It has become commonplace (not to
say popular) to describe the Islamic states that governed the territories that
later became the crusader kingdoms as “civilized” and the crusaders as
“barbarians.” This perception rests primarily on two facts: 1) the Greek
historian Anna Comnena used the term to describe the participants of the First
Crusade, and 2) the sack of Jerusalem.
Now, it must be remembered that
the Greeks used the term “barbarian” to refer to anyone who didn’t speak Greek.
This included, in a different age, the highly civilized Persians, Babylonians,
Egyptians etc. Second, the Greek Emperors considered themselves the descendants
and heirs to the Roman Empire – and viewed the German, French, and Norman
crusaders as the descendants of the “barbarian hoards” that had over-run the
Western Empire. Because the Byzantine Empire preserved greater continuity with
Rome, it also had a very sophisticated bureaucracy and hierarchy that left the
Byzantines confused and offended by the lack of formalized command structures
and, indeed, the absence of a supreme commander among the crusaders. Anna
Comnena certainly saw the crusaders as barbarians – that does not mean that we
should. The lack of understanding for a different culture exhibited by the
Byzantine chroniclers does mean the other culture was inherently inferior – as
modern readers ought to appreciate.
The sack of Jerusalem was
unquestionably a barbaric act – from the modern perspective. It was hardly so
in the eyes of contemporaries. The contemporary rules of war were very
explicit: a city that surrendered could expect mercy, a city that did not could
expect “to be put to the sword.” This had been the rule of war since the
sack of Troy. Modern sensibilities are offended particularly by the fact that
Christians, allegedly fighting in the name of a peaceful, forgiving and loving
Christ, could commit this “atrocity.” It is surely evidence that medieval
understanding of Christianity and our own diverges – or that the crusaders by
the time they reached Jerusalem were not willing to curb their baser instincts
even in such a sacred place. But it does not make the crusaders “barbarians” in
the contemporary context, certainly not when it is clear that most apocalyptic
descriptions of the sack are exaggerations and religious zeal on the part of
later writers and that thousands of Jerusalem’s inhabitants survived the sack.
The Arabs, after all, had taken
the Holy Land by the sword, not with sweet words and persuasion. In 997 the
Muslims sacked Santiago de Compostella, the most important pilgrimage church in
the West. In 1009 the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built by the Byzantines over
three hundred years starting in the reign of Constantine the Great (306 – 337),
was utterly destroyed. Meanwhile, however, the Muslims had divided into Shiites
and Sunnis and engaged in bloody wars in which they murdered, raped, pillaged and
burned rival Muslim cities. Zengi, atabeg of Mosul, for example, not only
(according to a Muslim source) ordered the “pillaging, slaying, capturing,
ravishing and looting” of Edessa, but was feared in Damascus because of “his
exceptionally cruel and treacherous behavior” – to his co-religionists.
Attempts to depict the crusaders
as illiterate brutes lacking in cultural accomplishments also miss the mark.
The “unwashed masses” might not have been very cultivated – but nor were the
peasants and common soldiers of the Byzantine Empire or the Turks. The upper classes in 11th century
Europe, on the other hand, had already started to develop arts and architecture
to a high degree of sophistication as manuscripts, artifacts and the
architectural record shows. Literacy was confined to an elite, and fostered
mostly by the clergy – but that was true in the Byzantine and Muslim world as
well. Nevertheless, it is fair to say
that in certain fields, notably medicine, mathematics and astronomy the Muslim
world was far ahead of Western Europe.
The differences are hardly so dramatic, however, as to paint the one
culture as civilized and the other as “barbaric.”
What then made the crusaders appear so
“barbaric” to their contemporaries in the East? Two features of Western European feudal society set it apart from
the East into which the crusaders came so suddenly and unexpectedly at the end
of the 11th century.
First was the decentralized
system of government based on complex, feudal relationships. Both the Byzantine
and the Muslim world in this period were intensely hierarchical societies in
which the Emperor (in the one) and the Caliph (in the other) had supreme and
absolute control over his subjects – at least in theory. True, reality looked
different. By the end of the tenth
century the Abbasid Caliphs were virtual prisoners of the Persian Abuyid
dynasty, and changed masters when the Seljuk Turks captured Bagdahd in
1040. Thereafter they were puppets of
the Selkjuk sultans, while the Fatimid Caliphs were at the mercy of their
viziers.
But whether the theoretically absolute rulers wielded actual power or
not, their powerful “protectors” always ruled in their name; they considered –
and called themselves – slaves of their masters. Western feudalism, in which
kings were little more than the “first among equals,” was utterly alien to the
Eastern mentality, and so was the outspokenness and (from the Easter
perspective) impudence of vassals. The Eastern elites saw the inherent dangers
of such a fluid system and associated it with primitive tribal structures. Yet
it was exactly these feudal kingdoms that gradually devolved power to ever
wider segments of the population until (through a series of constitutional
crises) they eventually developed into modern democracies. Meanwhile, the
Eastern states remained mired in autocracy.
The other feature of Western
European society that the Muslims (though not the Byzantines) found disgusting
and incomprehensible was the presence of women in public life. The fact that
women had names and faces that were known outside the family circle was viewed
as immoral and dishonorable (much the way the Athenians viewed Spartan women) by
the Muslims of the 12th and 13th centuries. The fact that
women not only had names and faces, but a voice in affairs and could play a
role in public life including controlling wealth and influencing politics was
even more offensive. Yet modern development research shows a strong correlation
between societies that empower and enfranchise women and development, while
societies that insist on muzzling and oppressing half their population are
nowadays considered less “civilized.”
Whether you view the crusaders or
the Saracens as more civilized will therefore depend less on objective factors
than on how you view democracy and womens’ rights.
Helena, I LOVE this post! Thank you so much for going against the grain of modern Crusade propaganda.
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