass slaughter.
What one cannot debate is that these events lay totally outside the experience of European warriors. In the largely rural countryside of their homeland, most soldiers would have had precious little experience of urban life. None of them had ever gone into a city and killed every living inhabitant -- at least not until they joined the crusade.
It is an ugly story, making it easy to understand why the Reconciliation Walkers felt a need to apologize.
But 900 years later, is an apology really constructive? Despite the fantasies of jihadists and apocalyptic evangelicals, the crusades are not part of current events. None of the actors responsible is left to apologize (except, perhaps, for the papacy, still smarting over the whole Galileo business), and both Christian and Muslim societies have moved on. For starters, the crusaders did lose -- driven out of Jerusalem in 1187 and out of the Holy Land in 1291.
No apologies necessary, but that doesn't mean we -- not in the sense of Westerners or Christians, but in the sense of everyone -- are obligated to remember our history, and as good historians do, to search it for lessons. They are not hard to find.
As a tale of a western society that chose all-out war against a dimly understood Muslim adversary, leading to nearly two centuries of an unwinnable occupation, you can't help but wish that American policymakers had read this story ten years ago.
As a tale about the horrors of religious warfare, of what ordinary believers are capable of doing once they become convinced God is directing their cause, of what happens when militants believe themselves to be literal and not just figurative martyrs for a cause, you can't help but wish that everyone -- Christian and Muslim, Eastern and Western -- would listen to this story and learn in the telling of it not to apologize but simply to understand and reject its ideals.
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With regard to true Christians, the apostle Paul wrote: “Though we walk in the flesh, we do not wage warfare according to what we are in the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly.†2 Corinthians 10: 3 & 4.
What matters right now is recognizing that the upcoming battle of Armageddon will wipe out wicked people including those who insist on being warmongers. Psalm 37:10 states it quite clearly: “the wicked one will be no more; and you will certainly give attention to his place and he will not be.â€
the estimate of 3000 is not related to the slaughter of Jerusalem, its the number of muslim prisoners executed by Richard of England at Acre, despite having just made a pact with Saladin that includes an exchange of prisoners.
3000 is even less than the number of "prisoners" that were killed in the Dasht-i-Leili massacre in Afghanistan, which is far more recent than the crusades. If you are wondering why these things matter? then feel free to look up news reports from British papers that explain the new strategy in the war in afghanistan; paying the Talibans to stop fighting. its because of such reckless and inhumane treatment of prisoners that international coalition, now under immense economical pressures, has to offer to pay an entire hostile army in exchange for a truce..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Massacre:_The_Convoy_of_Death
And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.
STOP THE WARS,LET PEACE REIGN!
No there is no such disconnect. Now the 2 books are from the same God, but God wanted only the final one to be 100% preserved. Searching the in Arabic is easy. You may use the book of search to see if there is a sentence (ayah) that uses the word of torture per example or kill! in fact the Koran says that whoever kills an innocent is like if he has killed humankind!
Remembering that the Moslems associated with 9/11 were condemned by all Islamic scholars since the Coran (Which is the Last Testament and the only 100% preserved one) says that killing one innocent is like killing all humans!
On the other side the cruisaders were blessed by the Church!
Why is it everyone wants to discuss the "Christian" atrosities of the crusade (which were conducted by a hired military,not particulary of Christianin character)
but we don't talj about how the middle-east was a Christian region until Islam destroyed 30,000 Christian churches with forced conversions to Islam or death. This part of history gets ignored.
.
Forced conversions violate the Qur'an. Muslims arranged for the "Dhimmi" contracts. You might look all this up, but one doubts you might be so inclined. Nothing is being ignored, especially your false history.
The Crusades started as a rescue mission when 2/3 of the Christian region was being destroyed.
There are many things done by "Muslims" which violate the Qur'an. Today persecuted Christian are still faced with the choice of forced conversion or persecution / death.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apalachee_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystic_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yontoket_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olowalu,_Hawaii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_massacre_of_1622
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Creek_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marias_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_River_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apalachee_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystic_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Island_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
You may add to your impressive list, providing weapons and money and vitos and lies to the torturers of the Palestinian people, who dynamite houses of the occupied people if a member of their family resists, who uproot olive trees, who shower the sky over civilians with American made phosphorus bombs who....
I would add Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Shock N Awe, Drones, unprovoked war and occupation
Of course
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/CIAtimeline.html
"One can debate the military necessity of these actions."
1) Crusaders Killing, Claming and Occupying a foreign Land
2) 19 Suicide bomber making a statement for the rights and security of their Home Land from the same western invaders who have no claim to or right to support others there
Does not seem like much of a debate to me. But in this modern time DARK AGES it appears to be the apirations of us Westerners.
Hell bent to prove Reverend Write was correct.
GOD DAMN America
notwaff,
Where did you get this information?
What, you think everyone came along peacefully?
During the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Syria and Egypt the British repression of the anticolonial riots led to the death of some 800 people. In 1920, Syrian forces were defeated by the French in the Battle of Maysalun and Iraqi forces were defeated by the British when they revolted. In 1922, the (nominally) independent Kingdom of Egypt was created following the British government's issuance of the Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence. A major military base for the British forces and the country was occupied. In 1941, the RashÄ«d `AlÄ« al-GaylÄnÄ« coup in Iraq led to the British invasion of the country during the Anglo-Iraqi War. Followed by the Allied invasion of Syria-Lebanon and the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran.
The rise to power of German dictator Adolf Hitler in Germany had created a new urgency in the Zionist quest to immigrate to Palestine and create a Jewish state there. A Palestinian state was also an attractive alternative for Arab and Persian leaders to British, French (Lewis, 348–350)..
On 14 May 1948, when the British Mandate expired, the Zionist leadership declared the State of Israel.
The 1953 Iranian coup d'état was the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom and the United States under the name TPAJAX Project.
Remember for purposes of revenge or retribution? No. Remember to understand and to effect reconciliation and tio avoid the mistakes of the past? Yes.
“Yea, they slay us and they smite,
Vex our souls with sore affright;
All the closer cleave we, Lord,
To Thine everlasting word.
Though they curse, and blind and kill,
The living God is with us still.
We are thine Though limbs are torn;
Better death than life forsworn.
The fair and young lie down to die,
In witness of Thy Unity;
From dying lips the accents swell,
“Thy God is One, O Israel’
And knit with bonds of holiest faith,
They pass to endless life through death.
(Kalonymos Ben Yehudah, 1096.)
The crusaders could not distinguish between Christians, Jews and Muslims. All the inhabitants of Jerusalem were slaughtered.
Israel’s martyrs are remembered in the traditional prayer book. Why should we forget? Should Israel forget the Holocaust?
Seeking peace today does not require we forget.
Mathew 5: KJV
38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;