Muslim minorities under Christian rule had been genocided, forcefully converted and exiled.
After ‘re-claiming’ Spain, Catholics had expelled a total of 100,00-2,000,000 Jews and 500,000-3,000,000 Muslims according to contemporary writers Navarrete (1626)³ and Guadalajara (1630).
- The Reverend J. H. Hunt states: “The knot of brigands, some of them well meaning, but all of them bigoted and deluded, who inflicted innumerable calamities upon the inhabitants of Asia, with whom they had no concern, for the purpose of depriving them [Muslims] of territories to which they had the same right, as any one of themselves has to his own hereditary dominions.”
- Radulph of Caen states “In Marta our troops boiled [Muslim] adults in cooking pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled”.
- Historia francorum qui ceperint Jerusalem, co-authored by Priest Raymond de Gilles, Count of Toulouse, one of the leaders and chroniclers of the First Crusade. During the capture of Jerusalem, whilst the Muslims fought till their last breath, he had this to say:
- Strange to relate, however, at this very time when the city was practically captured by the Franks, the Saracens were still fighting on the other side, where the Count was attacking the wall as though the city should never be captured. But now that our men had possession of the walls and towers, wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they felL from the towers ; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames What happened there ? If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much, at least, that in the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies. The city was filled with corpses and blood. Some of the enemy took refuge in the Tower of David, and, petitioning Count Raymond for protection, surrendered the Tower into his hands. (August C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses and Participants (New Jersey: Princeton University Press) 261)
- Humbert of Romans wrote about his experiences regarding “the splendid occasion when the blood of the Arabs came up to the horses’s knees, at the capture of Jerusalem in 1099.”
- The same Michael the Elder, reveals the state of inter-Christian relations prior to Islamicization. During the reign of Constans II (642-668), Byzantine soldiers under Armenian, David, stole and pillaged villages; killed and tortured men to then proceed to rape women in front of their husbands.
Chabot, Chronique de Michel le Syrien, vol 2, 443
- Petrus Tudebodus, a priest and a witness of the First Crusade wrote the Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere. In it, he proclaims the Muslims the “enemies of of Christians and God” who were “screaming, and crying out diabolical words in a strange language” Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, trans. John H. Hill, Laurita L. Hill (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1974) 34. James M. Ludlow in The Age of the Crusades:
- “Never before or since was there such exalted a faith combined with such grotesque superstition, such splendid self sacrifice mingled with cruel and unrestrained selfishness, such holy purpose with its wings entangled, torn and besmeared in vicious environments.”
- Sir Edwin Pear’s The Fall of Constantinople regarding the Fourth Crusade “handed over Constantinople and the Balkan Peninsula to six centuries of barbarism.”
A Brief History of Culture by John Shertzer Hittell. Page 137
A sign for Cain; an exploration of human violence. Page 140
the definitive chronicle of history’s 100 worst atrocities. Page 576
Notes on the history of military medicine … Page 106
Modern times and the living past. Page 260-261
A Short History of Christianity. Page 278
Victory in the East : a military history of the First Crusade
Page 5
Note; page is 32
page 119
chapter 6 intro
168
These two men, with their people, seized Barra2 and Marra; by a courageous attack. After the former city had been captured quickly and completely depopulated by the slaughter of its citizens and everything which they found there had been seized, they hastened to the other city. Here, when the siege had lasted twenty days;( our people suffered excessive hunger. I shudder to tell that many of our people, harassed by the madness of excessive hunger, cut pieces from the buttocks of the Saracens already dead there, which they cooked, but when it was not yet roasted enough by the fire, they devoured it with savage mouth. So the besiegers rather than the besieged were tormented. Peters, Edward The First Crusade: “The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres” p84 Was this view of the Franj unjust? Did the Western invaders devour the inhabitants of the martyred city simply in order to survive? Their commanders said so in an Official letter to the pope the following year: A terrible famine racked the army in Mac‘arra, and placed it in the cruel necessity of feeding itself upon the bodies of the Saracens. But the explanation seems unconvincing, for the inhabitants of the Ma‘arra region witnessed behaviour during that sinister winter that could not be accounted for by hunger. They saw, for example, fanatical Franj, the Tafurs, roam through the countryside openly proclaiming that they would chew the flesh of the Saracens and gathering around their nocturnal camp-fires to devour their prey. Were they cannibals out of necessity? Or out of fanaticism? It all seems unreal, and yet the evidence is overwhelming, not only in the facts described, but also in the morbid atmosphere it reflects. In this respect, one. sentence by the Frankish chronicler Albert of Aix, who took part in the battle of Ma‘arra, remains unequalled in its horror: Not only did our troops not shrink from eating dead Turks and Saracens; they also ate dogs! The crusades through Arab eyes p39-40
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