The Crusades and the Medieval Muslim World: Religion and Politics

Introduction: The Crusades as Religious and Political Conflict

The Crusades were seen by many in the West as a religious act, carrying the banner of Christianity against the non-Christian Muslim world. There was also a strong political component. There were in fact several Crusades, keeping this fighting alive for two centuries. The Muslims were at first defeated and then managed to eject the Crusaders and begin rebuilding the Muslim world. While some in the West might use the term "crusade" in a non-religious manner today, to Muslims the word continues to conjure images of an invasion by the West understood specifically as an expression of bigotry against Islam.

The Western powers fought the Crusades against the Muslims for several reasons, and the religious element was only one of them. The Muslim world at the time was divided into factions, and Muslim Spain had started to go its own way in the eighth century. Much of the Muslim world was by then under attack from the Seljuk Turks, but the Muslims also controlled the Holy Lands — the seat of Christianity. In the eleventh century, European Christians set out on the Crusades to recapture the Holy Lands, especially the city of Jerusalem. The Crusaders saw an opportunity because of the divisions within the Muslim world at that time. The Christian world also suffered its own divisions, such as the splitting off of the Byzantine Empire following the disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire. This left the Greeks in power in the East while the remnants of the Roman world held power in the West, and the Church now had eastern and western factions.

The State of the Muslim World in the Eleventh Century

Vernon O. Egger, in the introduction to his book about the era, states:

"The phrase Muslim world, as used in this book, refers to regions ruled by Muslim-dominated governments, as well as areas in which the Muslim population is a majority or an influential minority. For several decades in the seventh century, the Muslim world was coterminous with the region often referred to today as the Middle East, but it soon expanded far beyond that heartland. By the tenth century, many of the most important cultural developments in the Muslim world were taking place outside the Middle East. The size of the Muslim world has alternately expanded and contracted over time, and we will be concerned to see how and why that has happened."¹

By the eleventh century, the world of Islam was in decay. Economic decline was caused by extravagance and a lack of organization at the center. The weakness of the Empire was evident in a series of attacks by internal and external forces on all sides. The Seljuk Turks were making inroads. As Sunni Muslims, the Seljuqs conquered Baghdad and became the new rulers of the Empire, relying heavily on Persians and on the Persian bureaucracy for administration. Social upheaval was inevitable, and trade withered and declined. The economy and religious life were reorganized, the Seljuq Empire eventually broke up into a series of smaller successor states, and the Crusades brought Christian forces into conflict with Spanish Muslims and Turks. In the East, a new threat to Islam developed in the form of Genghis Khan. The Mongol invaders were not Muslims and showed no interest in Islam. In the middle of the thirteenth century, the Mamluk Sultanate emerged to rule Egypt and Syria until 1517.

Islamic Cultural Unity and the Golden Age

By the end of the tenth century, an Islamic world had come into existence united by a common religious culture expressed in the Arabic language and joined by human links forged through trade, migration, and pilgrimage. This world was divided into three broad areas, each with its own centers of power and with three rulers claiming the title of caliph — in Baghdad, Cairo, and Córdoba. These and other political changes did not destroy the cultural unity of the Islamic world, which grew deeper as more and more of the population became Muslim and the faith of Islam articulated itself into systems of thought and institutions.

In the period of expansion and growth, the majority of peoples coming under the sway of Islam accepted the new religion either because its simplicity appealed to them or because they were taking the path of least resistance, accepting the faith in order to claim equality of status with the new rulers. Arabs and non-Arabs were brought together in a new society completely different from what had existed before. Many of the civilizations that came into contact with Islam were ancient ones, and often the Muslims did not make radical changes in these new territories. These existing civilizations, in turn, exerted an influence on the Islamic world, so that the original unity soon gave way to new sects within Islam. This tension both divided and served to reinvigorate the Muslim world through an infusion of new ideas and encouragement for inquiry across a variety of fields.

The Islamic Golden Age was open to ideas from outside just as it disseminated ideas to the outside world through open contact. Scientific inquiry was encouraged alongside philosophical inquiry, a disposition with a basis in the Quran, which persistently invites the faithful to examine the created world in order to appreciate the greatness and power of God. Scientific knowledge of nature, the stars, the heavens, the earth, flora, and fauna therefore only reinforced the faith. There was also a literature of mirabilia — the miracles of nature — occupying a space halfway between scientific observation and religious contemplation. The people of Islam developed mathematics (including algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and arithmetic), astronomy, botany, pharmacology, zoology, geography, physiognomy, and psychosomatics to a high degree, and the West was the beneficiary of this knowledge from the twelfth century onward. The growth of these and other fields of learning within Islam, however, came to a halt as Islam retreated.