History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 12 of 12

CHAPTER I--THE CRUSADERS IN EGYPT


_The Ideal of the Crusader: Saladin's Campaign: Richard I. in Palestine:
Siege of Damietta: St. Louis in Egypt: The Mamluks: Beybars' Policy._


The traditional history of the Christian Church has generally maintained
that the Crusades were due solely to religious influence and sprang from
ideal and moral motives: those hundreds of thousands of warriors who
went out to the East were religious enthusiasts, prompted by the pious
longings of their hearts, and Peter the Hermit, it was claimed, had
received a divine message to call Christendom to arms, to preach
a Crusade against the unbelievers and take possession of the Holy
Sepulchre. That such ideal reasons should be attributed to a war like
the Crusades, of a wide and far-reaching influence on the political and
intellectual development of mediæval Europe, is not at all surprising.
In the history of humanity there have been few wars in which the
combatants on both sides were not convinced that they had drawn their
swords for some noble purpose, for the cause of right and justice. That
the motives prompting the vast display of arms witnessed during the
Crusades, that the wanderings of those crowds to the East during two
centuries, and the cruelties committed by the saintly warriors on their
way to the Holy Sepulchre, should be attributed exclusively to ideal
and religious sources is therefore quite natural. It is not to be
denied that there was a religious factor in the Crusades; but that the
religious motive was not the sole incentive has now been agreed upon
by impartial historians; and in so far as the motives animating the
Crusaders were religious motives, we are to look to powerful influences
which gradually made themselves felt from without the ecclesiastical
organisations. It was by no means a movement which the Church alone had
called into being. On the contrary, only when the movement had grown
ripe did Gregory VII. hasten to take steps to enable the Church to
control it. The idea of a Crusade for the glory of religion had not
sprung from the tenets of Christianity; it was given to mediaeval Europe
by the Muhammedans.

History can hardly boast of another example of so gigantic a conquest
during so short a period as that gained by the first adherents of Islam.
Like the fiery wind of the desert, they had broken from their retreats,
animated by the promises of the Prophet, and spread the new doctrine far
and wide. In 653 the scimitar of the Saracens enclosed an area as large
as the Roman Empire under the Cæsars. Barely forty years elapsed after
the death of the Prophet when the armies of Islam reached the Atlantic.
Okba, the wild and gallant leader, rode into the sea on the western
shore of Africa, and, whilst the seething waves reached to the saddle
of his camel, he exclaimed: "Allah, I call thee as witness that I should
have carried the knowledge of Thy name still farther, if these waves
threatening to swallow me would not have prevented me from doing so."
Not long after this, the flag of the crescent was waving from the
Pyrenees to the Chinese mountains. In 711 the Saracens under General
Tarik crossed the straits between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic,
and landed on the rock which has since been called after him, "the hill
of Tarik," Jebel el-Tarik or Gibraltar. Spain was invaded and captured
by the Moslems. For awhile it seemed as if on the other side of the
Garonne the crescent would also supplant the cross, and only the victory
of Charles Martel in 732 put a stop to the wave of Muhammedan conquest.

Thus in a brief period Muhammedanism spread from the Nile Valley to the
Mediterranean. Muhammed's trenchant argument was the sword. He gave a
distinct command to his followers to convince the infidels of the
Power of truth on the battle-field. "The sword is a surer argument than
books," he said. Accordingly the Koran ordered war against unbelievers:
"The sword is the key to heaven and hell; a drop of blood shed in the
cause of Allah, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months
of fasting and prayer; whoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven,
and at the day of judgment his limbs shall be supplied with the wings
of angels and cherubim." Before the battle commenced, the commanders
reminded the warriors of the beautiful celestial houris who awaited the
heroes slain in battle at the gates of Paradise.