Osama Bin Laden & the First Crusade

Osama is gone.  Physically at least.  A key decision by President Obama means he won't live on in the form of a death mask.   I'm leaving out that a Seal probably had a Iphone camera going in the room.  As to the official visual records of the raid, the National Archives and Records Administration will ultimately care for them. And the Smithsonian may have an exhibit in 3100, captioned with the mission and outcome.  Most likely, Wikileaks will have captured them by May 31.

To speak more seriously, it remains to be seen if the war that Osama Bin Laden participated in will take its place among the great crusades of history between Christianity and Islam.  I believe the the wars we are prosecuting and the surrounding terror are renewal of a cycle a thousand years old: his death is just a fresh punctuation mark.  I look back now to tell a brief story of the first European crusade to recapture Jerusalem, making a few modern comparisons.  

In 1096, the Roman Pope called for the faithful (nobles and peasants) of Europe to reclaim Palestine from the Moslems.  The force of the church's call and the resulting response came from a renewed purity and moral sense injected by monastaries (the first at Cluny in France).   The popes of Rome had been combatting moral issues such as celibacy for priests and a profound rift with the eastern Christians in Byzantium. 

At the same time, the popes were trying to detach themselves from any control exerted by secular European rulers.  These difficulties were swept aside when the Seljuk Turks, Sunnis from a northern Moslem empire, routed the eastern Christian empire at Byzantium in 1071 and took over Jerusalem the same year.*  In secular terms, the new assets of the Turks also included all of Asia Minor (the modern Turkey and islands immediately to its west) and the cities of Antioch and Odessa in the Eastern Mediterranean.

As I see it, the takeover of Jerusalem can be compared to the attack on the attacks on 9/11, in the way that 9/11 galvanized patriotic sentiment and our leaders' will to counterattack in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The crusade was launched with equivalent reaction to the US's drives: to ward off a threat to security, to redress an insult to God and to defend a way of life.

What the Turks captured brought out complicated motives in the 150,000 Crusaders.  The coming wars, it seemed, would put in the balance the European way of life.   

As a religious incentive, the abbot of Cluny, St. Bernard proclaimed, 'Take the cross and you will obtain in equal measure remission of all the sins you have confessed with a contrite heart'.  Compare this to the heavenly promises made to potential Islamic martyrs today.

The motives driving the Medieval warriors were also economic: the riches of the East seemed to have been as attractive to the Crusaders as the continuing flow of oil is to the modern West. Putting money into the equation, the middle eastern adventure of the US government has enriched private companies and cooperating tribal chiefdoms in the same way that Holy Crusades enriched European knights and caliphs in the Holy Land. 

The knights and barons of Normandy, England, Italy and Flanders took the lead in the eastern progress of the tens of thousands into battles against the Turkish holders.   A warrior had not yet developed  the complicated, colorful design for his clothing that would come later but each carried different flag: vertical zig-zags, a cross on a red background, or a golden orb overlaid with a picture of the Madonna and Child. 

First the lands of the Byzantine Empire had to be reclaimed from the Seljuk Turks.  A single bloody battle outside the city of Byzantium totally undermined the Moslems' control.  

Building on this quick success, the knights moved further east. Eventually, they mounted a year-long siege on the city of Antioch only to stumble into the city and become an victim of siege themselves.  What to do then was settled by a vision of a soldier's vision urging that they dig under the street for a lance -- the one he claimed pierced Jesus' side.  A metal stake was found where he predicted; with that the Crusaders followed dream's message -- to break out and fight.  The confined army burst free and defeated the surrounding army as well as reinforcements from Mosul.

The Crusaders marched south along the eastern coast avoiding the last Turkish strongholds.  In June 1099, the western armies came to Jerusalem.  Soldiers collapsed in relief.  Raymond of Toulouse sat on a neighboring outcropping, humbled and grateful after the long, embattled pilgrimage.  As to the final step -- taking over the city -- a siege would be necessary. 

In an ironic turn, the Fatamid Moslems, a southern branch from Egypt -- having thrown out the Seljuks in 1097 and now in charge of Jerusalem --  viewed Jerusalem as a shared city, welcoming all visitors including Christians.  This hospitality would not be enough for the Crusaders.  After a protracted siege and a bloody battle, the Fatimids fell, leaving the city open to a terrible slaughter.

By this time, Pope Urban II's chief administrator -- the primary advocate of continuing the Crusade beyond Antioch -- had died.  The crusaders now faced the job of creating several states to be ruled by the principal leaders of the movement.  The challenge now was nation-building.

  

(For the next 200 years, sweeping dramas would unfold, crusades from west to east, north to south, many of them not aimed at any Moslem power.)

I opened with Osama Bin Laden's discovery and death because I try to imagine today's media covering the cruel, confusing wars of the Crusades a millennium ago.  

At least five waves to gain and regain the Holy Land for Christianity came out of Europe.  During that 300 years, the whole scope of human warmaking could have been recorded. Such pieces as violent film footage of a new Antioch seige or a biopic of terrifying knights leading a tenth sacking of Byzantium could have kept 1000 interactive television stations busy for months.  Reporting and Internet speculation could have fed 10,000 bloggers and a million commenters.

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*I use "Moslem" for traditional, historical reasons to preserve connotations in earlier printed work on the subject, religious and secular.  I won't use "faithless dogs", "infidels" or "corruptors of the One Faith".

--Main sources: The Oxford History of the Crusades, ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith. 1995: Oxford U. Press.

The Crusades, Timothy Biel. 1995: Lucent Books.  Illustrations from Riley-Smith.

The Pilgramage of 2

The Pilgrimage of 2

Being the Events that occur in the Lives of an American Man and Woman As
They circle the Ring around the Dizzying Vortex
OF Reality Entertainment

Ken's History traced from Birth (2000) to a Lamentable End in (2051)  &


Barb's from Birth (2011) to a Frightening Ruin (2082)

Ken’s Realities

1) Little Mister Perfect
 age 5 – Year 2005

2) America's
Best Dance Crews
 age 10

3) Top Chef
 age 20

4) Biggest Loser
 age 22

5) Dance Your Ass Off
 age 26

6) Survivor
 age 30

7) Bachelorette (a suitor of Barb)
 age 32 - year 2032

8 Dates Jessica Simpson, now
Vegas act, cougar
 age 33

9) Dr. Drew
 age 46

10) Cops
 age 49

11) Lockup
 age 51 – Year 2051

12 Dies at 51


Barb’s Realities

1) Little Miss Perfect
 age 3 - Year 2014

2) So You Think You Can Dance
 age 15

3) Big Brother
 age 19

4) Bachelorette (doesn’t pick Ken)
 age 21 - year 2032

5) Amazing Race
 age 23

6) Dancing with the Stars
 age 39

7) MTV Cribs age 49

8) Hoarders
 age 71 – Year 2082

Buried alive at age 72

Reality Ends – Spring 2083