The Impacts of crusades on European and Middle Eastern Historical development Essay Example

of the Third Crusade was that the Muslims remained in control of Jerusalem however unlike previously, the Christians were free to visit anytime they wanted without fear of persecution (Hamilton, The Crusades, p 4-8) The fifth crusade lasted from 1217 to 1221. The Pope Innocent III wanted them to attack Egypt on their way to the Jerusalem.The crusade, while it had good success in the beginning with its capture of the city Damietta in Egypt, fell short when the crusaders had to give back the city for a truce (Hamilton, The Crusades, p 23). Fredrick II, who was The Holy Roman Emperor, during the time of the sixth crusade in 1228 and 1229, took over the city of Acre and he negotiated a treaty, which gave Jerusalem to the Christians for ten years (Hamilton, The Crusades, p 29).

The crusades officially ended when the Muslim Sultan Khalil captured Acre, the last Christian city, on May 5, 1291.Europe was losing its interest in the Holy Land and instead turned its attention to the discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492. The Christians decided to leave the Holy Land to the Muslims, while satisfying their ambitions to expand in the New World (Treece, The Crusades, p. 272 -74). There were many impacts on the development of both Western and Eastern civilizations as a result of the Crusades. These impacts revolved mostly around the sharing and exchange of ideas and techniques between the European Christians and the Muslims.

Oldenbourg writes, " bound to the soil as farmer, shepherd, and hunter, the medieval peasants lived to the rhythm of the season... Medieval Society and society before the Crusades

in particular was divided into clearly defined classes and the society offered little to no possibility to escape" (Oldenbourg, The Crusades, p. 8).

Also Oldenbourg believes that if there were no crusades than the peasant class would not have developed out of the bonds of bound labor as quickly. "Crusading also helped the poverty-stricken to articulate their grievances against the rich.During the First Crusade, poor noncombatants played a critical role and made the monastic ideal of holy poverty central to Crusading, the Children's Crusade of 1212 may in fact have been a huge demonstration of the poor and destitute people of France and Germany, who were often contemptuously referred to as pueri or children" (Oldenbourg, The Crusades, p. 9) Oldenbourg may have biases based on living in France, a person with French loyalty would want to see the history of France showed in good light.As far as the Children's Crusade not really being children at all, but in fact the poor, that seems like that should have been discovered long ago, or never unknown in the first place.

Albert Hqurani is one of the world's foremost writers on Arab culture in modern times. He has written other books concerning the development of the Middle East as well as the connections between the west and the Middle East. His stance is that because the Western European lost not only the crusades because they had no long lasting impacts on Arab culture, but they also lost their ideal that they were the best and strongest persons in the world.He writes "Defeat goes deeper into the human soul than victory. To be in someone else's power is a

conscious experience which induces doubts about the ordering of the universe, while those who have power can forget it" (Hqurani, A History of the Arab Peoples, p300). Furthermore Hqurani states that because of the "memories of the Crusaders" the Western European nations namely Britain and France has seen "Islam [as] a danger, both moral and military to be opposed.

Translated into secular terms, this provided both a justification for rule and a warning: fear of a 'revolt' of Islam" (Hqurani, A History of the Arab Peoples, p 301).With the "fear of revolt," Hqurani believes that that is the reason that Arab peoples are oppressed now, both in their homeland and through persecution of Arab people across the world. He thinks that If the "Aryans" think that they are the better race then they should look at they logic using Darwin's theory of evolution. The Arabs have flourished longer then the Aryans and survived, therefore they must be the better species (Hqurani, A History of the Arab Peoples, p 301) There are questions that arise from Hqurani's stance.

Being from the "other" side of the Crusades namely Arab he would have a defined bias, just as French and German authors would have. The belief that there has been "no long lasting impacts" on Islamic society must surely be false, an event that spaded 200 years and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, united both the Western world, and the Islamic world in relative unity, and gave rise to trade between the East and the West would have to have major long lasting impacts.Karen Armstrong is a writer and she writes mostly on the relationship

surrounding Jerusalem and the three faiths that revolve around it, on September 19, 1999 she published her article "The Crusades, Even Now" in the New York Times. She writes, "With the Crusades, the West found its soul. It began cultivating its own literary, artistic, and spiritual traditions" (Armstrong, "The Crusades, Even Now," p74).

The main point of her article is that the crusades gave the West an identity, and unlike other historians she believes that the crusades should not be remembered as a quest for loot but as a quest for "spiritual knowledge and rightness. She goes on to write "Many survivors returned penniless, for knights often mortgaged their lands at home in order to equip their armies, Crusading's rewards were always more spiritual than financial: it was genuine religious passion... They regarded their Crusade as an act of the love of God" (Armstrong, "The Crusades, Even Now," p74). It is hard to believe that hordes of people would not only risk their lives to defend a city thousands of miles away and loosing their money while attempting it.

Armstrong's ideas show too much compassion in the Human mind, particularly those minds that were still getting over the plundering of the Vikings. Not everyone who participated in the crusades did it out of their "love of God," someone had to be getting paid for it. Her possible biases stem from her knowledge of Jerusalem and her ideal of not to adversely shine light on any one of the religions that call Jerusalem home. Henry Treece was born in the West Midlands, Great Britain in December 1911.He was educated at Birmingham University where he graduated in 1933.

He

began working as a teacher until World War II where he worked as an intelligence officer with RAF Bomber Command. In his book The Crusades, with the slightly sinister subtitle of A lively and authentic account of two hundred years of war, sacred journeys and the quest for Loot, he believes that many crusaders joined for reasons rather than riding the Holy Land of the Infidels; including power, territory, riches, and just plain adventure. Most people want to think of a crusader as a "...

igure of brave self-effacement, the idealized crusader, a red cross on his white mantle, his mailed hands clasped on the hilt of the sword which he had dedicated to Christ and the salvation of the Holy Sepulcher, a prayer always on his lips... " when in actuality, the crusades may have been largely influenced by the selfish desires of men (Treece, The Crusades, p. vii). In the long sequence of interaction and fusion between Orient and Occident, out of which our civilization has grown, the Crusades were a tragic and destructive episode.

The historian, as he gazes across the centuries at their gallant story, must find his admiration overcast by sorrow at the witness that it bears to the limitations of human nature. There was so much courage and so little honour, so much devotion and so little understanding. High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed enterprise and endurance by a blind and narrow self-righteousness; and the Holy War itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost (Treece, The Crusades, p. ii).

Furthermore Treece goes

on to say that the "Holy crusaders" were doing nothing more they their fathers and their father's father had done, business.Superficially, it may be proved that at a certain date in the Christian era men stitched the red cross upon their mantles and set off to drive the Saracens from Jerusalem; but further thought soon shows that what we call "crusades" were relatively small journeys encapsulated within much older and greater ones; that en of the North and West had been journeying into the East to gain gold or land even before the dawn-world of the Hellenic Bronze Age; and that when all the folk-movement had died away, and the "crusades" had failed, men continued to push on towards the Levant, like lemmings taking to the seas in spring, but now under the banner of commerce and not of religion (Treece, The Crusades, p. viii). Greed for money, Land, and titles were a incredibly strong forces that pulled men to join in the crusades. During the time of the crusades, people in Europe were either Lords, Knights, or Serfs.

Nearly all of the population was in the peasant class. A serf had very little to look forward to in life, however the opportunity that was presented by the crusades that of ridding themselves of "back breaking slavery on his lord's land, with the possibility of a bag of old thrown in to seal the bargain" (Treece, The Crusades, p x). Treece gives many results and impacts of the crusades on western culture, " The crusades were the keystone of that arch of human development on the one side of which lay what was to become the

modern. He goes on to say that, "it might be said that almost everything which has happened to the Western men of to nations since the crusades is in some degree attributable to them" (Treece, The Crusades, p 283).

"Even though countless numbers of people died during the Christian Crusades, there were many positive effects Arab countries. After the Crusades halted, various trade routes opened up between Eastern and Western cities.The Muslims developed new military strategies and techniques during the fights with the Europeans, and they united themselves against one cause one common enemy, producing a stronger religious nation. Numerous effects of the Christian Crusades in the Middle East had a positive out come on Arabs" (Treece, The Crusades, p 299).

Treece theorizes that it is conceivable that because of shipbuilding and navigation that the Western nations developed during the crusades they Columbus was able to find America.Also the ability for the peasant to move from is class and rise up during the crusades gave the average people the power for the further revolts such as the English Peasants' Revolt in 1381 or the English Civil War, The French and Russian revolution. Lesser impacts include the introduction of sugar, syrup, new herbs and spices, and fabrics bread new life into the dull life of middle age Europe (Treece, The Crusades, p 285-7). Henry Treece seems to be very jaded, and unlike Karen Armstrong, seems only to look at the seedier side of life, this is possibly from the time in which he was in World War II.However with his possible biases aside, he offers the most reasonable account of the crusades taking into view that

there are dark sides to human nature, and many people do what they do for personal gains. Treece seems to have the most dead on approach to the impacts of the crusades to both Western and Eastern development.

There were many results to the crusades, the combination of the two cultures pushed both civilizations to excel and move ahead faster than they had previously or would have without the contact of the other.However it seems as if the West took more than its fair share away from the crusades. The East united itself and learned new military tactics, however in today's society it seems that the Middle East is again divided. The West took many things that have never been seen, felt, or tasted in the western world, they gained the knowledge to travel great distances across water, and eventually found America, they learned hygiene from the Islamic society, not only bathing practices, but also medicine and physician practices.Greatest off all that the West took from the crusades was the idea that people did not have to settle in their role of life. If you were a serf and tied to your lord's land you could rise up and have bloody adventures.

This ideal gave the peasant class the courage, power, and idea to through off the shackles of bonded labor and revolt against oppressive governments. These are the things that had the greatest impact on the development of Europe.