Bill Maher Ignites Twitter Firestorm With Just 21 Words on Islam

[jobycom]

103. It was about control of the trade routes and of Byzantium

The Crusades are rather poorly taught most of the time, and even a lot of historians get them wrong. The sources describing the Crusades were all written by priests and monks, and all after the Crusades had begun, so the sources are all biased (imagine if the history of the Iraq invasion was written only by Bush supporters). They all try to make it sound religious because that's all most of the writers understood.

Urban II called for the Crusade in 1097 after the Emperor in Byzantium asked him to send some forces and resources to help them out. Instead, Urban just called for an invasion under his own authority, and bypassed Byzantium. He gave a speech in Clermont, and while the speech isn't recorded, several sources write about it. They say he called for a Crusade to free the Holy Land, and he filled it with atrocities that Muslims committed against Christian (Yeah, wars use the same rhetoric, every time), but he also said that nobles could claim the land they captured, and that this would help increase their wealth and glory, etc. So even in the speech, there was an appeal to money interests.

But the bigger goal needs the full context. Europe was just becoming wealthy again. The three major trade routes of the era went through Palestine (one through the Red Sea, one across Arabia, and one north through Syria and Iraq). Islamic states controlled the region that was essentially the mouth of the Mediterranean trade, and of course, they charged for access. Byzantium wanted to retake this land, partly because an enemy was on their doorstep, but mostly because it would put them in control of the wealth of this route. Trade was the oil of that era.

Urban knew this, being an Italian and therefore from the part of Europe most involved in trade, so rather than helping Byzantium he rerouted the efforts to conquer the land for Europe. This would mean that the new nobles in Palestine would be directly beholden to him, which would strengthen his claim in Europe and his claim with Byzantium. So he encouraged the nobles to take the land and set up their own kingdom.

And the actions prove the leaders knew it, too. They allied with Muslims against other Christians when it suited them, building a kingdom perfectly placed to control trade. Over the century, as they fought battles and had to negotiate settlements, they always kept the land that gave them control of trade. The famous battle at Hattin was fought largely because one of the Crusaders, Raynald of Chatillon, tried to violate all the truces and capture the trade routes himself.

Anyway, to sum up so I don't go on longer, the Pope and the leaders whipped the populace into a religious frenzy by telling terrible tales, as Bill Maher seems to want to do, of how horrible Muslims were and how they had to be destroyed, but the leaders were using this public attitude for very concrete political economic goals. Again, same as we do now.

One day I've got to finish writing that book.