More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
June 5 - September 5, 2024
Because much of the existing wealth had already been plundered in the previous centuries, these raids on coastal Europe thrived on capturing and selling “white slaves [who] were a particularly desirable commodity.”73 Indeed, the “House of Islam in the tenth century had little use for any of the produce and natural resources of Europe, except one; the bodies of the Europeans themselves. Young women and boys were preferred, but during the tenth century Europeans of almost any age or class, and in almost any part of the continent, could find themselves in chains and on a ship bound for North
...more
Of all the battles surveyed in this book, Tours has, beginning with the contemporary chronicles up until the modern era, been one of if not the most celebrated in the West. For although the Mediterranean was lost, and although raids on the coastline became a permanent feature, Islam was confined to the Iberian Peninsula, leaving Western Europe to develop organically. Thus, well into the twentieth century many Western historians, such as Godefroid Kurth (d. 1916), still saw Tours as “one of the great events in the history of the world, as upon its issue depended whether Christian Civilization
...more
Moreover, as mentioned in the Introduction, all who fought under the banner of jihad—from many of Muhammad’s first Arab recruits, to the Bedouins who were always eager to join the jihadi caravan, to the Berber masses that first entered Europe—were always motivated by the promise of plunder. Such motives never clashed with Islam, the deity of which incites his followers to war on the promise of booty, both animate and inanimate—so much so that an entire sura, or chapter of the Koran, “al-Anfal,” is named after and dedicated to the spoils of war.
Thus, in the late 850s and for the first time since the disaster at Yarmuk over two centuries earlier, General Bardas (d. 866) marched a large army across the Euphrates, far into Muslim territory, and launched raids on the coast of Egypt, slaughtering several emirs.
Nikephoros made no secret of his contempt for Islam and ordered his men to gather and burn any copies of the Koran they found.‡ After reconquering Tarsus, he ordered his herald to proclaim that those Muslims “who desire security of property, of their lives, and the lives of their children,” and “who desire just laws and fair treatment,” to accept Christian rule.
One Muslim region after another—Mosul, Beirut, Damascus, Tiberius, Nazareth, Acre, Tripoli—fell to him, and the whole of northern Syria was devastated. He announced that “all Phoenicia, Palestine, and Syria have been freed from the bondage of the Muslims,” and began preparations to march onto Jerusalem itself.
[t]he campaigns of Nicephorus Phocas and John Tzimiskes once again made the Byzantine empire a great power in the east. Significantly, they were also consciously holy wars, the first since Heraclius’s war with the Persians. In previous wars with the Muslims the Byzantines had all too often been on the defensive, with the retaining of Christian territory their aim, not its expansion. However, both Nicephorus and John declared their wars to be for the glory of Christendom, aimed at rescuing the holy places and destroying Islam.
Only in the context of raids on the “infidel”—which becomes synonymous for “tribal outsider” or “enemy”—is Islam evident in their lives.
Muslims interpreted this massive march as Christendom’s attempt to exterminate Islam once and for all. “They swore oaths that they would drive out the caliph, appoint the catholicos in his place, destroy mosques and build churches,” one Muslim chronicler projected. Romanus was coming “out intending to conquer the world and destroy the religion [Islam] and to overcome sultans and to give help to devils,” another fumed. The emperor “had resolved to destroy the lands of Islam,” yet another succinctly jotted.
The Eastern Roman Empire lost much after Manzikert. It lost the richest and most fertile part of its empire, whence its hardiest soldiers and not a few warrior-emperors (including Leo III and Nikephoros II) historically came from; it lost its prestige and reputation as the world’s greatest power for seven centuries—not just in the eyes of Muslims who had still been reeling under the shadow of defeat from the empire’s tenth-century comeback, but Western eyes as well.
As many as one hundred thousand people from all walks of life—not just knights, but peasants and priests, women and children—hastened to “take the cross”* and prepare for an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem.18 Fulcher of Chartres, a priest and chronicler who traveled with the earliest crusaders, wondered at what he saw: “Little by little and day by day the army grew.… You could see a countless number from many lands and of many languages.… Whoever heard of such a mixture of languages in one army?”
Something new was happening; the Europeans who had fought and died against Islam in the preceding centuries had bought the continent the necessary time to mature in strength and confidence.
As foremost crusade historian Jonathan Riley-Smith puts it, “The crusaders, moved by love of God and their neighbor, renouncing wives, children, and earthly possessions, and adopting temporary poverty
and chastity, were described as going into a voluntary exile.”
Being made to feel inferior was one thing; many dhimmis learned to live with it. But two other sharia provisions created—and continue to create†—deep frustrations. The first, still colloquially known as Islam’s “blasphemy” law, banned on pain of death any speech that could be interpreted as offensive to Muhammad and/or Islam (including preaching the Gospel, which contradicts—and thus makes a liar of—Muhammad). The second, Islam’s apostasy law, also bans on pain of death any Muslim attempts to leave Islam (which, then and now, is particularly evident when a Muslim actively converts to and
...more
Whether these words were posthumously attributed to Almanzor or not, they would prove true. By 1031 Muslim infighting caused the Cordoban caliphate to crumble into some thirty petty Muslim states. So began the First Taifa (Arabic for “sect”), which is reminiscent of the First Fitna and other Muslim civil wars: as Muslim chieftain fought Muslim chieftain, the pristine notion of jihad on infidels lost meaning, giving the northerners a respite to regroup and respond.
“There is war between Christians and Moors and there will be until the Christians have recovered the lands that the Moors have taken from them by force,” prince Juan Manuel (d. 1348) once observed before highlighting the difference between Just War and just plain old jihad: “There would not be war between them on account of religion or sect, because Jesus Christ never ordered that anyone should be killed or forced to accept his religion.”62 As for the popes in Rome, they regularly exhorted the kings of Spain “to expel them [the Muslims] and drive them far from the lands which the Christian
...more
An indecisive tug of war ensued over the following years between Muslim and Christian. Then, in 1118, another Alfonso (b. 1074)—surnamed the “Battler” or “Warrior”—took charge of and spearheaded the Reconquista. Described as the “quintessential crusader devoted to the destruction of Islam until his dying day,” this founder of the new kingdom of Aragon attacked the Ebro River Valley and, with the aid of Frankish veterans from the First Crusade, retook Saragossa in 1118.70 This was the first major Christian victory over Islam since Toledo thirty-three years earlier.
Muhammad al-Nasir died unlamented on Christmas Day the following year. And he was wrong: “The Christian victory at Las Navas marked the end of Muslim ascendancy in Spain and helped to undermine the Almohad empire, which now entered a period of rapid decline,” explains one Reconquista authority. “The balance of power was now tipped decisively in favor of the Christians, thus making possible the subjugation of the greater part of al-Andalus in the next forty years.”
Las Navas de Tolosa was Christendom’s response to Hattin, and for centuries thereafter, July 16 was celebrated as the “Triumph of the Holy Cross” in the Spanish calendar (until Second Vatican abolished it).125
Meanwhile, the jihad leader of the ghazi state never seemed to miss an opportunity to humiliate the heir apparent of the ancient capital of Christendom.
God answered Constantinople’s prayers in the unlikeliest of forms: Timur, the latest self-styled “Sword of Allah,” notorious for building massive pyramids from the decapitated heads of those who resisted him.
Although the Christians believed him, Muhammad was taking advantage of “the basest arts of dissimulation and deceit” afforded by Islam.* “Peace was on his lips while war was in his heart.”
In short, and as contemporary European observers had long said of the Turks, “the Tartars had [also] adopted Islam because it was the easy religion, as Christianity was the hard one,” to quote Ricoldo of Monte Croce (d. 1320).20 Whereas Islam complemented their preexisting way of life, Christianity only challenged it.
As Bernard Lewis puts it, “The last great Muslim assault on Europe, that of the Ottoman Turks, ended with the second unsuccessful siege of Vienna in 1683. With that failure and the Turkish retreat that followed, a thousand years of Muslim threat to Europe came to an end.”
“In no part of the globe are Christians so hated, or treated with such severity, as at Algiers,” where the slaves were regularly treated “with perfidy and cruelty.”122 Centuries later, Robert Playfair (d. 1899) agreed: “In almost every case they [European slaves in Algiers] were hated on account of their religion.”
Any European rebuffing the homosexual advances of their masters—“male slaves were often used for sexual purposes”130—were especially brutalized by their disgraced would-be rapists:*
In 1794 Algerian pirates captured eleven more American merchant vessels. Two things resulted: the Naval Act of 1794 was passed, and a permanent standing U.S. naval force was established. But because the first war vessels would not be ready until 1800, American jizya payments—which took up 16 percent of the entire federal budget—began to be made to Algeria in 1795. In return, some 115 American sailors were released, and the Islamic sea raids formally ceased. American payments and “gifts” over the following years caused the increasingly emboldened pirates to respond with increasingly capricious
...more
Having not receiving the demanded jizya, on May 10, 1801, the pasha of Tripoli proclaimed jihad on the United States. But by now, the latter had six war vessels, which Jefferson deployed to the Barbary Coast. Their initial show of force was enough to cause Tunis and Algiers, which were flirting with the idea of emulating Tripoli’s demands on America, to think otherwise. For the next five years, the U.S. Navy warred with Tripoli, making little headway and suffering some setbacks—the most humiliating being when the Philadelphia and its crew were captured in 1803.
Four months later, in October 1806, the first American edition of the Koran was printed in the United States. As the editor’s note makes clear, its publication was not for the “cultural enrichment”
of Americans—as is often claimed today—but to inform them why they had been at war for the last four years. After opening up by saying, “This book is a long conference of God, the angels, and Mahomet, which that false prophet very grossly invented,” the editor concluded: “Thou wilt wonder that such absurdities hath infected the better part of the world, and wilt avouch, that the knowledge of what is contained in this book, wilt render that law [sharia] contemptible.”
Because it was well covered by Western journalists and contained the centuries-old hallmarks of sadistic contempt for infidels—including mutilations, crucifixions, systematic rapes, and the wanton desecration of Christian churches and symbols—the Ottoman response to the Bulgarian uprising of 1876 especially provoked outrage.
Thus, when the Islamic State declares that “American blood is best, and we will taste it soon,” or “We love death as you love life,” or “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women,”4 virtually no one in the West understands that they are quoting the verbatim words—and placing themselves within the footsteps—of their jihadi forbears as recounted in the preceding history.
When Muslim migrants go on church-vandalizing sprees in the West—many hundreds of churches, crosses, and Christian statues have been respectively desecrated, broken, and beheaded in just Germany, France, and Austria6—very few understand that this modus operandi stretches back to and has been on continuous display since Islam’s first contact with Christian civilization, as recounted in the preceding history.*
