Rivers of Blood: An Analysis of One Aspect of the Crusader Conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Rivers of Blood: An Analysis of One Aspect of the Crusader Conquest of Jerusalem
Revista chilena de estudios medievales, 2012
Muchos cronistas medievales describieron la conquista cristiana de Jerusalén durante la Primera Cruzada en 1099 y sus palabras han sido repetidas desde entonces sin mayor cuestionamiento. Tan horrible como pudo haber sido la masacre en la mezquita y en el resto de la ciudad, nunca pudo haber sido tan grande como para fundamentar los reportes de calles ensangrentadas que con tanta frecuencia se indican hoy en día. Estas eran descripciones fantásticas, claramente imposibles. Las descripciones modernas de los cruzados moviéndose por calles de sangre han convertido una masacre histórica en algo ridículo. La sangre que se derramó en la masacre de Jerusalén fue real, pero no así los ríos sangrientos que han llegado a las páginas de los periódicos modernos y a los libros populares.
Explaining the 1096 Massacres in the Context of the First Crusade
2019
During the First Crusade's onset, lay enthusiasm went unregulated. Popular preachers spread Urban II's call to crusade across Europe, and after Peter the Hermit left the Rhineland, religious tension flared and culminated in the 1096 A.D. Jewish massacres. This paper examines Christian crusader motivation during the 1096 massacres. Through textual analysis of contemporary Latin and Hebrew chronicles, and medieval eschatological legends, I argue that the conversion of the Jewish communities to Christianity was the primary motivation of the Christian crusaders and neighboring burghers. I suggest that figures such as Count Emicho of Flonheim were likely inspired by the eschatological legend of the Last Roman Emperor and sought to destroy the Jewish communities to bring the second coming of Christ and the End Times. The Jewish communities' destruction was through conversion or the sword, however I argue through primary source examples that conversion was preferable, and crusaders and burghers went to great lengths to see conversion through. This study is part of a growing body of research on conversion during the 1096 massacres, specifically conversion linked to Christian millenarianism. This study aims to add to the greater literature and offer another voice to the ongoing conversation.
The First Crusade (1096-1099) is often romanticized as a religious war over the Holy Lands, yet it was driven by a complex mix of political, economic, and social factors. While the Papacy's call to arms framed the Crusade as a holy mission, motives such as papal consolidation of power, nobles' ambitions, the quest for wealth, and population pressures were central. The Crusade emerged in the context of a fragmented Islamic world and the weakening Byzantine Empire, which sought aid against the expanding Seljuk Turks. This article explores the multifaceted motivations behind the Crusades, highlighting the political and economic interests that shaped this significant historical event. It also examines the role of key figures like Sultan Saladin, who played a crucial role in uniting Muslim forces and recapturing Jerusalem, and emphasizes the importance of understanding the Crusades beyond the simplistic "clash of civilizations" narrative.
Crusaders and Jews: The York Massacre of 1190 Revisited
Anglo-Norman Studies XLIV, 2022
Except for the general expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, the York massacre of 1190 is arguably the most momentous and disruptive event in the history of the relationship between Christians and Jews in medieval England. Contemporaries, both Christian and Jewish, in England and elsewhere remarked on the enormity of the massacre in which around one hundred and fifty people are estimated to have died. As a subject of historiography, the York massacre can be framed in different contexts. First of all, there is the wider history of the relationship between Christians and Jews in twelfth-century England. Secondly, there is the more immediate context of the late twelfth century which witnessed an increasing hostility towards Jews in England. Thirdly, there is a crusading context. The York massacre took place during the preparatory phase of the Third Crusade, in which the English King Richard I played a leading role. This makes sense because, since its beginnings at the end of the eleventh century, the crusade movement carried with it a potential for anti-Jewish violence which intermittently led to pogroms against Jews perpetrated by crusaders. The York massacre of 1190 can, in fact, be understood as a typical example of the structural violence with which the crusading movement confronted European Jewry. It is this third frame, that is the connections between crusading and the York massacre, which will be the focus of this article.
This article discusses the reports on the conquest of Jerusalem in 492/1099 in Arabic chronicles. It argues that the reports on this event developed in three distinct and very diverse regional traditions in Egypt, Syria and Iraq. On the basis of the early Egyptian and Syrian evidence, it is highly unlikely that the conquest of Jerusalem was accompanied by a large-scale massacre of the entire population. This evidence shows furthermore that contemporaries did not see the fall of the town as a momentous event. The later Iraqi tradition, by contrast, introduced not only a new dimension to the massacre of the town's inhabitants, but developed two further narrative strands which were largely unknown to earlier reports: the plundering of the Dome of the Rock and the subsequent delegation to Baghdad. The development of these strands must be seen within the political and intellectual setting of Baghdad, most importantly the conflict between Sultanate and Caliphate and the profile of the Hanbalite traditionalist milieu of the city. Ibn al-Athir's famous report from the early seventh/thirteenth century almost exclusively goes back to this Iraqi strand and was an "Islamic narrative" in that it sidelined all previous regional traditions and reframed the conquest as a momentous event in terms of eschatology, martyrdom and divine intervention. This development of the Arabic reports on the fall of Jerusalem reflects the broader transformation of how relationships with crusaders and Franks were conceptualized from a pre-jihādī landscape to one where jihād propaganda moved to the centre of political discourse.
The Crusades: Historical Interpretations from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century
Lecture delivered to the Plantagenet Society of Australia at Hornsby Library, 16 March, 2019
The Crusades are most often presented as religiously motivated wars between the Christian medieval powers, secular and ecclesiastical, and the Islamic world. The proximate cause of the First Crusade (1096-1099) included the defeat of the Byzantine Emperor Romanes IV Diogenes by the armies of the Seljuq Sultan Alp-Arslan at the Battle of Manzikert (26 August 1071), followed by the Seljuq conquest of Anatolia. Pope Urban II feared Constantinople might be conquered and preached the Crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095. This tale is well-known; the Western occupation of the Middle East came to an end in 1291 when the final expulsion of Latin Christians from Syria occurred. However, there were Crusades in the Baltic States and north-eastern Europe, in which the military order the Teutonic Knights was prominent (compared to the Templars in the Holy Land). These began in 1193 when Pope Celestine III preached a Crusade against the Pagan Balts. The Teutonic Knights were active in Eastern Europe until the fifteenth century, building a huge Christian territory in Prussia and the Baltic region. This lecture looks at the critical lenses used to interpret the particular type of Holy War denoted by the term “Crusade” from the medieval era to the present.
On July 15th, 1099, European Crusaders entered Jerusalem ransacking and ravaging the city in a bloody frenzy. Approximately 6,000 Jews and 30,000 Muslims were slaughtered in their places of worship as the Crusading armies burned and looted their way through the streets. As the smoke of smoldering ruins ascended to the sky and the bodies of this religious genocide were piled up in high mounds outside synagogues and mosques, these Christian crusaders danced and sang songs of victory and praise to God. History tells us that they were in eager anticipation - expecting the eminent return of Jesus Christ to earth. How did the Christian Church come to this place in history? How does history tie itself to the present and the future? How do we free ourselves from the strangleholds of historical atrocities? These and other questions will be grappled with in this paper. Section I will touch on the elusive movement of what is called 'history' and how it is interpreted and understood. Section II will attempt a brief narrative of the history of the First Crusades. Section III will unpack an analysis, from an 'integrationist' perspective, of the factors and circumstances that prepared the way for the Crusades. Various tapestry threads of the Crusader worldview will be unraveled such as the theological underpinnings, the political ambition, the economic interests, and the social, cultural and religious decay of that era. Section IV will look at one response to this Crusade history in the form of the Reconciliation Walk. It will explore the motivation behind the walk especially in the context of the Middle East with its main aim or focus being to move, speak and act, (through apology and deep listening) in a spirit opposite to that of the Crusades. This section will open up the 'complexity of justice in a victim's world' by relating the past Crusade histories to the present dynamics of religious, political, economic and social-cultural conflicts and struggles. In the conclusion, the spiritual dimensions of prayer, and acts of peace and forgiveness will be highlighted within the context of sustainable reconciliation and the work of peace practitioners. Mention will be given to inter-religious relationship building and future-views for peaceful co-existence.