Now we must again retreat in time, visit the Middle East, and review what happened when Islam expanded across Africa, conquered Spain, invaded France, and later invaded and destroyed the Eastern Roman Empire (called Byzantium). Once again, odd as it may seem, when Byzantium fell its Roman culture disappeared. The Ottoman Turks had no use for heathen Christian ways and obliterated the remains of Rome in the east.
In AD 640, out of the deserts of Arabia, came a new monotheistic religion firing its adherents to conquer in the name of their god Allah. Long before the fall of Constantinople, the Muslim warriors had swept out of Arabia, through Egypt, and across North Africa to the straits of Gibraltar. After crossing the Mediterranean to Iberia (Spain and Portugal) the Muslims destroyed the disunited forces of Christianity, conquering Iberia for Allah. Now that Spain was Muslim, the armies of Islam looked to the conquest of France as the next logical step to winning the world for their god.
Islam Turned Back at Tours
732
A powerful Muslim force crossed the Pyrenees Mountains and moved into Southern France where they shattered the Christian forces of Aquitaine before moving north and falling into battle with Charles Martel (the Hammer) at the Battle of Tours in 732.Accounts of the battle are somewhat terse and extremely scarce, but both Arab and Christian writers tell of the clash. The Muslims had never known defeat, and they outnumbered Charles and his men. After the battle began, Charles positioned his men in squares where fierce Muslim charges failed to dislodge them. It is said that it was the force of Martel’s personality that held his men together as they withstood charge after ferocious charge. Although losing a large number of men in the clashes with Martel the Muslims were prepared to fight on. Then the Muslim army discovered a few of Martel’s men had infiltrated into their camp, where they were releasing European prisoners and pillaging loot seized in previous battles. Many Muslims turned their horses around and hurried back to the rear trying to save their riches. Martel surrounded the remaining Muslim force and totally destroyed them, including killing their commander. Martel gathered his far-flung army and organized to renew the fight the next day, but the Muslim forces were gone never to return.
Historians debate the significance of the victory at Tours; nonetheless, there is no doubt Charles Martel won one of the world’s most important victories. Like the victory of Vasco De Gamma at Du, which destroyed an Arab fleet in the Indian Ocean securing the waterway forever for the West, the victory at Tours by Charles Martel and his men denied the Muslims entry into Europe for the rest of time (at least up until 2010), and saved Christian Europe. If Martel had lost, Europe could have suffered Islamic conquest. If Islam had won Europe we could forget about the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, the flowering of literature, science, math, art, and all the rest that defines the Western world. Every person enjoying Western Civilization owes an immense debt to Charles Martel and his men who desperately fought and won against the Moors at Tours so long ago.
Although turned back at tours in the West, in 1453 the forces of Islam, under the Ottoman Turks, toppled the last of the Eastern Roman Empire when the city of Constantinople (Byzantium) fell. Byzantium was a Greek-speaking Christian empire, and all that remained of the once mighty Roman Empire in the east. The Byzantine Empire was quite large at one point, stretching from Turkey to Spain by AD 585; however, numerous defeats and poor rulers shrank it to a small size around its capital of Constantinople by 1300. The city of Byzantium’s name was changed to Constantinople by Constantine the First (AD 306 to 337) who made the glorious city the center of the Eastern Roman Empire. Constantine was the first Roman emperor who converted to Christianity; thus, Byzantium became a Christian empire. Now, a little Byzantium background.
Figure 25 Justinian’s Empire (Byzantium) 527-585 AD
Byzantium
The Roman Emperor Diocletian had split the Roman Empire into western and eastern parts in 285 with the goal of better governing each half; however, after the split, the economic power remained in the east, and thereafter the west declined as the east prospered. The city of Constantinople was founded on May 11, 330 by the Roman Emperor Constantine, who was out to found Nova Roma (New Rome). He chose a site with seven hills to mimic the old Rome, but his new city would be far more magnificent. The citizens of Constantinople called themselves Roman at the dedication of the city, and 1,123 years later when the city at last fell to the Turks, they still called themselves Romans. It was Constantine who called the counsel that set forth the Nicene Creed, which defined what it meant to be a follower of Christ and a Christian. When Constantine died he was laid to rest in his Nova Roma city at the Church of the Holy Apostles that he had previously ordered constructed.
The Byzantine Empire would be blessed with great, and not so great, rulers; however, through it all the riches of the East kept the empire alive. At the crossroads of east and west, commerce was the boon of the Byzantines. By keeping the area around the Mediterranean peaceful they encourage trade. The Roman roads and safe sea routes all contributed to Constantinople’s commercial success.
At the Battle of Adrianople in AD 378 the Goths killed the Roman Emperor Valens and destroyed his legions. This defeat, and the threats from other barbarians, caused Theodosius II of Constantinople to build triple walls around the city some sixty feet high. It was these walls that defined and protected the marvelous city for over 1,000 years. Justinian I (527-585) became emperor of Byzantium and was successful in expanding the empire by constant battle. He managed the re-conquest of Italy and North Africa by about 527; nevertheless, the strain on the empire was great in economic terms. During his reign he had improved the system of taxation and tried to kill off corruption, but with the riches of east pouring in corruption was immortal. With his partner and famous queenTheodora (an unusual mix of whore and genius),[81] and his gifted general Belisarius, Justinian was successfully pushing the reunification of the old Roman Empire when disaster struck. Belisarius had returned Italy and North Africa to Imperial control when the bubonic plague infected the empire, the city of Constantinople, and his stunning Queen Theodora in 541. After Justinian lost his beautiful consort Theodora to the plague he was never the same, and the expansion of the empire stopped. AD 541 was the high point of the Byzantine Empire.
Figure 26 Byzantine Empire 867 AD
Byzantium faced the same problem that Rome had faced: scheming aristocrats. Merchants, small manufacturing concerns, and small farmers began to disappear as wars, natural disasters, taxes, and corruption drove them under. The wealthy aristocrats were waiting to buy up the land being sold by the small farmers. The middle class began to evaporate, and with it the strength of the empire.
The strength of Persia continued to grow, and by 619 they were threatening to topple Constantinople. Heraclius became emperor in 610 and he was already in deep trouble. He turned to the Church for money, and the patriarch gave it to him to save the city and the empire. This was a fusion of church and state unknown in the West. It took ten years to construct a winning army, but Heraclius did it and completely vanquished the Persians. All seemed well for the moment, but the moment soon passed with the coming of Islam.
The threat of Islam arose with a new religious prophet born after the death of Justinian. The prophet Muhammad founded his new religion (Islam) on a monotheistic belief in the one true god, Allah. The one true god chose to speak with his ultimate prophet secretly in a cave for some years before Muhammad reveled Allah to the world. These teachings were written down in the Koran the Muslim holy book. Muhammad prophesized all believers must submit to Allah, warning that Allah demanded control of every aspect of their lives. The new religion set forth an exacting series of requirements resulting in the government, all social life, law, worship, and even eating habits being controlled by the rules of the Koran, the perfect example of Muhammad’s life, and pronouncements of Muhammad apart from the Koran. The religion condemned all non-believers, and death awaited those who failed to convert. The Muslims preferred dealing death to all heathens, although exceptions existed for “people of the book,” meaning Christians and Jews, who could choose to live in total subjugation to Islam in lieu of death. Muhammad managed to conquer Mecca in 630, thereby ensuring his new religion a strong base of operations. He died in 632; nevertheless, his followers were determined to spread the word of Allah, and in 640 they began a series of fantastic conquests that swept the Middle East, North Africa, Iraq, Persia, Spain, and beyond by 1500.
Muslims believed the “umma,” a religious and social community concept uniting all believers, was to have only one leader—a caliph. The caliph was a religious and political leader, thereby uniting the church and the state. The first caliph was Abu Bakr. Under the first three caliphs Islam expanded exponentially. There were two very successful caliphates (Islamic states): the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750) concentrated in Damascus, and the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258) focused at Baghdad.[82] Under the Caliphate’s expert leadership the Muslim armies swept all before them.
Meanwhile, the empire of Byzantium was constantly under attack from all sides. Constantinople held out against two Islamic assaults from the south, one lasting four years between 674 and 678, and another in 717. However, to the north and west the Bulgars and Avars seized nearly all of the Balkans and reduced the empire substantially. Things were looking grim for the empire as it was subjected to simultaneous assaults from different directions.
A general recovery began for the city and the empire after 717, and Byzantium was once more able to recover lost territory in Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace. Following this period of expansion the Komnenoi (also Comneni) dynasty came to power in 1085 and managed to hold the empire together and expand its economic prosperity. Under great pressure, Emperor Alexius I Comnenus invited the Church of Rome to help save the Byzantine Empire. The pope understood the importance of the empire as a bulwark against Islam and responded. Pope Urban II delivered his sermon requesting men to save the Holy Land on November 18, 1095 and he received an overwhelming response. Unfortunately, the Crusaders refused to take advice from Alexius and suffered defeat after defeat. Then a total disaster. Disobeying the orders of the pope and his threat of excommunication, the Fourth Crusade sacked the great city of Constantinople in 1204, breaking its ability to resist further Muslim incursions. After the fall of the Komnenoi dynasty the empire entered a steep decline that eventually resulted in the fall of its capitol and the complete destruction of the Byzantine Empire. The fall of the great city opened up Christian eastern Europe to Muslim conquest.
In 1180 the great city at Constantinople protected about 400,000 inhabitants, in 1204 about 150,000, and by 1453 (the date of its fall) about 50,000. It was during the Fourth Crusade in April of 1204, that Constantinople was sacked by “Christian” troops originally on their way to fight the Muslims. A scheming duke (doge) of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, was seeking revenge for financial losses suffered to the emperor at Constantinople, and he managed to turn the crusade against the great city rather than the Muslims. The Christian crusaders slaughtered the inhabits, looting and burning the city for three days and stealing everything of value. The crusaders even dug up graves and pried open crypts containing the jeweled garments of past emperors, which they promptly stole. Ancient manuscripts with gold inlaid covers were hacked apart for the precious metal. The city failed to recover from this plundering by Latin Christians, and the weakening of the city greatly hastened its decline. The fact that Christian Crusaders attacked and pillaged the strongest Christian bastion in the east against Islam was incredible. Once Constantinople fell the entirety of Eastern Europe was open to Muslim invasion. The duke of Venice had opened the door to an incredible slaughter because of a personal vendetta. The pope was stunned. The call for help from Christian brothers had turned into an orgy of violence against those who had pleaded for aid.
By 1453 Constantinople was isolated in a sea of Islamic controlled territory. Knowing no help was coming from the West, or anywhere else, the 7,000 soldiers of Christ prepared to meet the 80,000 Turks of Allah. The Ottomans were able to capture the city by attacking from land and sea simultaneously, and by pounding the walls down with a massive cannon throwing stones (cannonballs) weighing 1500 pounds. The defenders of the city were few during 1453, but they held out for nearly two months providing yet another testament to the strength of the triple walls that protected the city for so many centuries. Even after the walls were opened up by the huge stone cannonballs, assault after assault was thrown back. The Ottoman Turks used their powerful cannon to batter the city again before their final assault, punching additional large openings in the walls and demoralizing the defenders. The last emperor, Constantine XI, refused to become a vassal of the Muslims, preferring to die in battle. He positioned himself at the weakest point of the wall, and as the enemy swarm stormed through the breach he charged forward. His body was never found. Cannons had overcome the old static defenses that turned back so many previous invaders. After the fall of the mighty city, and an immense slaughter of its citizens where the streets became slick with blood, Islam moved on by invading Eastern Europe and continuing their string of conquests. Byzantium was gone and Constantinople became the capitol of the Ottoman Turks. They renamed it Istanbul. It never regained its former glory or wealth. Rome was at last a distant memory.
As Constantinople was falling its citizens were leaving. They went west to Italy and France, bringing with them the classics of Greek and Roman literature. In addition, they brought the learning of the East where, for example, Arabic numerals (they were actually Hindu) and the concept of zero as a mathematical place holder proved far better than Roman numerals in calculations. The West had long been held back by the inability of the Roman numeral system to make complex calculations. Many other concepts in medicine and philosophy entered Europe from Constantinople. Thus, the fall of Constantinople was a kind of boon to Europe, and kick started the era we call the Renaissance.
The Crusades
1095 to 1291
As we know from the above commentary, in 1095 Pope Urban II set off a religious war to regain the Holy Land of Palestine, and the city of Jerusalem, then under Islamic control. This was a natural response to the slaughter of Christians throughout the conquered area, and there was the threat to Christian Constantinople that had requested aid from the west. As European knights formed armies for the liberation of Jerusalem and Palestine, the name Crusaders attached itself to the men and the venture. Even though the Crusaders managed to retake Jerusalem in 1099 (the First Crusade), the Muslims counterattacked and re-conquered the city in a few years. In spite of four more Crusades the forces of Christianity failed to defeat Islam. The number of crusades is hard to count because a lot depends on what one defines as a crusade, however, most historians count five.
The Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople and never attacked Muslim forces in the Holy Land; nevertheless, they did manage to destroy the last best bastion against Islamic invasion of eastern Europe. The final Crusade was the Fifth (1217 to 1221), and it also managed to accomplish nothing. Four Crusader states were established in Islamic territory during the Crusades, but these were small embattled kingdoms that failed to spread the Christian faith or expand their conquests. The forces of Islam destroyed all these Crusader states; however, Muslim armies lost so many men in battles at the Islands of Rhodes and Malta that it damaged Islam’s ability to continue attacking Europe. Even though unsuccessful in holding the Holy Land, the Crusades did turn the tide of conquest against Islam.[83] The constant wars with the European Crusaders and the Mongols attacking from the east eventually wore down the Muslims reducing the wars between the Europeans and Islam. The Muslim advance into eastern Europe stopped at the gates of Vienna, and the advance into Western Europe had failed at Tours in 732; nonetheless, the conquests of Islam were vast, and they represent a continuing challenge to the West and Christianity.
Figure 27 Islamic Caliphate to 750 AD
The Crusades influenced Europe far more than Islam. To Islam they brought only hate, but through their contact with the Muslims, Europeans brought back knowledge of the classical Roman and Greek world that started the European Renaissance.
Most of this section relies on the book Lost to the West, the Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization, Brownworth, Lars, 2009, Crown Publishers.
Let Us Learn
From this complex era in the Middle East, and the political, social, and religious clashes of the Crusades we learn not to bite off more than we can chew. Islam over extended itself, then broke up into factions over details thus sacrificing unity. Moreover, their treatment of other religions led to a backlash out of Europe, the Crusades, that punished everyone involved including the Europeans. The Crusades taught us to plan well before any significant undertaking, and if you cannot get everyone on the same page before the project starts then start over or abandoned the project. In essence the pope said, Go get ‘em without any plan, and the segmented nature of the response displayed a disunity of ideals, goals, and actions on a broad scale. In addition, no one thought about the end game. Even if Jerusalem was taken, what then? How many people wanted to go there and stay? Not many. Failure to think through significant undertakings, especially the end game, can turn worthwhile projects into disasters.
The forces of Islam failed to think through what caused the Christian backlash. It turns out that mistreating people, including killing and degrading them over religion, gets folks kind of riled up. In your own life remember the lesson of treatment of others. Treating folks poorly may result in them treating you poorly. Many a politician managed to discover that rule. Smart people give and command respect; however, respect for others comes before getting respect. Learn to admire others and respect their beliefs and accomplishments. Condemnation on a broad scale seldom achieves a necessary objective; rather, it normally ends up impeding the ability to gain any objective. Stay unified, stay respectful, plan well, define objectives closely and clearly, and prepare thoroughly for the task. Finally, think about the end game. What achievement is sought, at what cost, and what are the consequences of failure? Also, think about other ways to gain the same objective. This era taught us all this and more.
Books and Resources:
The New Penguin History of the World, Roberts, J, 2007, Penguin. p. 358 et al fall of Byzantium; p. 342 et al Crusades.
Crusader Castles in the Holy Land 1192-1302, Nicolle, David, 2005, Osprey. Excellent maps and illustrations by Adam Hook.
A History of the Byzantium State and Society, Treadgold, Warren, 1997, Standard University Press.
Lost to the West, the Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization, Brownworth, Lars, 2009, Crown Publishers. The best short book on Byzantium.