Socialistworker.co.uk, UK
May 24 2005

Crusade and jihad

photo: The Crusader kingdoms of Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli and
Jerusalem around 1140

Neil Faulkner examines the medieval precursor of imperialism in the
Middle East

On 15 July 1099 Jerusalem was stormed by soldiers of the First
Crusade. For the attackers, who had set out from western Europe three
years before, this was the culmination of their efforts – the
`liberation’ of the Holy City from Muslim `infidels’.

The campaign had been punctuated by massacre and mayhem. Pogroms had
been launched against the Jews of Germany. The people of the Balkans
had been plundered on the army’s line of march. There had been
clashes with the Greeks of Constantinople (Istanbul), whom the
Crusaders were supposed to be defending. Edessa had been seized not
from `infidels’ but from Armenian Christians. And there had been
wholesale slaughter at Antioch and other captured cities.

Now it was the turn of Jerusalem. For two days after the walls were
breached the Crusaders killed and pillaged. Jews and Muslims were cut
down where they stood or herded into buildings and burnt alive. The
few who survived were sold as slaves.

In the days following, rotting corpses having filled the city with
stench, bodies were gathered up and piled in great heaps outside the
walls. Meantime the Crusaders plundered the city of every scrap of
wealth. Western civilisation had reached the Middle East.

The Crusade had been launched by Pope Urban II in 1095. The church,
with estates spread across the whole of western Europe, was a vast
feudal corporation. Now the popes aimed to turn wealth into power.

But they clashed repeatedly with the competing claims of secular
rulers in the West, and their authority was challenged by a rival
Christian hierarchy in the East. So Urban II’s aim in launching the
Crusade was to increase the ideological, military and political power
of the church.

It was also a way of diverting social discontent. Flood and plague in
1094 followed by drought and famine in 1095 had left millions
destitute. Instead of anger being turned on the rich it was targeted
at the Jews, while despair was transformed into the mysticism of a
`people’s crusade’ in which thousands set out on a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land.

Brutality
Above all, the Crusade was an outlet for the brutal imperialism
inherent in the feudal order. Much of 11th century Europe was divided
into landed estates (or `fiefs’) designed to support a heavy
cavalryman, providing enough to pay for his armour, equipment,
horses, and the luxury and trappings of a knight.

In return for their estates, knights owed allegiance to the great
lords who owned the land. These lords in turn had obligations to the
rulers of the feudal states. Norman feudalism was an extreme example.
The Normans were descended from 10th century Viking settlers in
Normandy. The native peasantry was heavily exploited to maintain a
large force of heavy cavalry.

But to avoid fiefs being subdivided and becoming non-viable, the rule
of primogeniture prevailed, whereby the eldest son inherited the
entire estate. Younger sons therefore had to fight to keep their
place in the world.

Denied an inheritance, they had to survive through mercenary service
or by winning for themselves a new fiefdom. This was true of knights,
nobles and princes – all ranks of the feudal aristocracy produced
younger sons prepared to maintain rank through military force.

Opportunities were numerous. Civil wars were frequent. Competition
for land and power kept the feudal aristocracy divided. The rulers of
feudal states tried to control and channel these energies in wars of
conquest – exporting the violence inherent in the system.

Bloody logic
The dynamic of feudal imperialism was the drive to find booty and
fiefdoms for a warrior caste otherwise liable to tear itself apart in
fratricidal slaughter. It was this bloody logic that powered the
Crusades.

`This land you inhabit is overcrowded by your numbers,’ explained the
pope. `This is why you devour and fight one another, make war and
even kill one another. Let all dissensions be settled. Take the road
to the Holy Sepulchre. Rescue that land from a dreadful race and rule
over it yourselves.’

The war was sustained by lies. The Holy Land was supposedly
desecrated with the blood of Christian pilgrims. Muslims were accused
of revolting atrocities. Racist stereotypes appeared in contemporary
art. In fact, Muslims, Jews and Christians had lived side by side in
the Holy Land for centuries, and Jerusalem welcomed pilgrims from all
three faiths. The truth was that the Crusades were an exercise in
feudal violence and pillage. Most Crusaders returned home after the
war. But they left behind four Crusader states – Edessa, Antioch,
Tripoli and Jerusalem – and these, each guarded by just a few
thousand men, had to be brutal to survive.

Living on stolen land and surrounded by potential enemies, the
Crusaders were too few ever to feel safe. They needed wealth to
recruit and maintain soldiers, and they grabbed it any way they could
– attacking desert caravans, raiding their neighbours, and screwing
the local peasantry. They were true robber barons.

Sophisticated
The Arab response was slow. This seems at first surprising. The
Crusaders were massively outnumbered, and Middle Eastern civilisation
was greatly in advance of that of Europe. The Arabs boasted rich
irrigation agriculture, sophisticated urban crafts, a dynamic banking
system, and a strong tradition of scholarship, literature and art.

These were the fruits of the Islamic revolutions of the 7th to 9th
centuries. Merchants and nomads from Arabia had united under the
banner of Islam to create a vast Middle Eastern empire in which towns
and traders could flourish.

But the urban classes did not control the Arab states – mosque and
medina were subordinate to palace. Arab rulers siphoned surpluses
into luxury consumption, political corruption and military
competition.

The unitary empire of the early Islamic period had fragmented into
numerous regional and local states. Economically stagnant and
politically divided, much of the Middle East had recently fallen to
Seljuk Turk invaders from central Asia. The Crusaders were battering
at a crumbling edifice.

Few Arab rulers had the strength or will to resist. Many feared the
upheaval and risks of all-out war. Some made alliances with Crusader
states against their Muslim enemies.

It was the Second Crusade (1146-1148) that transformed localised
resistance into full scale insurgency. The crusade ended in disaster
and led to a decisive shift of power in favour of the architects of
Muslim victory.

By 1154 Syria had been united under a regime openly preaching jihad –
a holy war to destroy the Crusader states. By 1169 the jihadists had
secured control of Egypt. And by 1183 the whole of Syria and Egypt
had been united under the leadership of the famous Saladin.

Saladin
Saladin has become a romantic and heroic figure, both in Europe and
the Middle East. In fact he was a ruthless aristocratic politician as
capable of lies and atrocities as any other. His famed magnanimity
was carefully calculated.

Saladin placed himself at the head of the Muslim masses and raised a
holy war against the Crusaders – he became the leader of a national
liberation struggle fought under the banner of religion.

The tide was turned at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. Saladin
assembled the greatest Arab army ever to face the Crusaders – 30,000
men, including heavy cavalry, swarms of light horse-archers, and
thousands of jihadist volunteers.

The Crusaders were led in the ferocious July heat through a landscape
in which the wells had run dry. Only when they were dying of thirst
did Saladin engage. His huge host surrounded the Crusaders and
plagued them with clouds of arrows.

Again and again the Crusaders charged, attempting to break out, only
to be swamped by the huge numbers of their opponents. At the end of
the day the survivors surrendered. The entire army of the Crusader
Kingdom of Jerusalem had been destroyed.

Saladin – in contrast to the Crusaders – spared most of his
prisoners. The exceptions were understandable. With his own sword he
slew Reynald de Chatillon, a notorious robber baron who had turned
the caravan road beneath his castle at Kerak into a slaughterhouse.

And he ordered the mass execution of Templar and Hospitaller knights.
These were the Waffen SS of the Crusades – warrior monks who waged a
war of bigotry, hatred and genocide.

Jerusalem fell soon afterwards. The Third Crusade (1189-1192) was
mounted in response. Led by King Richard I of England – a boorish and
brutal man under whose leadership the usual carnage and pillage
prevailed – the campaign eventually reached stalemate.

The hardest punch
Well handled, Crusader armies could hold ground and throw back even
the strongest attacks – with their detachments of first class
armoured cavalry, they packed the hardest punch.

But the Crusaders were too few to garrison fortresses and hold ground
in the great sea of opposition that now confronted them. Even had
they retaken Jerusalem, they could not have held it.

The Crusader states clung to patches of their territory into the late
13th century. Though Saladin’s empire collapsed on his death in 1193,
the Crusader enclaves remained hemmed in by hostility and were unable
to endure without external support. This never came.

Later Crusades were diverted by easy pickings and commercial
advantage – the Fourth Crusade, for example, ended with massacre and
pillage in the streets of Christian Constantinople. The last of the
Crusader-held fortresses fell in 1291, almost exactly 200 years since
the first Crusader army had reached the Holy Land.

In that time the Crusader states had contributed nothing – their
rulers were backward robber barons who visited death, destruction and
impoverishment on the people of the Middle East.