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In 1095, Pope Urban II called for an expedition to fight the Muslims in the East - the expedition that we now know as the First Crusade. In atrocity stories in his speech, the Muslims were portrayed as a bloodthirsty, cruel race, who liked nothing better than to treat Christians in all sorts of nasty ways. The truth, however, was rather different. Far from being fundamentally opposed to Christianity, Islam has a lot in common with it. Muslims share with Jews and Christians a belief in a single God, and a veneration for the prophets of Israel. They also recognise Jesus, although as a great prophet, not as son of God.
Islam was born in the early seventh century AD. Muhammad, a young man from a merchant family in Mecca, preached a new monotheistic (one-God) creed. This angered the pagan rulers of his home city, Mecca, who made a tidy sum out of pilgrims visiting the sacred stone known as the Ka'aba. (When Muhammad later conquered the city, he shrewdly incorporated the Ka'aba and the pilgrimage, or hajj, into Islam).His expulsion from Mecca in 622 AD (the Hijra) is taken as the starting point of the Muslim calendar. He was received in the rival city of Medina, from where he rallied opposition to the Meccans. By his death in 632, he had united most of Arabia under his rule and in his new faith.
So, Islam was a warlike, intolerant religion that imposed itself on others by force? Not a bit of it; the Muslims were remarkably tolerant of Jews and Christians (but not pagans) under their rule. So long as they paid a special tax, these faiths could practice their religion and live according to their own laws. Some Muslim countries, notably Spain, were cosmopolitan lands where the three faiths lived reasonably happily alongside one another. The heavily-taxed peasantry of the Byzantine Empire, although Christian, probably preferred Muslim rule, especially in the east where the heretical Monophysite church was repressed by the Greek Orthodox church of the emperors. The Muslim world was the intellectual power-house of the early Middle Ages. The Arabs learned readily from the civilisations that they conquered, and kept alive the learning of the ancient world which had largely been lost in western Europe. Far from being the intellectual straight-jacket that is often portrayed in the West, Islam saw the flourishing of philosophy and learning. Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article The World of the Crusaders (2): Medieval Islam in The Crusades is owned by . Permission to republish The World of the Crusaders (2): Medieval Islam in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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