Download Why study the crusades? from Jonathon Phillips The

Why study the crusades?
from Jonathon Phillips The Crusades, 1095 -1197
The study of the history of the crusades is flourishing in schools and universities, in academic
research (in Europe, the Middle East and North America); it is also a subject that attracts
considerable interest from the general public. In part this is a consequence of the enduring
fascination fostered by such a dramatic and important aspect of the histories of western Europe
and the Middle East, of Christianity and Islam and, to a lesser extent, Christianity and Judaism.
The sense of adventure in trying to conquer and hold a distant and unknown land still exerts a
powerful pull on the imagination of the modern West; the perceived glamour of men such as
Richard the Lionheart and Saladin have great allure too. Alongside this, there is, to some modern
western eyes at least, a curiosity and confusion as to how and why people could fight and kill in
the name of God.
There is also the historical legacy of the crusades – a legacy of brutality and fanaticism that has
cast a deep shadow across relations between Christianity and Islam, Christianity and Judaism,
and among Christians themselves. From a western perspective, first the Protestant Church and
then an increasingly secular European society have relegated the crusades to a distant and exotic
escapade carried out by barbaric and foolhardy knights. While recent academic scholarship has
done much to bring the subject back into focus as a complex and central element in the history of
medieval Europe, the origins and meaning of the word have become obscured. The term
‘crusade’ has become casualised and secularised. It is used readily in everyday life: a crusade to
cut hospital waiting lists, a crusade for fair play in sport. Given the fact that, ultimately, the
crusades to the Holy Land collapsed, the continued deployment of the word in such ways shows
how far removed it has become from historical reality. Why do people want to identify with
something that failed? Its current, generic meaning, therefore, is one of a sense of right, or a
quest for justice, and in this form it can trace back its roots to the medieval usage. In the world of
contemporary Islam, however, the crusade has retained a much sharper and more vivid presence,
in large part because the outline of events in the medieval period have a number of pertinent
parallels to the present. In 1099 the armies of the First Crusade (representing the Catholic Church
of western Europe) captured Jerusalem and were popularly reported as wading ankle-deep in the
blood of their slain Muslim foes; in the wake of this conquest the Crusader States were formed
and Christian rule was established in the Levant. By 1187 Saladin had united the Muslims of the
Eastern Mediterranean region under the banner of the jihad, or holy war. The forces of Islam
retook the city of Jerusalem and relegated the Christians to a strip of land on the Mediterranean
coast until their eventual expulsion in 1291. For today’s Muslim world the ingredients seem
familiar: violent western incursions, slaughter and oppression of the faithful and the loss of the
holy city of Jerusalem. These are among the reasons why the crusade still has such a high profile
in the Muslim Middle East. At the start of the twentieth century, as the Arab world began to try
to shake off the shackles of western imperialism, the struggles of their predecessors against the
crusaders seemed highly relevant and this is a perception that has continued. Even more
significantly, a role model was available: Saladin – a devout Muslim who succeeded in driving
out the invaders. Such a figure has obvious attractions in the modern age and contemporary
political leaders have striven to appropriate his legacy. Saddam Hussein, for example, has a huge
mural depicting himself leading his Iraqi tanks into battle alongside an image of Saladin in front
of his own mounted warriors. Saddam has, therefore, identified himself as someone who, like
Saladin, will defeat the westerners and drive them from the Middle East. In 1992, the late
President Assad of Syria oversaw the construction of a large equestrian statue of Saladin in
Damascus. The emir is riding to victory, guarded by Muslim holy men and with defeated
crusaders trailing on the ground behind his horse. Placed just outside the old citadel of
Damascus, Saladin is, of course, symbolically protecting Islam and the city, while the West bows
to him.
Colonel Gadaffi is another Muslim leader who has employed the ideas of jihad and in the 1980s
he compared the United States to the crusaders and described the Americans as ‘leaders of the
modern crusader offensive’. A further, important parallel with the age of the crusades exists for
Muslim militants in the form of the state of Israel. Although the First (and subsequent) crusades
were responsible for numerous atrocities against the Jews of Jerusalem (in 1099) and in western
Europe (1096, 1147, 1190), the close identification of Israel with the USA, and, in the eyes of
some, as an enemy of Palestine and occupier of the holy city, means there is a perception that the
crusader kingdom of Jerusalem was a forerunner of the modern Israeli state. Some Muslim
polemicists argue that the creation of Israel was the West’s revenge for the failure of the crusades
and they point out that the Christians were eventually expelled from the Levant: inevitably,
therefore, they argue that the Jews will suffer the same fate. The militant Islamic groups in the
Middle East, Hamas and Hizbollah, both invoke the struggle between the crusaders and jihad in
their efforts to liberate Palestine. Most pointedly of all today, one name of Osama bin Laden’s
organisation is ‘The World Islamic Front against Jews and Crusaders’. When, after the bombings
of 11 September 2001, President George W. Bush described the struggle with bin Laden as a
crusade (a phrase that the president backed away from very rapidly once the implications of the
word were revealed to him) he had fulfilled the stereotype created by those looking for the
historical parallel and offered an opportunity to tap into the emotional tinderbox of centuries of
conflict.