The age of the crusades

by James M. Ludlow

The Saracens.—During Mohammed’s lifetime Arabia and Syria were beneath his hand. Within eight years following, Persia, parts of Asia Minor, Palestine, and Egypt submitted to him. Thirteen years more (653) saw the cimeter of the Saracens enclosing an area as large as the Roman empire under the Cæsars. In 668 they assaulted Constantinople. In 707 North Africa surrendered the treasures of its entire coast from the Nile to the Atlantic, and the home of Augustine, the father of Christian orthodoxy, was occupied by the Infidels. In 711 the Saracen general Tarik crossed the straits between the Mediterranean and Atlantic, and landed on the rock which has ever since borne his name—Jebel-Tarik, the “hill of Tarik,” or Gibraltar. By 717 Spain, from the Mediterranean to the Pyrenees, had become the proud conquest of the Moors. But for the timely victory of Charles Martel at Tours, in 732, they had surely subdued France and soon completed the circle of conquest by the desolation of Italy, Germany, and the lands bordering the Balkans. In 847 the Saracens were masters of Sicily, and besieged Rome itself, plundering the suburban churches of St. Peter and St. Paul. Thirty years later Pope John VIII. wrote to Charles the Bold: “If all the trees in the forests were turned into tongues, they could not describe the ravages of these impious pagans; the devout people of God is destroyed by a continual slaughter; he who escapes the fire and the sword is carried as a captive into exile. Cities, castles, and villages are utterly wasted and without an inhabitant. The Hagarenes [sons of fornication and wrath] have crossed the Tiber.” In 916 these persistent foes occupied a fortress on the Gangliano, between Naples and Rome, whence they held the papal domain at their mercy, and seizing the persons of pilgrims on their way to the shrine of the apostles, held them for heavy ransom. This stronghold was broken up only by the attack of a powerful confederacy of Italian dukes, aided by the emperors of the East and West. The exigency was so great that, in the estimate of papal apologists, it warranted the action of Pope John X., who arrayed himself in carnal armor and rode at the head of the attacking forces.

In 1016 a powerful armament of Saracens was landed at Luna in the territory of Pisa, but defeated by Pope Benedict VIII. This disaster did not diminish either the hauteur or expectancy of the invader, who sent to the Pope a huge bag of chestnuts with the message, “I will return with as many valiant Saracens to the conquest of Italy.” The Pope was not to be outdone in prowess of speech, and returned a bag of millet with the boast, “As many brave warriors as there are grains will appear at my bidding to defend their native land.”

In 1058 there occurred a wild outburst of Moslem bigotry, which sent a thrill of horror through Christian Europe. The charity of earlier rulers of Palestine towards Christian worshippers gave place to fiercest persecution by Mad Hakem, the Sultan of Egypt, who razed to the ground the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and slaughtered its devotees. He ultimately, however, commuted his rage into cupidity, and affixed a tax upon the worshippers. At the close of the eleventh century, the time of the first crusade, the Saracenic power, though steadily receding before the Christians, still menaced southern Europe. Trained bands of Moslems, when not in war on their own account with their common enemy, the Christians, joined themselves with one or another of the contending parties which rent the empire and the church. Thus in 1085, ten years before the first crusade, Pope Gregory rescued Rome from the hands of his imperial opponent, Henry of Germany, only with the assistance of Saracen soldiers, who thronged the ranks of the Pope’s Norman allies. Very naturally the joy of the papal victory was mingled with jealousy of the means by which it had been accomplished.

Not only were Moslem warriors often found in Christian ranks; frequently the valor of the Christian knight found freest exploit in the cause of the Moors. The adventures of the Cid, whom Philip II. wished Rome to canonize as an ideal saint, were for eight years performed in the service of the Arab king of Saragossa.

The Moslem became also the rival of the Christian in commerce. The ships which in the lull of hostilities sailed from the ports of France and Italy met the richly laden vessels of Egypt and Spain in exhausting competition for the trade of the Mediterranean. The coast of North Africa was the lurking-place of pirates, who darted over the Great Sea with the celerity of spiders along their web, and seized every craft that weakness or misfortune made their prey. With his wealth the Moslem often won his way to social position, and even invaded the family relations of his Christian neighbor. Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice, if not a real character, was at least one typical not only of the fifteenth, but of earlier centuries. The plot of this play was borrowed by the English dramatist from the Venetian romances. More than one Desdemona had braved the curses of her Christian kindred for the fascinations of the Infidel; many a renegade Iago was found in his service; and often the Christian dignitary, like Brabantis, was led by gold and political advantage to assent that his daughter should

“run from her guardage to the sooty bosom”

of the Moor.

Yet these misalliances did not destroy the common sentiment of the Christians against the Saracens. The foul sensuality allowed by the Koran as it thus touched the homes of Europe deepened the racial antipathy of the people who were still monogamic in their faith and customs.

The Mohammedan menace was further augmented in the superstitious notions of the age by the intellectual ascendency of the Saracens. Christendom did not discern that, in the mass of evils brought upon Europe by the invasions from the East, there were the germs of its own quickening, as the freshets of the Nile enrich the land of Egypt. If, in the first heat of his zealotry, the Saracen destroyed the library of Alexandria, regarding the Koran as compensation for all the books of Christian and pagan wisdom, yet in the light of the flames he saw his mistake, and became the most liberal patron of education. To the mosque he added the school. While the rest of Europe was in the density of the Dark Ages, the Moorish universities of Spain were the beacons of the revival of learning. The Christian teacher was still manipulating the bones of the saints when the Arab physician was making a materia medica and practising surgery. By the discovery of strong acids the Moor laid the basis of the science of chemistry; by the adoption of the Hindu numerals he improved arithmetic. He first practically used, if he did not invent, algebra; introduced astronomy to the European student; wrote on optics, the weight and height of the atmosphere, gravity, capillary attraction; applied the pendulum to the measurement of time, and guessed that the earth was round. In the superstition of Christian Europe these studies were regarded, if not as belonging to the magic arts, at least as threatening the faith by fostering undue independence of thought, and tempting to scepticism regarding the office of the church as universal teacher. The subsequent persecution of Galileo and Bruno was anticipated in the hatred and fear which were awakened by such names as Ben-Musa (ninth century), Avicenna (tenth century), Alhazan and Algazzali (eleventh century). The diverse spirits of the age are illustrated by the Giralda, the tower of Seville, which was built by the Moors for an observatory, but on the Catholic conquest was used only for a belfry.

The Turks.—The Saracenic conquests caused only a part of the Mohammedan menace in the eleventh century. A new power appeared, which has since dominated the middle Orient. For generations the Turks, or Tartars, had been steadily pressing southward and westward, from Turkestan and the borders of China towards the fertile plains and rich cities of the eastern Roman empire. Of nomadic habits, their entire property was in their camps and the driven herds that sustained them. They were skilled horsemen, cradled in the saddle, tireless on the march, loving the swift foray better than luxurious residence, inured to danger, and careless of blood. In the course of their migrations they came in contact with the followers of Mohammed. The Koran, with its celestial indorsement of sensuality, easily captivated in such a people that demand of common human nature for some religious faith and pursuit. They became the most enthusiastic devotees of the new faith, although in their deeper passion for selfish conquest they often slaughtered their fellow-religionists of other races.