The Dispatches on War (Part V)

In the last five hundred years, the destiny of the Muslim world and the European continent seems to have undertaken diverse paths. Rudyard Kipling may have been correct about the inability of the east and the west to be one, but there was a time, when the path of the Muslims did cross, with the Europeans and in the process, irrevocably changed the course of history. The cross-roads, which brought these different religions and cultures together was the age of the crusades and after the crusades were over, both the European and the Muslim worlds were deeply influenced by the nature of their confrontational fusion. The crusades marked a very important development in the history of the world, as the political, social and cultural graphs of the Muslims and the Europeans intersected each other and the axis of this intersection created, what the Germans refer to as “ein augenblick” – a moment, which marked an end and a beginning of a historic epoch.

The crusades marked the emergence of Europe from the shadows of its dark ages and in the process, the crusades would allow the Europe to travel a path of politics, which would eventually see it emerge as a world power. The crusades were fought over a couple of centuries, starting from the latter years of AD 1000s to about the middle of AD 1200s, and historically, had it not been for the crusades, the European dark ages might have lingered on for a few more centuries. The crusades not only ended the dark ages in Europe, but they also spurred the political development of Europe, which finally crystallized itself in the ideals of representative democracy. Prior to the onset of the crusades, Europe politically existed under the influence of feudalism due to its inability to create a viable structure of centralized power. The nature of political power, in Europe, was fragmentary, de-centralized and personalized within rule of a strong monarch, without any political institutionalism to support such a power. Another contribution of the crusades to the development of European politics was the idea that Europe was willing to overlook the limiting influence of religion in its politics and was quite willing to adopt religious politics, when ever they suited its political and economic interests.

However, in order to understand the full impact of the crusades upon the Europeans and the Muslims, it is necessary to understand the reasons, which led to the origins of the crusades. The origins of the crusades lay in Palestine and the right of the Christians to visit the Holy Land for pilgrimage. By AD 700, Islam had established itself as the premier religion of the Arabian peninsula, and it was swiftly expanding beyond the borders of Arabia into West Asia; across the Red Sea into Africa and towards Asia Minor (present day Turkey). It was in Asia Minor that the Arabs came into contact with the Byzantine Empire, which had replaced the Roman Empire as the main power in the region. As the Arab armies pushed the Byzantine forces out of Palestine, they took over the administration of the region and in the beginning, were tolerant of the non-Muslim populations of the area. The Christian and the Jews, who lived in Palestine under the Arab rule, were given the freedom to practice their religion in lieu of a religious tax, and other than this criteria, the Arab rule over the non-Muslims of Palestine was marked by a high degree of political and religious tolerance.

The Arabs did not interfere with the Christians visiting their holy places in Palestine, but this tolerance towards the Christians ended, with the defeat of the Arabs at the hands of the Saljug Turks. Saljug Turks were a nomadic group of people from the eastern part of Asia Minor, with a turbulent history. After being defeated by the Byzantine armies, the Saljug Turks had migrated to Mesopotamia and Persia, where they lived for some time and were able to reorganize themselves politically and militarily and where they would eventually accept Islam as their religion. Once they had regained their political cohesion, they resumed their conquests in the direction of the Byzantine Empire only to discover that the Arabs had replaced the Byzantines and controlled Palestine. The aim of the Saljug Turks was not to attack and conquer Palestine per se, but to march towards the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, which was famous for its riches and wealth. It was the misfortune of the Arabs that Palestine happened to lay in the way to Constantinople and as a result, the Arabs were defeated and the rule of Palestine passed to the Saljug Turks.

The Saljug rule over Palestine was marked by the repression of Christian religious activities and the imposition of a ban on the Christian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. Saljug Turks also instituted anti-Christian pogroms, which resulted in the death of many Christians in Palestine. The result of this was that the news of the brutalities of the Saljug Turks, on Christians, traveled to Europe, where rumor was combined with gossip to create an image of a wide scale massacre of the Christians at the hands of the Muslims. Throughout this period, as the Christians were being politically and religiously persecuted, the Saljug Turks were militarily threatening the borders of the Byzantine Empire as they continued to advance towards Constantinople. The Byzantine armies were hard pressed to stem the pressure exerted by the Saljug Turks and seemed incapable of stopping the onslaught of the Saljug Turks upon their capital city. The Byzantines were forced to confront the possibility that they had no allies to aid them against the Saljug Turks due to a political disagreement between the Byzantine Empire’s Eastern Orthodox Church, in the east, and the Holy Roman Catholic Church, in the west. The Byzantines’ lack of finding an ally in the west sprung from the consequences of the Iconoclast Controversy.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, in 476 AD, Christianity was slowly solidifying itself in Europe and in the process, problems arose as there was a question on the methodologies of how to preach the teachings of Christianity. The root of the problem existed in the levels of literacy in Europe. In the eastern part of the old Roman Empire, which would become known as the Byzantine Empire, there was a higher level of literacy than Western Europe. The Byzantine Empire’s lingua franca was Greek, whereas in the west, the language of knowledge was considered as Latin. Since, the majority of the people in the west were not fluent in Latin, the western church was using pictures to educate the people about Christianity and this caused a negative reaction in the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine Empire had adopted Christianity as its official religion in the AD 300s and as most Byzantines were literate enough to read the Bible, the Byzantines’ interpretation of Christianity was that eikons- a Greek word for pictures - were a blasphemy.

The Byzantines objected to the use of pictures for religious purposes in the west and due to this, declared western Christianity as a form of heresy by claiming for itself the title of the true representative of Christianity. This controversy would cause a fissure in Christianity resulting in the emergence of two Christian churches. The western church would call itself as the Holy Roman Catholic Church. The word “catholic” in Latin meant universal and the title Roman was to signify the fact that Western Europe considered itself as the real political successor to old Roman Empire and did not consider the Byzantine Empire’s claim of being the successor to the Roman Empire. The word, “holy” was added to highlight that this new reincarnation of the Roman Empire, was a Christian power. The Byzantine church, in return, would identify itself as the Eastern Christian Orthodox Church. The word, “orthodox” comes from the Greek word, which means “true believer” and it was intended to buttress the credentials of the Byzantines’ claim as the real representatives of Christianity vis-à-vis the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

The Iconoclast Controversy was finally resolved by the late AD 800s, as the Catholic Church in the west and the Orthodox Church in the east agreed to accept each other’s existence. However, this acceptance did not lessen the amount of political distrust, which existed between the western and eastern halves of Christianity. Hence, the political disputes, between western and eastern brands of Christianity, prevented the west from aiding the east against the attacks by the Arabs and the Saljug Turks. Furthermore, the Byzantine Empire, despite the threats on its borders, was wary of Western Europe and was not keen to ask for its help. There was a concern in the Byzantine Empire that in the process of helping Constantinople against its enemies, the western Europeans might exploit the situation to seek an of the Byzantine Empire as a rival contender to Christianity in Europe. Likewise, Western Europe and the Catholic Church were quietly enjoying the specter of the Byzantine Empire struggling to sustain itself, politically, against the threats to its existence.

This political and religious ambivalence, which existed between Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire, and which had prevented them from allying against the Muslims, ended in AD 1096. The Byzantine Empire, once more threatened by the Saljug Turks, dispatched another appeal to Western Europe for help against the Saljug Turks. This time, with the stories of the atrocities committed on the Christian pilgrims eliciting an evocative reaction in the west, the Byzantine request was greeted with a favorable response. Pope Urban II, the spiritual and the political leader of the Holy Roman Catholic Church in a speech at Claremont, France, asked the nobles of Europe to create an army of Christian soldiers to capture Jerusalem and thus, bring the Holy Land under Christian protection. Though the proclaimed reason was to offer aid to the Byzantine Empire, the real reasons for Urban II’s declaration of support, to Constantinople, were motivated by the politics of Western Europe. Pope Urban II was using the pretext of the Byzantine call for help to foist the Holy Roman Catholic Church’s political influence over the kingdoms of Western Europe.

The church had always harbored dreams of creating Christendom; a political union of all Christian kingdoms under the leadership of the papacy. The logic behind this idea came from the realization that after the collapse of the Roman Empire, the church was the only politically organized institution left, which could offer a vision of centralized leadership in Europe. This argument had merit, because after the end of the Roman power, Europe was overrun by a succession of Germanic barbarian tribes. These tribes were incapable of offering any form of centralized rule in Europe, as they were mostly nomadic and their political influence was only limited to the territories, which they controlled and the political power, which emerged, from this development in Europe, was localized, decentralized and ineffective. However, by AD 600s, there seemed to be an attempt to centralize power as more politically organized and militarily superior tribes conquered the weak tribes and started to consolidate their power. The process of cohesion, in terms of political power, contributed to the rise of the early kingdoms in Western Europe, and with this, the structures of European power also changed to accommodate the new realities of European power. Even as political power was being centralized, the European rulers of the time were still handicapped and were not in a position to exercise centralized power due to a host of reasons.

The centralization of power in Europe was limited by poor communications, which hindered effective control over the territories since the outlaying areas were always beyond the administrative control of the ruler. Hence, a ruler could not prevent the occasional rebellion against his rule and the nature of these rebellions meant that political stability was always a tenuous proposition in Europe. Another limitation was that, for a European monarch, it was easy to conquer new lands but it was highly difficult to govern them because of geographic considerations. Europe was geographically divided with rivers, mountain ranges, and forests and these factors were responsible for the rise of regionalism in European politics, which disallowed any attempt to enforce centralized structures of political power. The biggest obstacle towards centralized power in Europe was the existence of the multi-polarity in European political power, as various kingdoms competed for political power and wanted to subjugate others, but were unwilling to subordinate themselves to another political power. This would have two far reaching consequences for European power; one was that it prevented a centralization of power, but more importantly, it created the idea of political independence in Europe, whereby each power jealously guard its political interests and would refuse to politically compromise, with another power.

The aim of seeking a centralized power structure in Europe created a series of wars, as many powerful European kings tried to bring Europe under a centralized rule and in the process, were bitterly resisted. Unable to quell the spirit of political independence, in Europe, but still wishing to bring centralized rule to their kingdoms, the Europeans kings were increasingly forced to enter into political compromises. The nature of the political compromise was the rise of the feudal structure of power in European politics, as the kings allowed the regional powers centers to exist, as a semi-autonomous political entities, in return for a vow of political loyalty to the king. Even though political feudalism did not bring centralized power, it did offer a sense of political stability and it did make the governance of the kingdoms easy. The nature of this governance was based on a very simple understanding, between the king and his vassals, and that was to respect the arrangements of power, as they were agreed and not seek, or attempt, to alter the existing status quo. In a word, this created the first system of “checks and balances” in European politics, because if the king became too ambitious; he would be resisted by his vassals and if the a vassal tried to take over more land, the king in a mutually beneficial alliance, with his other vassals would prevent the disequilibrium of political power in the kingdom.

Parenthetically speaking, a comparison needs to be drawn, at this stage of the narrative, between the emerging ideals of political power in Europe and the Muslim world, because it would have far reaching consequences. It would also explain why political independence and representative democracy found such a fertile soil to grow in Europe and not in the Arab/Muslim world. The time period, of AD 700s and AD 800s, offers a rare insight into the nature of European power vis-à-vis Muslim power, because the origins and the development of both European and Muslim political ideas was concurrent, but would they end up with diametrically opposing viewpoints on the nature of political power itself.

As already seen, centralized power was resisted in Europe, because its motives were always doubted and in the political skepticism, which resulted from this questioning, Europe was able to articulate a debate on the nature of political power itself. The European political experiences, at the end of the Roman Empire, suggested that political power had to remain diffused and the nature of power, itself, should be based on the idea of compromise. Furthermore, it advocated that such a power should be balanced evenly and not allowed to be concentrated in the hands of one, or a combination of powers. The key criteria was that Europe favored a multi-polarity of powers and it wanted such an arrangement to exist because of the political leverage it allowed the weaker nations in comparison to the powerful nations of Europe. Therefore, Europe wanted to ensure that the fulcrum of political power tilted against centralized power by favoring a de-centralized power structure. Out of this early multi-polarity in European politics, there emerged a European tradition of political dissent, against a strong political power, which would periodically demand more political rights and resist attempts at the consolidation of power.

Unlike the Europeans, the Arabs were never able to initiate a debate on the nature of political power, because the early experiences of Arab politics did not allow the space for such a debate to occur. Arab political power drew its inspiration from the conduct of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), who practiced both the religious and secular aspects of power, with the result that Arab politics was never able to a create balance, between theocratic absolutism and political pragmatism. This form of centralized political power was the norm in Arab societies and as the Arab political structures matured, there was an increasing concentration of power in the hands of the ruler. The dictates of power were imposed instead of being shared, as was the case in Europe and also; in contrast to the European example of political co-existence, Arab political power, due to its theocratic influences, was disallowed to share political power and instead, it was prompted to subordinate all forms of politics in order to preserve the political integrity of Islam.

However, despite this the Arabs were able to develop secular politics to a limited extent, as the Arab rule in Spain proved, but they were unable to deny the theocratic nature of their politics. The final result, of this Arab inability, was that the Arabs were never able to develop a tradition of political dissent in politics. Consequently, the idea of political activism was never able establish itself in Arab societies, as in Europe, which could question and resist the abusive impulse of centralized power. The institutional weakness of Arab politics to prevent the abuse of power, which was the ancillary of centralized power, would be responsible for the lapses of Arab societies into despotism. The religiously dominated politics of Arab societies created a political dogma, which could not be questioned and as a result, Arab political development was not as dynamic as the evolution of European politics. Whereas, the fluid nature of European power favored change, the nature of Arab societies supported a status quo and it was this combination of a political status quo, with a religious prohibition on political skepticism, which would eventually allow the Europeans to create more pluralism in their politics than the Arabs.

Another facet of European political development, that was starting to manifest itself, when Pope Urban II made the call to free Jerusalem from the Arabs in AD 1096, was the law of diminishing returns, which had started to haunt political feudalism in Europe. Feudalism in Europe was well established as a political structure, but the nature of political power in feudalism was limited and as the number of political contenders increased, the political power in Europe seemed limited. The source of this political problem resulted from the principle of primogeniture, which decreed that the rightful heir to inheritance, would be the eldest male in the family and only the eldest male would inherit all the political titles, wealth and the land, which was considered as the main source of political power in Europe at that time.

The idea behind primogeniture was to prevent wars of succession from breaking out, which could endanger the stability of the kingdom, but in doing so, it created more problems than it solved. The members of the family, who as a result of primogeniture were denied a heritance, started to pose as a potential source of political instability as they continually strived to gain power and were not averse to political alliances, which might be advantageous to their interests. These victims of primogeniture, made alliances, with outside political powers and would encourage them to invade their kingdoms and over throw the existing monarchs and thus, create a new hierarchy of power in which they would have a position of prominence.

Consequently, the issues of power, based on the rights of primogeniture, created a wave of rebellions and wars, which were greatly undermining the prospects of peace in Europe. Given the chaotic nature of European politics, with successive wars and periods of uncertainty, the people of Europe looked towards the church for leadership and guidance. The Holy Roman Catholic Church in Europe was also a political power due to its ability to control the papal lands, which were gifted to church by a Merovingian king, Pepin the Short, in the AD 700s. Pepin was the first king of Europe to be crowned by a pope and in return for this ultimate blessing of political legitimacy; Pepin had traveled to Italy with the pope, where he had defeated the barbarian tribe of Lombards and the lands taken from the Lombards were given to the church. As the monarchs of Europe wrestled with these problems, there was a rising concern in the papacy about a need to end these European wars, because the nature of these wars was preventing the church from instituting its own political power over the kingdoms of Europe.

The problem facing church was that it could not implement its political influence in Europe unless it ended the political wars in Europe. To overcome this problem, the church appealed to the religious fervor of the Europeans by declaring that it was a sin for Christians to fight and kill other Christians. When the European refused this plea, and did not stop fighting, the church employed a variety of other ploys to stop the wars in Europe such as the “Truce of God” and the “Peace of God”. The idea was to set aside certain days in the week, when the fighting would stop for prayers and mediations. It was in this political context of Europe that the Byzantine request for help against the Saljug Turks arrived and offered the Holy Roman Catholic Church the best opportunity to end the wars in Europe and establish itself as a political power.

Hence, when Pope Urban II asked the Christians of Europe to come to the aid of the Byzantine Empire, he was not motivated with any wish to help the Byzantines, but was solely guided by the political interests of the church. Urban II not only saw a chance to end the wars in Europe, but more importantly, he was determined to exploit the situation to increase the church’s political power. Pope Urban II realized that if he could make all the kings of Europe end their wars and come under the banner of the church for purposes of fighting the Arabs, he would have created a very powerful political precedent. The principle, which Urban II wanted to create, was that all European politics were under the influence of the church, when it came to matters of religion and in the interests of religion, it was dejure for the papacy to influence, and intervene in, European politics.

Pope Urban II’s declaration of a holy war against the Arabs was instantly welcomed by the kings and the nobility of Europe as they rushed to organize an army under leadership of the church to defeat the Saljug Turks. The Europeans kings and nobles, who answered the clarion call of Pope Urban II, had heard the tales about the east, with its fabulous wealth and thus, were more interested in the prospects of getting rich than helping out their fellow co-religionists, who were suffering under the Saljug Turks. To the sons of the European nobility, whose claim to political titles and power was denied by the laws of primogeniture, the idea of sharing the wealth gained from conquest was highly attractive and towards this end, they all willingly joined the struggle against the Saljug Turks.

An unexpected problem, which arose before this Christian army was even constituted and, which nearly ruined the dreams of Pope Urban II to establish the influence of the papacy over the monarchies of Europe, was the morality of the Holy Roman Catholic Church itself. For a long time, the church had argued and sermonized about the moral sin of Christians killing Christians, as it had sought to end the wars in Europe, and just as it seemed that it was on the verge of attaining political power in Europe, questions were asked, whether it was morally justified to kill in the name of Christianity. Apparently, the Europeans were of the opinion that it was perfectly reasonable to kill for the sake of politics, but killing in the name of religion was a sin; a statement of European political reality, which might be considered as a tongue in cheek tribute to the secular nature of European politics. Not be deterred by this dilemma, the church, which was not willing to risk its influence in Europe over a moral issue, created the concept of jus bellum – the just war. According to the church’s logic, wars were an evil but if the evil of the war could prevent a larger evil, then wars of such nature were permissible under the canons of Christianity.

Thus, with the moral impediment in the path of their greed removed, the European kings, nobles, opportunists, and people plumbed from the depths of European society, marched towards Jerusalem. Leading this motley collection of saviors was Pope Urban II, who was salivating at the idea of becoming the new Caesar of a European Christendom. Under the moral and political leadership of the papacy in Rome, the Europeans marched towards Constantinople to fight the Saljug Turks. In a metaphorical sense, as the army marched towards the east, it would leave the old Europe behind, because when it would return, it would be influenced by its contact with the Muslims and in the process, would influence Europe, with far reaching consequences. The Europe, which had come into existence, with the collapse of the Roman Empire, in AD 476, would slowly fade away in AD 1096 and by the time the crusades would finally end in AD 1200s, there would be a new Europe in existence and due to this; the world would never be the same.