Correcting Four Myths About the History of the Crusades – IOTW Report

Correcting Four Myths About the History of the Crusades

Saturday, 25 April 2020, 15:15 Claudia Uncategorized 24

The verdict seems unanimous. From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.

But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be true.

Keep reading here.

24 Comments on Correcting Four Myths About the History of the Crusades

  4. Which crusades are we talking about here? The original one that the muslims did when they spread across the middle east, north Africa, Iberian peninsula, eastern Europe, Persia, and all the way to India, murdering, pillaging, raping, and enslaving as they went? Or the ones the Christians did several hundred years later in response to how the muslim conquerors were treating Christian pilgrims in the muslim-occupied territority.

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  5. …sure, @ Claudia, do a good thread when I have to drive home and will miss it, but the truckers get SO mad when I post while driving, and bouncing off the guard rails makes me misspell more…;)

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  7. Most people seem to think of the Crusades as being done during short period of time and as a war against Muslims when it was actually numerous defensive counter attacks that took place over about 3 or more centuries.

    They were not as deadly as most people think either, for instance they killed far, far fewer people over 300 years -a large number of them soldiers that succumbed to disease and such, not battle- than Genghis Khan did over a short period of conquest wars during a single lifetime.

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  9. Bad_Brad, you’re so right. It’s time for us to get back to stopping this spread of evil.

    While we’re at it, let’s stop the spread (and eradicate all evidence) of the left (same evil, different group).

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  11. I’ve had an amateur interest in the Crusades for a long time now, and that roughly 200 year period of history was complicated. From the Western perspective, there were religious, social and political reasons for the Crusades. From the Muslim perspective, the same reasons also apply. In addition to this, many people try to analyze the Crusades in the context of modern social conditions and conventions – yet the world was vastly different and evolving in the 11th through the 13th centuries.

    I do not believe it is possible to simplify the motives and reasons for either the Crusaders or the Muslims during this period of time. Almost 900 years after the end of the Crusades, scholars are still arguing over the reasons Urban II called for the First Crusade – to assist the Byzantine Empire, restore Jerusalem to Christian dominance, or rid Europe of brigands? From the Muslim perspective, they spent as much time fighting each other as they did the Europeans. Both sides had their saints and sinners, scoundrels and heroes, and a lot of folks in between. I would caution against trying to oversimplify this period of history.

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  12. The crusades were a response to moslem aggression. As usual, the moslems blame the victims for their own murderous intentions and deeds, re-write history and stupid people fall in line because they are too lazy to educate themselves or they are blinded by evil and cannot hear or see.

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  13. What Wyatt said.
    Linked article is essentially correct but barely scratches the surface.
    The Crusades were undertaken (and were of limited success) for a variety of reasons.

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  16. Moslems live to murder, while Christians find it abhorrent. But we will only be pushed so far.

    One of the lines in a book by one of my favorite authors writing in a historical context is “there’s nothing more dangerous than a justified Christian.”

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  17. i am a direct line descendent of many of the “French” First Crusaders and a good deal of the following ones. the first 2 Frankish Kings of Jerusalem (Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin I) are my 30th great uncles. their brother who also went on the First Crusade but returned to Boulogne is my 30th great grandfather, Eustace II. Godfrey and Baldwin were buried in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Muslims tore apart their tombs and removed their bodies when the Ottomans retook the city.

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  20. Billy Fuster APRIL 25, 2020 AT 6:29 PM
    “The Christians finally figured out “turning the other cheek” did not apply to their enemies. Too bad they can’t figure that out today.”

    …well, in the person of “pope” Francis the Catholic church is DEFINITELY showing Islam their ASS…

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  22. For starters, Fuck ’em
    People whom are bred to the fued and conquest have no place crying about retaliatory strikes.
    The fact that it took multiple trips to get it done speaks volumes about the Moor
    And lastly, fuck ’em

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  23. Helps to put things into context.
    What was happening around (and just preceding) 1096?
    Not just in Europe, but in Byzantium, Central Asia, North Africa, and beyond?

    I was a special envoy for Gustafuston II of Lower Liechtenstein at the time, and I can assure you, politics was more of a harlequin patch-job than black-and-white. The musselmen were exploding upon the borders of Civilization – killing, maiming, destroying all they touched – converting by the sword, castrating our youth, raping our daughters, and demanding ever higher taxation. Sort of like the Demonrats of a later date – at any rate – they had to be stopped.

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