Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam

by Andrew Wheatcroft

  But there were not many other factors in common between the peoples of North Africa and those across the land bridge. Islam in North Africa was formed from both Arab and Berber strands. West from the city of Cairouan, on the great open Gulf of Sirte, it was Berber- and not Arabic-speakers who formed the bulk of the population. From the fringe of these lands came the Fatimid conquerors of Egypt in the mid–tenth century. These adventurers followed the Shia line of the faith, taking their name from the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed, from whom they claimed descent.14 The caliphate they established in Cairo was based on the Shia traditions of Islam, even though the majority of the Muslims they ruled in their new state followed the Sunni line. Much of the subsequent history of the Islamic lands in the Levant was a struggle between those who ruled to the north of the land bridge and those who ruled to the south, regardless of the pattern of Islam to which they adhered.15 From the late tenth century, armies raided more or less continuously back and forth across the narrow coastal strip of the Levant, as they engaged successively with Byzantine armies and the Abbasid rulers of Baghdad. But even more dangerous from a pilgrim’s perspective were the Bedouin tribesmen, who lived by raiding traders and travelers. Palestine had become a zone of war.

  Muslim rulers rarely made any attempt to curtail pilgrimage, which provided them with a valuable source of income. There were occasional riots and other popular outbursts, as in 966 when part of the rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed. But in 1003 these attacks became official policy. The bizarrely eccentric Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim in Cairo suddenly began a campaign against local Eastern Christians and Jews and their holy places. On his orders, numerous churches and synagogues were razed. Most dramatically of all, the vast shrine of the Holy Sepulchre was “dismantled,” with the upper levels pulled down until the towering mound of stone blocks and rubble stood so tall that it prevented any further demolition. Then the Church of St. Mary on Mount Zion was leveled to its foundations, while the Church of St. Anne was completely obliterated and its stones used for new buildings on the site.

  Al-Hakim devised new and ingenious means of putting pressure on local Christians to convert to Islam. He ordered Coptic and Orthodox Christians to dress only in black, “and to hang [heavy] wooden crosses from their necks, half a metre long and half a metre wide.” In 1013 he ordered Jews to wear large bells around their necks when they entered the public baths.16 Many succumbed and professed Islam. Yet Western pilgrims continued to stream into Jerusalem even during the fiercest persecutions of local Christians. Al-Hakim’s attacks on the “Peoples of the Book” were not part of a growing Muslim hostility to Christians in general. Many said that the Fatimid caliph was mad and impious, and his policies were certainly without precedent. Also in 1013 Al-Hakim declared that he possessed divine qualities and began to persecute Sunni Muslims with much the same vehemence as he had attacked the other faiths.17 Finally, in 1021, he died in mysterious circumstances, and his obsessions ended with him.

  However, the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre resonated powerfully in Europe. Pope Sergius IV supposedly issued an encyclical to the faithful, exhorting them to send an army by sea from Italy that would rescue the sorely wounded city of Jerusalem:

  Let all Christians know that news has come from the east to the seat of the apostles that the church of the Holy Sepulchre has been destroyed from roof to foundations by the impious hands of the pagans. This destruction has plunged the entire church and the city of Rome into deep grief and distress. The whole world is in mourning and the people tremble, breathing deep sighs …

  With the Lord’s help we intend to kill all these enemies and restore the Redeemer’s Holy Sepulchre. Nor, my sons, are you to fear the sea’s turbulence, nor dread the fury of war, for God has promised that whoever loses the present life for the sake of Christ will gain another life which he will never lose. For this is not a battle for an earthly kingdom, but for the eternal Lord.18

  After Al-Hakim’s death, the physical damage was slowly repaired. The Holy Sepulchre was partially rebuilt, although not on the same scale as Constantine’s great edifice. However, nothing could eradicate the folk memory of its destruction at the hands of the infidel.

  The millennium of Christ’s crucifixion, in 1033, stimulated pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Yet those who journeyed to the Holy Land came back with tales of desolation in a country driven by war and of constant attacks by Bedouin. More and more, pilgrims had to travel in large and defensible groups: one from Germany in 1065 led by Gunther, bishop of Bamburg, totaled 7,0, including a number of nobles and an armed escort.19 But even for a party as large as this the journey was fraught with unexpected dangers. On March 15, with the Holy City almost in sight, they were attacked by raiders and suffered heavy losses. For two days they did not attempt to fight back, but as the tribesmen grew bolder the knights and their retainers armed themselves, and drove off their assailants. The column was saved by the amir of Ramleh, who arrived with his garrison and repulsed the raiders. Then he escorted the party on their way to Jerusalem. Thus at least on this occasion the authorities did what they could to protect pilgrims. But for those who eventually reached Jerusalem and came safely home, the strongest memories were of those who had died on the road. Of the 7,000 who had set out, only 2,000 returned.20

  By the mid–eleventh century Palestine had been laid waste by war, and was full of robbers and brigands. Providing protection and supplies for the bands of pilgrims was beyond the capacity of the Muslim rulers, in a land that was short of food and water. These groups several thousand strong, with their armed protection of armored knights and retainers, and their fortified marching camps, must have seemed more like invading armies than parties of the pious. Increasingly, large groups of pilgrims seeking food and water met with a hostile response. There were skirmishes at ports such as Tripoli and later in roadside towns such as Ramleh, where the townspeople refused to admit the travelers within their gates. Pilgrims saw only that the Holy Land, which should belong to Christendom, was suffering at the hands of the “Saracens.” It had become a wilderness. In the pilgrims’ eyes there was little outwardly to distinguish those Muslims who like the amir of Ramleh behaved well toward them, from others who did not. The endless frustrations of the journey, the ceaseless demands for fees and bribes to pass through both Byzantine and Muslim territories, the requests for payments to ease entry into the holy sites fueled their undifferentiated sense of rage and resentment. So the thousands of pilgrims carried home tales of their difficult and dangerous journey, stories that were no doubt exaggerated with each retelling, to enhance their heroism.

  IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE, AT THE START OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM, to reconstruct the popular understanding of the Holy Land during the eleventh century. But it is safe to say that few believers can have been ignorant of it. For most lay Christians at the time, their faith was determined by the ceremonies of the church, and God’s truth, but not directly through the texts in which it was inscribed.21 The word of God came to them via a series of verbal dramas enacted by their priests. The pioneer philologist Walter Ong called this an “oral literacy.” And he also noted the essentially dramatic quality of the Christian message. It was designed to be spoken, especially since it was structured around a set of narratives or parables. These possessed all three vital characteristics for a good story: location, character, and incident. The Qur’an, by contrast, despite its great poetic power, is essentially abstract and rarely topographical. The Christian narratives all have a precise topos: as with the stable in Bethlehem, or the feeding of the five thousand beside the Sea of Galilee. The entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, his trial and crucifixion in the city are all closely bound to a place.22 The imagined topography of the Holy Land became the staple of medieval art and illustration. Jerusalem in particular must have been a place more real to many Christians than Rome, Paris, Edinburgh, or London. Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, and above all, Jerusalem were part of every Christian’s inheritance. The immediacy of the region was heightened by the
sense that many of the holy relics enshrined in Western churches had their origins in the East.23

  The holy city, for Western even more than for Eastern Christians, was “the navel of the world, a land fruitful above all others, like a Paradise of delights.”24 It was the central point on the globe, where Dante entered hell at the beginning of his Divine Comedy. Jerusalem was not so much a place-name as an individual. Pope Urban II echoed this popular feeling, personifying the struggle, when he summoned Christendom to Jerusalem’s aid: “This royal city, therefore, situated at the centre of the world, is now held captive by His enemies … She seeks therefore and desires to be liberated, and does not cease to implore you to come to her aid. From you especially she asks succour.” The pains and torments suffered in the East were human and not abstract. Evil men had ravished a land that belonged to Christ:

  An accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God, a generation forsooth which has not directed its heart and has not entrusted its spirit to God, has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire … it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion. They destroy the altars, after having defiled them with their uncleanness. They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font.

  When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate upon the ground.

  Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows. Others they compel to extend their necks and then, attacking them with naked swords, attempt to cut through the neck with a single blow. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent.25

  Urban’s diatribe talked of Palestine, although in reality even under Al-Hakim assaults this severe had never taken place. But Urban’s invisible subtext was the cruel and bloody Roman martyrdoms so familiar to his listeners.

  It is an open question as to whether the Crusades could have been launched without the oratorical skills of Urban II. He understood both his immediate and his wider audience. He skillfully reworked the elements known to his listeners—cruelty and barbarity, the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre, infidel rule—into an appeal that could have only one response. Unfortunately, we know tantalizingly little about his plans and intentions in the late summer of 1095 when he crossed the Alps into southern France. Had Urban already decided to make his appeal to Christendom, or did this conviction emerge as the autumn progressed? He had certainly chosen the venue with some care. The leaders of the church in France were summoned to meet the pope in Clermont, on the edge of the Auvergne; it was a point accessible from both north and south. On November 18, 1095, 300 churchmen and their clerical retinues gathered in the largest church of the city, filling it to capacity. There they settled disputes about discipline and good order: the king of France was excommunicated for adultery and the bishop of Cambrai for selling official positions in his diocese. But as the meeting proceeded, the pope suddenly announced that on Tuesday, November 27, he would speak not just to the church but to the world. A dais was built outside the eastern gate of the city and early on the morning of the address the papal throne was set up before a huge crowd.

  For so momentous an event in history, the accounts of Urban’s speech are teasingly confused. No one wrote down a verbatim account and there are five different versions of what Urban said, each subtly different in tone and emphasis, to reflect the writer’s own preoccupations. However, clearly common to each version is Urban’s method of winning over his audience, and if the details differ, his intention and technique are evident. He was telling the vast crowd gathered before him a story, reminding them of facts they knew already, interweaving his ideas and narratives in ways that they had hitherto not considered. In one version, by Robert the Monk, he appealed to them as men of France, upon whom he called in the hour of Christendom’s need:

  Oh, race of Franks, race from across the mountains, race chosen and beloved by God as shines forth in very many of your works; set apart from all nations by the situation of your country, as well as by your catholic faith and the honour of the holy church! To you our discourse is addressed and for you our exhortation is intended.26

  In another (by Fulcher of Chartres), he carefully linked the issue of a pure church, which they had been discussing for nine days, with the great and manifest evil in the East. He called upon Christians to make a pilgrimage in arms to the East:

  I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds to … carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it is meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it.

  All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.

  O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God.

  As he spoke, the crowd shouted back their assent, Deus lo vult (“God wills it”), and as he finished, Adhemer, bishop of Le Puy, knelt before him, begging his permission to join the great expedition. Suddenly, the crowd surged forward, and the cries of “God wills it” rose to a crescendo. In Guibert of Nogent’s account, it was at this point that Urban blessed them all, making the sign of the cross with his hand, and then giving them the emblem under which they would fight: “He instituted a sign well suited to so honourable a profession by making the figure of the Cross, the stigma of the Lord’s Passion, the emblem of the soldiery or, rather, of what was to be the soldiery of God.”27

  At Clermont, Urban II achieved what his quarrelsome (and arguably greater) predecessor Gregory VII had failed to accomplish. He stretched out beyond the issues of papal power and government to galvanize Christian society, clerical and lay, to action. The movement that he unleashed (and plainly, the potential for a war on God’s account existed before he spoke) had no set bounds or limitations.28 It had no name. It would be centuries before the term “Crusade” was first coined, and this did not become common usage until the eighteenth century, long after the first impetus had slackened. For Urban and his contemporaries it was a pilgrimage or a journey, but one made unique by the cross that they wore. Everything was embodied in the emblem, the undeniable mark of Christ, familiar to all Christians.29

  The image of the cross marked a boundary between Christendom and the world of Islam. For Christendom it represented an elemental triumph—over death itself. It signified both Jesus Christ’s humanity and his divinity, especially when the body of Christ was depicted hanging on the cross. For the Muslim it marked the essential absurdity of the Christian claims to divinity. Muslims in the Levant were already well aware of the symbolic importance of the cross for Christians. It was for this reason that Al-Hakim had forced them to suffer the weight of heavy wooden crosses around their necks. It was for this reason that Christians were not allowed to place the holy emblem atop their buildings, and the cause of Muslim outrage when the victorious Crusaders placed a cross on one of the most holy Muslim sites in Jerusalem.

  Urban’s call for a pilgrimage in arms, under the banner of the holy cross, produced a response among the population at large that exceeded all his expectations. This surge of popular feeling and commitment cannot be properly explained by material causes, like poor harvests, although such issues were certainly a factor. Those who rallied to his call to liberate the Holy Land seemed to have had some hazy idea of what their objective entailed. No practicing Christian could have been unaware that there was a place in the East where Christ had been born. Many must also have heard that this paradisal land was under threat. In some communities there might also h
ave been a pilgrim who had already made the journey, and in a culture where knowledge was still passed by word of mouth, such a testimony spread with remarkable speed. Others might have known of the tales of great heroes like King Arthur, who were widely believed to have made the journey in earlier days. But latterly the pilgrims’ stories had not been of the glories of the holy city, but of their failure to complete the journey: they had found the road blocked and had to retreat. Peter the Hermit, who led the People’s Crusade in 1096, had already failed to reach the Holy Land on a previous occasion. The Turkish soldiers who controlled the roads to Jerusalem had forced him to turn back, cursing him as he went.

  The Holy Sepulchre had been destroyed less than a century before, and this still resonated in the collective memory. Now, the holy places again seemed under threat. The fear if not the fact was real enough. The East was ravaged by war for much of the eleventh century, but in August 1071 the strategic balance between the Byzantine Empire and the Muslims had suddenly altered profoundly. The Seljuq Turks who had dominated the eastern Islamic world defeated the Byzantine armies at the battle of Manzikert in Armenia. Within a few months, Turkish riders had reached the shores of the Mediterranean, and a Seljuq sultanate was established in Anatolia. An army of Turks besieged Jerusalem in the same year but took the city from its Fatimid garrison only two years later. In 1077 the local Muslims rebelled against their new masters, and expelled the Turks. When these returned in force, the city was recaptured with a great slaughter of the qadi and all the leading Muslim families. The Turkish yoke sat as heavily on Muslims as on Christians and Jews. Heavy taxes were imposed indiscriminately.