The Western's Viewpoint During the Crusades

The Western's viewpoint during the Crusades

In order to narrow down the topic of this paper, the Muslim's viewpoint during the time of the crusades will be discussed. To best explain the Muslim's viewpoint, the first thing that needs to be explained is the crusades themselves. According to Microsoft's Encarta, the crusades are described as "a series of wars by Western European Christians to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims". Microsoft's Encarta also describes the crusades as "an expression of militant Christianity and European expansion. They combined religious interests with worldly and military enterprises. The Crusades strongly affected the imagination and aspirations of people at the time, and to this day they are among the most famous chapters of medieval history". In 1095 AD Pope Urban made a great speech at Clermont in southern France, where he urged the people to take up weapons and go fight to free Jerusalem from the rule of the Muslims or Fatmids as they were also known. People were wildly enthusiastic about this. As a result even children and old women as well as old men wanted to go and be part of this.

According to Carole Hillenbrand's book called Islamic Perspectives of the Crusades, "the Crusades in the eyes of the Muslims were a series of campaigns at least eight of them motivated by the desire of Western European Christians to bring the holy places of Christendom and Jerusalem under their protection" (30). The strange thing which I quickly found in this book in regards to the Muslim's interpretation was that their accounts were not properly documented.

The Muslims' had written down documents but they were not written in a way one could interpret easily. The Muslims' explain through their poetry and journals, their feelings in some great detail about what happened. "The beginning of the appearance of the state (dawla) of the Franks intensification of their activity and their departure to the lands of Islam and their conquest of some of them was the year 478. They took the city of Toledo and other parts of the al-Andalus [Muslim Spain] as already mentioned. Then they attacked in the 484 the island of Sicily and conquered it, and I have already mentioned that too, and they turned to the coasts of North Africa and conquered parts of that too" (52). This direct quote explains this man's account of the Franks in Syria and Palestine. I chose this quote to show that the information it provides can not be interpreted easily. His feelings towards this conquest need to be thought about before assuming anything. He does not mention any true feelings of these people or their missions other than the conquering of different places. Unfortunately this book has many quotes like this previous one and goes on to explain the troubles with the Muslims' documents during the time of the Crusades.

Hillenbrand goes on to explain that during the time the Franks entered, the Muslim accounts describe that the Franks "simply turn up out of the blue and wreak havoc among them" (66). During this time the Muslims' recorded the events with sadness and some detail but it seemed to me that they have no reflections toward these events. If one were to experience of these major events during their lifetime, there should be more reaction towards the events which they just encountered. Perhaps during this time Muslims felt that these were just lessons learned and whatever was to happen, was meant to be. The last quote found gave me the reaction I was looking for. The quote explained the Muslims' reaction towards the crusades as "a strange and unexpected enemy" (69).

During the Crusades the Muslim' army had endured many things during their struggle. The army was mainly setup by a mixed combination of people. "The Muslim armies had long been a mixture of tribal warriors, compulsory levies, volunteers, as well as paid professional, who were often salves" (439). Unfortunately "the Muslim armies lacked effective leadership against the Franks and were prone to disorder and arguments" (441). With the army itself in a quarrel, the Muslims usually had a difficult time fighting in the Crusades due to the fact they also "struggled with leadership and motivation" (444). This information was also found in short Muslim poems as well as journals and even art work. As the Crusades progressed onward, the Muslims' armies had improved. The reasons for improvement came with the help of the men being "trained on horseback with a wide range of weapons such as the sword, lance,