Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Emperors Faithful wrote:
@Miguelsan: I was aware that Spain was in no way united. But I have to disagree with you on your definition of a Jihad. Here it does not seems faith was an issue (at least not the main goal). It was mainly a fight over territories and resources. That both sides respective allies were of the same religeon does not in itself constitute a Jihad or a Crusade. Some sort of specific mandate or common call throughout the Islamic or Christian world is required no? (at least to some extent)

Not my definition but anyway that was my point.
If we limit Islam to a single entity (that it´s not) and erroniously require that to have a Jihad we need to have the ruling religious figure declare it, the Islamic effort in the peninsula was not a Jihad. But as I already said for some the Jihad is not akin to a Islamic Crusade but an effort in the name of faith. And in that case the Almohads and the Almoravids (specially this ones) were crusading for a stricter interpretation of Islam in Al-Andalus.

M.

sebster wrote:Is it reasonable to say that as the Byzantine Empire collapsed a power vacuum was left, and that multiple factions rushed to fill that vacuum?

The Byzantine Empire was helped to collapse (over a period of centuries) by the encroachment of Muslims, Mongols and Franks.

It didn't just suddenly collapse leaving a power vacuum.

The collapse doesn't need to be immediate to leave a power vacuum, just fast enough that if someone moves in and claims territory part of said empire, there won't be anyone there to dispute their claim from said empire (although a smaller nation may have popped up in the meantime, much weaker than original empire).

Basically, any nations in the area would rush in like vultures to a dead body, and grab land whenever said empire was forced to move back its borders, or maybe before then.

Also realize that just because it says they control an area on a map doesn't mean they have actual control over it. Take modern Pakistan. If you look at most political maps, the Northwestern provinces will be a part of the country. Do they have any control over said region? No, not at all.

This book

http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Penguin-Atlas-Medieval-History/dp/0140512497/ref=pd_sim_b_1

gives a good overview of rise and fall of the Byzamtine Empire.

Manchu wrote: ....... meant nothing to Christians as they saw Islam as at best a Christian heresy.

You have made similar claims before. Do you have a documented source for this claim?

GG

You could easily find this in any history book about the subject, Grog. But here is a more colorful example--and yes, it's even a primary source!

Dante wrote:A cask by losing centre-piece or cant
Was never shattered so, as I saw one
Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.

Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
His heart was visible, and the dismal sack
That maketh excrement of what is eaten.

While I was all absorbed in seeing him,
He looked at me, and opened with his hands
His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me;

How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;
In front of me doth Ali weeping go,
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;

And all the others whom thou here beholdest,
Disseminators of scandal and of schism
While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.

A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us
Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge
Putting again each one of all this ream,

When we have gone around the doleful road;
By reason that our wounds are closed again
Ere any one in front of him repass.

Inferno, Canto Twenty Eight

Manchu wrote:You could easily find this in any history book about the subject, Grog. But here is a more colorful example--and yes, it's even a primary source!

I'm sorry but quoting Dante's inferno doesn't really back up your claim of "Christian heresy". In fact, what I saw was a reference to "ali" and his followers being in hell. (at least that's what it appeared to me, from the reading.

Most likely you and I have different viewpoints on what Christian heresy is and how that applies to Islam, and other religions.

Anyway.. sorry for the sidetrack.

GG

I shouldn't have presumed that Dante would be obvious to you. Dante portrays Mohammed along with Ali in the Eighth Circle of Hell, reserved for "Sowers of Discord"--the theological term is "schismatics." Schismatics are people who cause a division in a community (in this case, the Body of Christ) by preaching heretical ideas. The punishment, as Dante wrote, was that schismatics would have their own bodies split again and again in Hell. The Dante expert Otfried Liberknecht explained it this way in a 1997 lecture at the University of Minnesota:

It has caused some consternation that Dante places Mohammed at this specific place of Hell, together with historically less important sowers of political and familial discord, and not in the sixth circle with the heretics and heresiarchs in their red-hot glowing tombs. For Asín this was a sign that Dante did not see Mohammed as a heretic, but that he condemned him only for the political and military conflicts which he had caused in the world. Asín even regarded this as an indulgence on the part of Dante, as "significant of Dante's sympathies for Arabic culture". But other commentators have justly pointed out that the punishment in a place deeper in hell implies, quite to the contrary, a more severe condemnation. And this more severe condemnation does not imply an exculpation from the less grave sin of heresy, because according to the general rule each soul is punished at the place of his (or her) gravest sin, by a punishment comprising also all his (or her) minor sins. It was commonly held by medieval Christian writers that Mohammed was a heretic, and his religion a heresy like Arianism or Nestorianism, but even worse than them, yet not a heresy because Mohammed himself had been a Christian, as the popular legend portrayed him, but because he adopted and changed elements of Christian and biblical doctrine, and also because he did so under the influence of heretic Christian and Jewish teachers. There is nothing to indicate that Dante did not share this view. Quite to the contrary, as we shall see.

I trust that clears it up for you?

Manchu wrote:I trust that clears it up for you?

Not at all. All that does is tell me what an author's opinion was concerning what he thought Dante's opinions were.

However, it certainly would make for an interesting study.

GG

::

So not even the part where this leading scholar says medieval Christians thought of Mohammed as a heretic clears up for you the idea that medieval Christians saw Mohammed as a heretic?

::shakes head::

What we have here is a lack of communication. (My fault I'm sure)

You have made comments in the past about Islam being some sort of "offshoot of Christianity". (forgive my paraphrase)

Then most recently you said that you believed that Christians at the time of the crusades, at best thought of Muslims as "Christian" heretics, not just plain old heretics. You made a broad generalization there, and I was just looking for some documented sources. You provided Dante' and an author that wrote about Dante'. all i was refering to was those little snipppets you presented didn't do enough to prove the broad generalization you made, and that I would be interested in study it further on my own.

I guess this is where I am having the problem. Islam isn't Christian heresy, like say gnostisim or classic arianism. Islam is a completely different religion.

Anyway, I'm sorry for taking the thread OT, as I have thoroughly enjoyed the topic so far. I'll give Manchu the last word.

GG

generalgrog wrote:Islam isn't Christian heresy, like say gnostisim or classic arianism. Islam is a completely different religion.

Yes. But that is not how medieval Christians thought of Islam. You asked for documented sources about this and I offered two. I'm not sure what more I can do to convince you. I don't need the last word. I'm simply responding to your request for further information and am admittedly baffled by your talk of "snippets" and "broad generalizations."

Emperors Faithful wrote:I would agree with you. But then we have to ascertain (from an historical viewpoint) whether or not they were correct.

No we don't. Any engagement in historical discourse will be to determine whether or not the standard method of historiography in place is accurate. Decisions on whether or not anyone was correct is irrelevant, and it detracts from the soundness of any historical discussion. The goal of any historian should be objective discussion and reasoning, not subjective moralizing.

Emperors Faithful wrote:But I honestly think that most Crusaders couldn't give a damn about any particular Christian Kingdom (such as the Byzantines) other than their own.

Maybe true of an Englishman in regards to his relationship to a Frenchmen, but almost all of the Christian kingdoms of Europe felt some sort of tie to the Byzantines. This is related to the European fascination with Rome, and its role as the creator of legitimacy. Any legitimate power in Europe would have tried to somehow tie his authority back to Rome, and more specifically to Constantine, Trajan, Augustus and Caesar himself. The Byzantines provided a very real anchor for their legitimacy considering the fact that they were in fact the Roman Empire alive and well.

Emperors Faithful wrote:You can't argue that the Holy Lands wasn't a special case. It was the Holy Lands that caused the struggle, not the fact that the Byzantine Empire had been attacked.

The Holy Lands added urgency and despair to the Europeans. Rome was not the center of their universe, Jerusalem was. To see the Roman Empire, as they thought of it, failing and the loss of the Levant in such a short amount of time would have been nothing short of traumatic. You must understand that with the muslim conquests of the Eastern Mediterranean 3 of the 5 Holy Sees of Christendom just vanished: Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria.

dogma wrote:If all you're arguing is that the Crusaders felt as though they were under attack, then you are correct to say that the Crusaders would have felt they were on the defensive. However, from what I've seen, that isn't what you're claiming. It seems you want to claim that they were somehow on the defensive in an objective sense, which does not align with the Muslim understanding of events, and thus is unlikely to be true.

Of course it won't align with muslim understandings, its a different point of view, that doesn't necessarily negate the truth in the histories of the Crusaders. Unless of course you assume that the muslims were better historians, which after reading several of them, I would say they are not.

dogma wrote:If we're going to discuss matters of historical perspective, then it should be noted that the Seljuks, Fatimids, Abbasids, and Danishmends all would have felt as though they were being attacked.

Of course they would, they felt that the lands they had just conquered were theirs to begin with. So any attempts to retake Christian lands would have been seen as an attack on their lands.

Miguelsan wrote:

Emperors Faithful wrote:
@Miguelsan: I was aware that Spain was in no way united. But I have to disagree with you on your definition of a Jihad. Here it does not seems faith was an issue (at least not the main goal). It was mainly a fight over territories and resources. That both sides respective allies were of the same religeon does not in itself constitute a Jihad or a Crusade. Some sort of specific mandate or common call throughout the Islamic or Christian world is required no? (at least to some extent)

Not my definition but anyway that was my point.
If we limit Islam to a single entity (that it´s not) and erroniously require that to have a Jihad we need to have the ruling religious figure declare it, the Islamic effort in the peninsula was not a Jihad. But as I already said for some the Jihad is not akin to a Islamic Crusade but an effort in the name of faith. And in that case the Almohads and the Almoravids (specially this ones) were crusading for a stricter interpretation of Islam in Al-Andalus.

M.

The wars on the Iberian Peninsula were hardly a Holy War to any extent. They were about territorial control and expansion. True, the opposing sides were of a different religeon, and it probably helped escalate the situation, it was not a primary war between faiths such as what was clearly the case in the Holy Lands.

Emperors Faithful wrote:The wars on the Iberian Peninsula were hardly a Holy War to any extent. They were about territorial control and expansion. True, the opposing sides were of a different religeon, and it probably helped escalate the situation, it was not a primary war between faiths such as what was clearly the case in the Holy Lands.

Flat out wrong.

Really? (Like I said, I don't know much on the History of the Iberian Peninsula)

In my mind, it was always more of a war between Christian Kingdoms and Islamic (Kingdoms?). While the Holy Wars was on a much grander scale, with Christendom as a whole pitted against the Empire of Islam as a whole.

The Reconquista was a faith issue. It started as a war to recover the lost Visigoth Kingdom but later, near the 11th century morphed in a war of religion where the Christian Kingdoms seek to expel the invaders (after 3 centuries the Muslims hardly were invaders but...) And Urban II promised the same papal indulgence to the christian knights fighting in the Reconquista than the crusaders.

Even when Granada was a subject kingdom of Castille paying the Parias tribute the Reyes Catolicos finally conquered it (over the objection of Ferdinard of Aragon who was quite happy with the money) on a faith issue as no heathen presence was to be allowed on Iberian soil.

M.

Miguelsan wrote:The Reconquista was a faith issue. It started as a war to recover the lost Visigoth Kingdom but later, near the 11th century morphed in a war of religion where the Christian Kingdoms seek to expel the invaders (after 3 centuries the Muslims hardly were invaders but...) And Urban II promised the same papal indulgence to the christian knights fighting in the Reconquista than the crusaders.

Even when Granada was a subject kingdom of Castille paying the Parias tribute the Reyes Catolicos finally conquered it (over the objection of Ferdinard of Aragon who was quite happy with the money) on a faith issue as no heathen presence was to be allowed on Iberian soil.

M.

Ah, that settles it then. There was definitely a faith aspect going on there. (Though obviously not entirely, as Ferdinard objected). The underlined bit definitely highlights the striking similarity between the Reconquista and the Crusades. Thanks for correcting me.



Would the Holy Lands have been the first 'Colony' as such? I know that Ireland was one of Englands first colonies, could the same be said of the Holy Lands? After all, they were not handed back to the Byzantines, were they?

Carthage was a colony of the Phoenician cities of the Levant established in 814BC according to Roman sources.

The Greeks were actively colonising around the Mediterranean at about the same time, for example they founded Marseilles in 600BC.