Dennis M. Mahoney: New View Of Crusades Abandons Simple Stereotypes

Dennis M. Mahoney, in the Columbus Dispatch (5-6-05):

In 1096, the rallying cry of western Europe's Christians was "Deus volt," or "God wills it." Today, the Crusades serve as a rallying cry for some as an example of the West's mistreatment of Muslims.

But in reality, misconceptions about the Crusades abound in the modern world.

The Crusades, contends historian Thomas Madden, were primarily a reaction by Christians to aggression by Muslims, who had controlled the Holy Land and other parts of the Middle East for more than 400 years.

Crusaders who signed on for the First Crusade in the late 11th century were told by the Roman Catholic Church that heaven could be their reward, he said.

"This was a way for you to do something good with your sword, and in the same token do a penitential act that could help your quest for salvation," Madden said.

The First Crusade was born when Emperor Alexius I of Byzantium begged Pope Urban II to recruit troops to turn back Muslim forces that were gobbling up his territory.

Madden, history professor at St. Louis University and author of The New Concise History of the Crusades, said the pope -- sensing Arab and Turkish forces were feuding -- ordered Crusaders not only to help Alexius but also to march on to Jerusalem.

In 1099, the holy city fell to the Crusaders, with Jews as well as Muslims slaughtered. Mosques were ransacked, and synagogues burned to the ground.

Other cities also were taken, leading to the creation of what came to be called the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

For the next 88 years, Europeans living there became "Arabized," learning Muslim culture and marrying native women, said Indira Falk Gesink, assistant professor of Middle Eastern history at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea.

Kingdom of Heaven, director Ridley Scott's movie opening today, depicts the years leading up to the Battle of Hattin in 1187. It was there that Saladin, known in the Muslim world as Salah ad-Din, defeated the Christians; that led the way for his recapture of Jerusalem.

The previous years had been spent in peace, Gesink said. That ended when Reynald of Chantillion, a Christian lord who referred to the Prophet Muhammad as "that accursed camel driver," attacked a caravan carrying Saladin's sister, and Saladin declared war, she said.

Unlike the victors in 1099, Saladin did not slaughter Christians as he took Jerusalem, she said. Many Christians were set free; those taken as slaves could ransom their way out, Gesink said.

"There was literally no violence after that point," she said. "The only thing that the Muslims did that was violent was to symbolically slam the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre shut."

Crusaders never again controlled Jerusalem. In several subsequent crusades, Muslims fended off the attacks; by 1291, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was no more. ...