July 4, 2024
Troy D. Smith
“A History of Israel and Palestine, Part 5”
We are slowly making our way, a few centuries at a time, to
the situation in modern Palestine. I am going to start this week’s installment
by quoting the final paragraph from last time, as a summary:
“In the eleventh century, the region was invaded by the
Seljuk Turks -who were also Muslim -and they took Jerusalem in 1073. The Turks
ruled tyrannically for a quarter-century, crushing any attempts at resistance
and at different times killing most of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Gaza.
They were finally driven out in 1098 by the Fatimid Caliphate.”
As we discussed earlier, the Byzantine Empire -that is, the
eastern half of what had once been the Roman Empire -had been fighting against
the Persian Empire for control of the Levant, finally winning that long series
of wars and retaking Jerusalem. Then came the Seljuk Turks and took Jerusalem
away from them, and by 1098 the Fatimid Caliphate took it away from THEM… just
as the Byzantine Empire was making THEIR move to get it back.
In 1094 the Byzantine Emperor appealed to Pope Urban II in
Rome for aid in retaking Jerusalem, at that time still controlled by Seljuk
Turks, in the name of their shared Christianity. A Crusade was declared to “retake
the Holy Land”. Armies from various Western European lands marched to the Levant
to join the Orthodox Christian Byzantines in their fight against the Turks. By
the time the forces fought their way to Jerusalem -many of them killing Jews
they encountered along the way in pogroms -the Fatimids had taken control of
the city, so the Crusaders attacked them in a siege in 1099. It was during this
siege that the Crusaders truly earned their reputation for cruelty and
barbarity. They eventually took all of the Levant, as well as parts of what are
now Syria and Turkey, dividing it all into four “Crusader Kingdoms”: the
Principality of Antioch, the Counties of Edessa and Tripoli (in northern
Lebanon, not the one in Libya)… and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which would be
controlled by (mostly French) Crusaders for the next 200 years. Those two
centuries were marked by waves of invasions and counter-invasions of the
region, not only by the European Crusaders but by the two principal Muslim
powers in the area, the Fatimids (Shiite Muslim) and the Seljuk Turks (Sunni
Muslim).
About halfway through that period, in the 12th century, a
Kurdish-born Sunni Muslim named Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub rose through the
Seljuk ranks. He is usually called Salah ad-Din, or Saladin. He eventually rose
to power in his own right, unifying the Muslims in the region and establishing
his own dynasty headquartered in Egypt. Saladin then led the forces under his
command against the Crusaders, winning a huge victory over them in 1187 that
restored most of the Levant -and the city of Jerusalem -to Muslim rule (though
the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem held on for another century, confined to a tiny
strip of land, before finally falling as well.) There were very few Jews left
in Palestine, but they fought on the side of the Muslims against the Crusaders.
Saladin’s Ayyubid Dynasty was short-lived in Egypt, being
overthrown in 1250 by mamluks (enslaved soldiers) who set up their own Mamluk
Dynasty in Egypt… just in time to defend Palestine from invasion by Mongols,
who -in an effort begun by Ghengis (or Jingis) Khan, had already conquered much
of the known world. The Mamluks eventually succeeded in repelling the Mongols, but
-as had so often been the case -the people of Palestine suffered heavily during
the conflict. With both the Mongols and the Crusaders chased out, though, Palestine
would have a couple of centuries of relative peace and rebuilding. The region was
taken away from the Mamluks by the Empire of the Ottoman Turks in 1516, but
-compared to the Crusaders and the Mongols -it was a relatively quick process
with much less death and destruction.
The Ottoman Empire would control Palestine for 400 years,
until World War I. Most of the region’s inhabitants were Arab Muslims, with
some Christians, Druze, and a small number of Jews. Most of the world’s Jews
were living in Central and Eastern Europe.
Near the end of that period, in the nineteenth century, two
movements arose that would set into motion -along with WWI -events leading to
our current situation: Arab nationalism and Zionism.
To be continued.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee
Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party.
His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE
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