Will the Real Saladin Please Stand Up!

Remember not that long ago when Notre Dame caught fire?  Some Muslims were saying that the evil crusaders prayed there before they went to kill a bunch of innocent Muslims.  I thought about this very hard.  Which crusade?  During the first two crusades, Notre Dame didn’t exist.  During the later crusades it was under construction so I didn’t know how true this statement was.  Did they pray at the church that was under construction?  I hate vague accusations.  Michael Brown tried to do this with me during the fall of 2017.  I should also point out that if buildings become worthless because bad people prayed there, then half the religious structures in the Christian or Islamic world probably shouldn’t exist.  Some bad people prayed at this church so it deserves to be burned down?  Talk about a lack of logic.

Back to the crusades.  I personally think that Muslims shouldn’t bring up the crusades.  Why do I say this?  Because for most of their history they didn’t refer to them.  It was a forgotten episode in history. I recently read the book The New Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden(see the above picture).  The most interesting chapter of the book is the last chapter which talks about the legacy of the crusades.  While they were always prominent in European history, Arabs had all but forgotten about them.  Why?  Probably because the holy land kept changing hands under foreign rulers of which the crusaders were only one.

When the crusades were called, Jerusalem was under Seljuk Turkish control.  While the crusaders started to win against the Seljuks in Anatolia, a North African Shia Muslim group called the Fatimids took Jerusalem.  It was these people the crusaders took it from.  Enter the Kurd from modern day Iraq named Saladin who was another foreigner to Jerusalem.  He’s famous for beating the crusaders in the Battle of Hattin and then recapturing Jerusalem not long afterwards.  King Richard the Lionheart came to try his hand at crusading shortly after this.  He won back much of the holy land and had much success against Saladin, though he didn’t take back Jerusalem.  He had to go back home because the King of France was carving up his land.  Recall at this point in history the King of England was also the Duke of Normandy.

Saladin died not long after Richard left and Muslim unity in the holy land fell apart.  What would have happened if Richard had stayed?  Either way, the city of Jerusalem was later conquered by the Christians and crusading was going well.  Saladin had won Richard’s respect.  Richard had many good things to say about the man, even though he was his opponent.  Because of this Saladin was featured in medieval Christian literature very positively.

Eventually the remaining crusader states would be destroyed in the late 13th century but by the Mamluk rulers Baybars and Al-Ashraf Khalil.  Two names that aren’t remembered much in crusading lore, either by Christians or Muslims.

During the colonial period, the crusades were glorified as a sort of pre-colonial colonialism.  However, by the early 1900’s colonialism was discredited and a very shameful subject.  Because of this crusader-colonial view, the view of the crusades took a hit as well.  After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, the British controlled much of the Middle East including Palestine.  The British taught the Arabs in the region about the negative view of the crusades.  With this they learned about the long forgotten Saladin since the British spoke very highly of him as King Richard had done 600 years earlier.

In fact, Saladin was so forgotten that in 1899, when Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Damascus and went to visit the tomb of the great Saladin, to his shock, he found a neglected and forgotten tomb in a run down state.  After all, Saladin was just another monarch and not yet a huge hero to Muslims and Arabs like he is today.  The Kaiser then personally funded a mausoleum for Saladin.  He placed a bronze wreath on the monument that said: “From one great emperor to another.”

The Muslims had largely forgotten about the crusades and Saladin.  Hence I argue that Muslims shouldn’t even bother bringing them up in discussion.  Do you agree Muslims?  Even if you don’t, you at least have to admit that you learned something interesting today.