Welcome to the Crusades: The First Crusade - Ep 3: Cairo

folks, we just released a new bonus episode for our First Crusade series with the boys from American Prestige and so we're releasing this episode for free to hopefully get more people interested in the 12-episode series we did, which you can find for just $10 at welcometothecrusades.com. this is the third episode, Cairo, which discusses the Muslim perspective on the First Crusade. if you haven't listened to the first two episodes we released on the regular feed back in June on Rome and Taranto, you should check those out and then come back to this one. anyway, it's a great series so check out the whole thing if you haven't!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hey everyone, it's Luke and if you're hearing my voice
at the beginning like this, you are no doubt aware
that it is time for another very special episode of
We're Not So Different. But this time it's not one
of our Patreon bonus episodes that we're unlocking or anything
like that. This is actually the third episode entitled Cairo,

(00:52):
that we did in our first Crusade series with the
American Prestige Boys, which you can check out it Welcome
to the Crusades dot com if you have not checked
it out. It's ten dollars for twelve episodes, ten regular
episodes and two bonus episodes, one of which is coming
out today. And that's why we are releasing this. We
wanted to generate a little bit more buzz and get

(01:15):
the word back out there that we're doing that. We
did a Q and A episode where we talked a
little bit about you know, we expanded on the ideas
that we shared in the series. We talked a little
bit about what it all means, went over maybe went
over some mistakes, you know, things like that, the kind
of stuff that people love to do with you know,
normal Q and as and Yeah, so if you want

(01:36):
to check that out and you've already bought the full series,
then you know, go check out the feed and get
your new bonus episode. But if you have not checked
it out, please do go and buy the whole series.
It's great. You'll learn a lot about the First Crusade.
We had a lot of fun doing it, and yeah,
as long as it sells well, we're going to try

(01:57):
and do more on more in the future, so that.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Would be really good.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
But yeah, as I said, that's the bonus for today.
If you remember, back in June when this originally came out,
we released two episodes on the regular feed on Rome
and Taranto. If you have not checked those out, please
go back and listen to those before you listen to
this because it might be a little confusing otherwise. But yeah,

(02:24):
you know, check it out, check out the series, and yeah,
we'll hopefully get to do more, do another one on
the Second Crusade and then you know, get the Saladin
and the Fourth Crusade and all that sort of stuff,
and that would be awesome because we love to talk
about it. So yeah, you know, if you haven't checked

(02:44):
it out yet, welcome to through Crusades dot com. You know,
go listen to it. It's just ten bucks. But if
you are a patron, please check out the show notes
for the patron feed for this one so you can
get a bonus code get twenty percent off at Welcome
to the Says dot com. But yeah, that's gonna do
it for us today. Thank y'all very much for listening. Uh,

(03:07):
we'll be back next week with one of our normal episodes.
Haven't aren't quite ready to announce what that is yet,
but yeah, we will be back then with more medieval
fun for you guys. But in the meantime, enjoy the
intros that you normally hear from me, just you know,
maybe from a slightly different audio feed.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Who's to say.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, anyway, folks, check it out Welcome to the Crusades
dot com, Patreon dot com, slash w NSD pod five
bucks a month if you want to check out our
bonus episodes and all that stuff. Anyway, guys, thank y'all
so much, and we'll see you next week. By ten

(04:00):
ninety six CE, the Fatimid Caliphate was entering its final decline.
Obviously we can see this with the benefit of hindsight,
but it must have been equally obvious at the time too.
Some four decades before, the Fatamid's followers of the fringe
Isma Illy Shia sect of Islam held Egypt, a large
swath of the Magreb in North Africa, Sicily and Levant,

(04:24):
But the intervening years were unkind and by the time
our narrative picks up, the Fatamids were left with only
Egypt and the Hejaws region containing Mecca and Medina, the
two Holy Atsites in Islaw. Meanwhile, their hated rivals, the
Sunni Muslim Seljic Turks, had amassed greater power and expanded
their landholdings, pushing right up to Fatimid territory. Yet the

(04:48):
fates seemingly conspired to present them with an opportunity to
rectify the problem. Sometime in ten ninety seven, a diplomatic
envoy from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios the f Comninos arrived
in Cairo, addressed to the Chief vizier and de facto
ruler al Afdal. The Byzantines offered an alliance. The two

(05:08):
Christian factions would attack them from the north, while the
Fatimids would attack from the south, catching the Seljoks in
the middle and crushing their mutual enemy between them. The
two sides help protracted negotiations, with the Fatimids pushing for
a Christian buffer state to be formed in the Holy Land,
but they never came to a full agreement. Hell even

(05:29):
if they had, the Franks would have surely ignored it,
just as they later broke their oaths to Alexios to
return his former land in Anatolia. Despite their inability to
make an official alliance, the Caliphate nevertheless used this new
information to its advantage. While the Seljuks were preoccupied with
the European invasion, Fatimid armies, led by al Afdal himself

(05:50):
marched out of Cairo in late ten ninety seven, sacking Jerusalem,
and the small Seljiic garrison left there early in ten
ninety eight. Yet if al Hafdal expected to be rewarded
by the Franks or Byzantines for helping secure the city,
he was sorely mistaken. The Caliphate held Jerusalem for less
than a year before the Crusader armies besieged and overwhelmed

(06:12):
them too, ensuring the fall of the fat Emits. It
was this outcome, with both Muslim powers defeated by invading
Christians due to intra religious infighting that led Ibn al Athir,
a thirteenth century Islamic scholar and historian, to perfectly sum
up the First Crusade from the Muslim perspective. Quote, when

(06:33):
the Franks, may God frustrate them, extended their control over
what they had conquered of the lands of Islam, and
it turned out well for them that the troops and
kings of Islam were preoccupied with fighting each other at
that time. Opinions were divided among the Muslims, desires differed,
and wealth was squandered.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
End quote.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
Welcome to the Crusade.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
All right, everyone, let's just give a brief recap of
where we stopped last time. We were talking about the
Christian Lord's assembling and the Norman conquest of Sicily. So
what was going on everyone, Well, we.

Speaker 5 (07:14):
Got a lot of white boys who long in their
hearts for Jerusalem. I think that that's obvious.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
A bunch of a crazy ass white boys.

Speaker 5 (07:23):
Yeah, you know, it's like some of the first to
ever do it. These boys are about to learn to
say martial law. They are going to develop opinions on
hummus at any moment. It's getting dangerous, it's getting dangerous
in here, especially when we consider that this particular group
of white boys is of the spicy variety. They're all

(07:44):
martial arts dudes. You know, they got they've got sort.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
Of there at least yellow belts.

Speaker 5 (07:51):
So you know, we have a lot of white boys
pointing east at this point, and not towards Mecca.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Say that, I'll just say that, No, they were. They
were going to make a separate pilgrimage. You know, long
before the Turk lusted in their heart for Constantinople or Vienna,
the Frank lusted in his heart.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
For Jerusalem once again.

Speaker 5 (08:17):
So true.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, so yeah, they they were making moves. They were disembarking.
They were disembarking from Taranto, God, which is I had
to say so many times so to myself beforehand, so
I didn't say Toronto. And uh, yeah, they were. They
were leaving from there because it was controlled by French

(08:38):
of five Viking Normans, and they were all going east
where they were going to either make their fortunes or
assure their salvation what have you.

Speaker 5 (08:49):
And I mean, I think it's I guess it's important
to also note here that the reason they are all
pointing in this direction is the Church has done a
great job of hyping them all up. You know, they've
all been attending the equivalent of the Nuremberg Rally. But
we're going to Jerusalem and they're ready. They're ready to rock.

(09:10):
They have their heartstuffed full of Christian propaganda, and they
are assured of victory.

Speaker 4 (09:17):
So this episode we're also going to be seeing what's
going on from the quote unquote other side, which was
a popular phrase in the nineties and two thousands, and Derek,
you're a resident expert on Islam here, So what's going on?
Who are the Seljuks, who are the Fatimids? How do
they fit into.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
This larger medieval story here?

Speaker 6 (09:38):
Yeah, the chaos of the Middle East is what will
someday be called the Middle East. I hate using that
term for this period, but regardless, the chaos of the
region is part of the reason why the First Crusade
is able to be successful. You've got competing caliphates. You've

(09:58):
got one of those caliphates, well, actually both of them
are pretty much in receivership at this point. They're under
protectorates from their secular helpers. But you've got the Abasids
in Baghdad. You've got the Fatimids in Egypt. The Abasids
have long since ceased to be a really going concern, right,

(10:22):
Like the Abasid Caliphate comes to power around seven to fifty,
the Abasid dynasty comes to power around seven to fifty.

Speaker 7 (10:27):
They get a good run, They get a good sort of.

Speaker 6 (10:32):
You know, one hundred and fifty ish years, maybe not
quite that long before the things starts to come apart. Like,
it's a very large caliphate. It extends all the way
from modern Morocco to Central Asia, and they can't hold
on to it territorially. They're civil wars that take place.
So it's a long story, but they start to lose

(10:55):
the cohesion of it, and you have groups that emerge,
especially in the East, Persians speaking groups that emerge and
sort of carve out. They start carving out their own
fiefdoms within the caliphate. This is always done is sort
of a fiction of you know, we respect the Caliph's
ultimate authority, but we're in charge in this particular place.

(11:16):
And sometimes you get appointed governors who wind up, you know,
kind of establishing their own little mini dynasties in these places.
Sometimes it's just a group that kind of plants his
flag and says we're here, and then the caliph will
go back and like retroactively say okay, well i'm I'll
appoint you the governor then, because that'll make everything nice
and official. So it's you know, somewhat somewhat fictional, but

(11:37):
they do start to lose control and in the big event,
the big kind of determining event in the loss of
Abacid power happens in nine forty five when a group
called the Buyids who are from kind of the southern
area around the Caspian Sea masaner on that region and

(11:58):
are Shia, so they're they're outside the sort of sunny mainstream,
you know, Khalifal kind of system. At this point, they
waltz into Baghdad and take over, like they take over
the place. They established themselves as viziers or kind of uh,
you know, co rulers in a sense, or like the

(12:19):
day to day managers of the caliphate on behalf of
the Abasids who are held in a sort of almost
captivity and the Bullards are really running the empire.

Speaker 7 (12:30):
And that's.

Speaker 6 (12:33):
You know, that's sort of the point at which it
becomes clear that the Abacids are no longer in control anymore.
The Seljuks come in, we can talk about them the
Selejectment about one hundred years later, and unseat the Bullods,
release the Avacid Calads from their horrid captivity at the
hands of these you know, Shia devils, but then basically

(12:54):
just impose the same system over the callus, like we're
we're really in charge, but we'll keep you around for
window dressing. The Fontomas are a different story, but they're
also a product of the breakdown in the cohesion of
the Bass Caliphate. They emerge, and we can go into
the whole Shia's story if you guys want, like the
you know, going all the way back to Ali, but they.

Speaker 4 (13:15):
Emerge it for people who might not know just briefly
obviously that could be yeah, no, we.

Speaker 6 (13:20):
Can't, like just to lay the groundwork like they emerge
in the early tenth century in North Africa overthrow a
dynasty of governors and what's known as Iraikia, which is
more or less kind of modern Tunisia with a bit
of western Libya and some other you know territory maybe

(13:41):
modern parts of madern Algeria thrown in. But they overthrow
the dynasty of governors that has established itself there and
set up their own independent caliphate which comes west or
comes east rather to Egypt and establishes itself in Egypt
and establish this actually the city of Cairo in nine

(14:03):
sixty nine, and that is another you know, in addition
to this sort of humiliating defeat or takeover by the
Buleids in Baghdad, the Abassids have to suffer the calmity
of losing like half the caliphate and one fell swoop
basically to the Fatimids. So that's where things sort of
stand at the end of the tenth century as we
start to get into the period we're talking about, and.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
What does Jerusalem actually look like in terms of governance
at this moment.

Speaker 6 (14:31):
At the moment the Crusaders come in. Luke alluded to
it earlier, what Jerusalem is tied very much to Egypt politically,
and that's the case for most of the Islamic period.
Whoever controls Egypt pretty much is likely to control Jerusalem.

(14:52):
So the Fontimids when they come through in nine sixty
nine and set themselves up in Egypt, they actually they
continue on like the goal is not to stop in Egypt.
The goal is to get to Bagdad and overthrow the
Abasids and establish themselves as the Caliphate.

Speaker 7 (15:06):
But they're stopped.

Speaker 6 (15:07):
They're stymied in Syria, but they have by this point
taken much of the Levant, including Jerusalem, so they hold
on to it until they hold on to about for
about one hundred years, until in the middle of a
real kind of dynastic breakdown, which we can talk about
where we talk about them in more detail.

Speaker 7 (15:29):
A group of.

Speaker 6 (15:30):
Turkic mercenaries, the Fotamens, were fond of hiring Turkic mercenaries
to supplement their Berber armies and their sub Saharan African
mercenaries that they would also hire. Those groups all started
to kind of operate independently of one another, and the Turks,
under a man named Atsis even Uwak, captured Jerusalem and

(15:55):
much of the Fontimid Levant in the late ten sixties
and ten seventy one, specifically in Jerusalem. They then turn around.
Atsis turned around and appealed to the Seljuks, who again
we can talk about in more detail, but he appealed
to the Celjects for support against the Fatimids. He had
by this point taken Damascus. He had taken a fairly

(16:18):
robust amount of territory, and the Seljuks supported him for
a while, but then decided it would just be easier
to kill him and take his land, which they did
in ten seventy nine. So it was briefly actually controlled
by the Seljuks, but as Luke said in his introduction,
with the Crusaders kind of coming into Anatolia and the

(16:39):
seljuks attention diverted to deal with that army, especially after Niceo,
and I think a lot of the illusions about how
easy it was going to be to deal with the
Franks were dissipated. The real ruler of the Fatima Caliphate
at this point, who was the Vizier of Vizier al Aftal,
gets this letter from the Byzantines like, hey, you might

(17:01):
be interested to know these things going on up north,
and this might be a good time for you to
do something about it. And he does send an army
to Jerusalem, and without a lot of fanfare, I think,
is able to take the city pretty quickly in ten
ninety eight, which is just in time for the Crusaders
to show up and take it away from him.

Speaker 4 (17:17):
So we're going to talk about a lot of different
characters in this episode. Do you want to maybe start
with the main content and get to the characters through there?
And I think the first thing to do would be
like what is Shia Islam? How does it arise and
how does it playing into this larger constellation of what

(17:38):
we call today religion. But you know that that's a
modern category that doesn't necessarily fit back into the period
we were talking about.

Speaker 6 (17:45):
Yeah, I mean the divergence starts right after the death.
I mean when I say right after, like in the
minutes after the deaths of Mohammad in six point thirty two,
there was very little preparation made. Although Mohammad had been
sick for a while prior to his death, there was
really no preparation made for a successor. And there were

(18:08):
a lot of different groups at Medina when he died,
who I think had their own ideas about what we're
supposed to do, like should we all just kind of
break up into our own because these there were different constituencies.
There were the people who had come with him from
Mecca to Medina. There were the people who were already
in Medina who had invited him to come there and
kind of be their judge or you know, administrator. There

(18:34):
were all the Arab tribes that he had successfully won
over to this new faith that he was building over
the course of his preaching career. There were the Meccans
who had only finally come around, you know, a couple
of years previously, when Muhammad marched his army to Mecca
and the city gave up and had finally sort of

(18:55):
converted to the cause. So there was a lot of
different kind of disparate groups here. There are questions about
like should we all stay together, is this one community
or is it a bunch of different communities who all
have our own you know, ties, unique ties to Mohammed
and we can all just kind of go our separate ways.
And there was what the sources say is there was
this back room deal that was cut basically between two

(19:18):
of Mohammad's longest standing followers, a man named Abu Baker,
who was his best friend, kind of right hand as
he was, you know, for most of his life, who
kind of worked things out with another man named Omar,
who was another zealous convert from Mecca to put forward
Abu Baker, who everybody seemed to sort of like he

(19:39):
was appealing to all these different factions as the successor,
and like, we're all going to stay together, We're going
to be, you know, under this successor who would be
called a caliph, regent or, successor means different things. And
so they kind of worked this out in the back
room and then went out and said, hey, here we go. Mohammed,
Sorry about that, bummer, but here's no I don't mean

(20:01):
to be disrespectful, I guess, but like you know, we're
all in shock. We're all very upset about this. But
here's the guy who's going to take over. We've got
a plan in place, which they really hadn't had to
that point, but convinced everybody that Abu Baker was the guy.
But there was another faction that was had formed around Ali,
who was the son in law of Mohammad and his cousin,

(20:23):
had married his daughter Fatima and was believed to be
sort of the rightful successor.

Speaker 7 (20:28):
She point to. There are.

Speaker 6 (20:33):
Parts of the hadith that that in parts of Shia
Hadeth where they point to his sermons that Mohammed gave
where he seemed to point to Ali as his rightful successor.
And they have other kind of pieces of evidence that
get brought up at the notion that that Ali should
be the guy who is in charge, and there's a

(20:53):
little battle, actually there's a little like violent encounter at
Ali's house and things don't go very well. But eventually
Ali is made to kind of acquiesce to the accession
of Abo Backer and that starts us down the road
to all the fun that will come around later. She
is Is as a dissident movement, is prone to dissident

(21:18):
movements breaking off from it and branching out. The line
that eventually becomes the or feeds the Fatimid Caliphate is
known as the Ismaili Shia tradition, and basically people are
probably most familiar with what's known as the twelver Shia tradition,

(21:38):
which is the predominant one today. It's the religion of Iran.
The Ismailis and the Twelvers kind of stay on the
same track through the first six im moms, and the
imams are the leaders of the community. So Ali, then
his son Hassan, his son Hussein. They follow this line

(22:00):
through six im moms to a man named Jaffar a
Sadek who died in seven sixty five. And Jaffar, according
to the ismailis appointed his son, his eldest son, Ismail,
as his successor.

Speaker 7 (22:15):
The problem with this is.

Speaker 6 (22:16):
That Ismail died before joffer did, or at least it's
we think he did, and so when Jaffar then died,
there was a question of, like what do we do, Like,
who's supposed to be the leader now? Could couldn't a
mom mistakenly have you know, designated as a successor somebody

(22:36):
who was going to die before him, Would you know,
God allow such a thing to happen? And so his
followers kind of fragmented along these lines. There was one
group that said, actually, Ismail's not dead. He they faked
his death to uh, you know, evade the abassad authorities
because he was a little politically active and you know,
they didn't want him to get in trouble. So he's

(22:56):
really still alive and he's in hiding. So that faction
sort of went off and followed Ismael. Others coalesced eventually
around a man named Mussel Kusum, who is considered to
be the seventh Imam.

Speaker 7 (23:07):
By the twelve Verse.

Speaker 6 (23:10):
But the group that followed Ismail eventually in seven seventy five,
after they acknowledged that he had died. You know, I
guess he really died in seven seventy five, not before.

Speaker 7 (23:25):
His father.

Speaker 6 (23:28):
Followed his son, whose name was Mohammed even Ismail, and
he lived until sometime in the late seven nineties. We
don't really know exactly when, partly because this is another
point of divergence. One branch of the Ismaelis believes that
he didn't die, or at the time, believe that he

(23:49):
didn't die. He was taken into what's known as occultation
with God. He would come again, you know, at the
end of days as the Maki, they're known as seven ers.
That is, as far as I know, an extinct line.
Then there was another group that sort of went into
hiding and developed a network of preachers, a network of missionaries.

(24:11):
They really pioneered a lot of Islamic missionary work. The
institution was called the Dawa and the individual missionaries called dais.
And they start spreading the message of Mohammad even Ismail
as he's in occultation and you know, needs people, needs
needs followers to kind of preach the message and attract

(24:33):
more people to it. This is again sort of a
symptom of the slow breakdown of abast power that these
missionaries are able to function all across the Islamic world.
You've got them in North Africa, You've got them in
like Asia and Central Asia and South Asia, like all
of these, you know, all over the place where Abassad
authorities just couldn't couldn't get.

Speaker 7 (24:54):
A lit on it.

Speaker 6 (24:56):
In around nine hundred ish, the Grand Master of the
Order of Missionaries, who's a man named Abu Muhammad Abdallah
imanel Hussein, announces to his followers that actually, in fact,
we're not just missionaries. I'm not just the grand master
of this missionary movement. I am the descendant of Mohammed

(25:19):
ibn Ismail. And this man that you think has gone
into occultation has not gone into occultation. He's had he died,
and his sons, his descendants, have followed him all this
time in hiding, kind of concealing ourselves under this title
of grand Master. And actually I'm the rightful Imam of
the Ismaili movement, which of course causes another fracture. Some

(25:40):
people don't believe him. Some people would go along with it,
but he changes his name. He adopts the regal name
of al Mahti Bellah, and he is the first Fatimid leader,
the first Fatimid imam eventually.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
Calap So that's one side of the equation.

Speaker 4 (25:57):
And now we have the Celtjuks, who were the Seljuks,
and how do they relate to the Fatimits.

Speaker 6 (26:04):
The Seljuks come along, really get their origins in sort
of the late tenth century, and they emerge out of
the Ogas Turkic tradition. Anybody who's familiar with the Ottomans
will know who the Ogos are. They're sort of a
branch of the Turkic people of Central Asia who trace

(26:25):
their origins back to this mythical figure Ogos, and the
Seljuks descend from a man named Seljuk. They're really a
ruling dynasty rather than a particular ethnicity or a particular tribe.
But he led his he leads his people. This man
named Seljuk leads his people to the Ettuin area around

(26:47):
the sir Darya River, which was at the time known
as the Jack Sartis to the Europeans, and around nine
to eighty five they're converted to Islam by a group
called the Samani, who are a Persian speaking group. One
of these groups that I was talking about earlier who
emerge as the Abacids rather lose control of the frontiers

(27:10):
of the empire. The Samanids are very important in the
re emergence of Persian as a language as a culture
within the Caliphate, and so the not only do they
convert the Celjics to Islam, they also heavily persianize them.
Persian is the language of court and really the sort
of centerpiece of the culture is very Persianate in the

(27:33):
Celgic period. The Samanids don't last much longer after this
sort of yeah, you know, after they do this sort
of conversion work in the in Central Asia that in
the late tenth century and by the ten thirties, really

(27:54):
the Seljuks have emerged under a pair of brothers named
Tugril the First and Chagri, who are grandsons of Seljuk
of Seljuk the Founder, and they they supplant or drive
off another group known as the Goaznovids, who had succeeded
kind of kind of taken a lot of territory away

(28:14):
from the Samanids, drove them off, drove the Goaznovids more
toward India kind of South Asia, and established the Seljuks
as a power in sort of Central Asia, and then
moving into eastern Iran by ten fifty five, as I said,
they've entered Baghdad, they have overthrown the hated buoyads, liberated

(28:39):
the callous, and then said, but by the way, you're
you know, you're still just like the house pet. You're
not really you know, you guys aren't really in charge
of anything. And they take the title sultan and they
rule a fairly robust empire that it starts to come apart, Doun.

(29:00):
The time of the Battle of Mans occurred a little
bit after, and we can talk about that. But for
a time they rule a pretty vast empire that runs
all the way from Syria in the west through Iran
kind of the extent of modern Iran into Central Asia.
So it's pretty big territory that they're able to amass.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
Well, Derek, I know that.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
One group that really gets overlooked here with the Seljuks
is the Sultanate of Rum, which broke off from them
in ten seventy seven. I guess I've seen it described
as they seceded, so, you know, and took Anatoly with them.
So what was the Sultanate of Rum? And you know,

(29:46):
how do they really differ from the Seljuks. It seems
like a bunch of you know, a bunch of Turkic
horse riders. You know, they are just kind of riding around.

Speaker 6 (29:55):
They're all just a familieu, right, So I mean you
have to get them through through as occurrent and what
happens after the deaths of Chagri his son alp Arslan,
the kind of can test the succession with a few
other claimants part of it. There's like a recurring feature
with these Turkic groups that like every time a sultan dies,

(30:18):
you've got like three or four guys. They are a
couple of sons, maybe a brother, maybe an uncle. You know,
there's a whole array of people because there's not a
clear there's not a clear tradition of like the eldest
son or you know, particular son inherits, so there's always somebody,
you know, kind of contesting the succession. Alp Arslan wins
this succession fight after the death of Chaghri in it

(30:40):
becomes sultan in ten sixty four and then starts to
campaign in the Caucuses. Now for thee for the Celjuks,
the big problem at this point was the Fatamens, and
we can maybe get back to the Fatimids at some
point and talk about what they were doing after the
emergence of al Mati.

Speaker 7 (30:58):
But the.

Speaker 6 (31:03):
Real issue for them was dealing with the Fontamtz. But
the Buzantines were related to that or the Byzantine Empire,
and you know, it's sort of activities and the caucauses.
The Byzantines and the Fontamens were on pretty good terms,
so there was this sense that you had to deal
with both of them, or that if you you know,
kind of marched off to the Levant to deal with
the celjects, that the Byzantines would attack from the rear,

(31:25):
and it was, you know, it was a problem that
the Celjics had to worry about. So he starts campaigning
and the caucases and then crosses over into Anatolia and
you get the Battle of Mansukhurt in ten seventy one,
which I think we'll talk more about next time from
the Byzantine side.

Speaker 7 (31:42):
But I think it's somewhat.

Speaker 6 (31:45):
Important to note that this was not like a planned
invasion colonization of Anatolia, at least it doesn't seem like it.
This was meant to be a campaign through Byzantine territory
to kind of you know, shut them off to the
side while you deal with the bigger enemy. It was
what happened after Man' occurred on the Byzantine side, and

(32:07):
this sort of breakdown of the empire that allowed the Turks,
the Seljuks to sort of bring you know, a lot
of tribes in and the families come with them, and
this is all you know, it all becomes sort of
a migration onto the Anatolian plateau, at which point things
start to break up. And the reason I say this
wasn't like a coherent plan to to like take and

(32:29):
hold this region is because what happens is a bunch
of different, like little piddling little principalities wind up forming.
Like everybody goes and establishes their own little little kingdom,
and the Seljects are okay with this, Like as long
as everybody sort of pays homage to the Seljuk sultan,
you know in Baghdad extensively and Bagdat is usually on campaign.
But as long as everybody sort of pays homage to this,

(32:52):
to the sultan, and you know, pays their their taxes
whatever they're they're they're okay with this. The Seljuks for
a time are able to make this work as a
coherent state. And the reason that they're able to do
that is because of one of the most remarkable figures
I think in Islamic history, man named Isamil Mulk, who
was the vizir under alp Arslan and his son malekshaw I.

(33:18):
He was vizier until ten ninety two and de facto
really like co ruler of the empires of Persian bureaucrat,
not a man of the sword, but you know, somebody
who was very good at state craft. He wrote a
book called the sat Name, which is regarded as the
finest example of kind of Islamic state craft, you know,

(33:39):
the sort of documenting this and was writing it to
the Seljuk Sultan's like, hey, you know, you might be
or the princelings right like, you might be a ruler someday.
Here's how to act. So he's able to build a
state that really holds together very cohesively. But in this
milieu in Anatolia, one another branch of the Seljk family,

(34:04):
which was you know, lost one of these battles to
be you know, to kind of rule the whole thing
and slunk off to Anatolia to hide out under a
man named sule Mahan Suliman Kotalmish, who's the guy who
had contested and lost the throne. He kind of SLINKs
off into Anatolia to hide and eventually accumulates a bit

(34:25):
of a principality around himself that again functions within this
this system. But you know, in like ten seventy seven,
you know, late ten seventies, this is when this principality emerges,
but still functions within the great Seljic Empires is sort
of you know, subordinate, a subordinate principality. Ultimately, it's not
until the ten nineties after Niazama Mulk dies, he's assassinated,

(34:49):
probably by the assassins, you know, another branch in the
the Ismaele's we can talk about them, but probably you know,
he dies, and the the whole thing starts to come apart.
Like he's clearly the guy who was holding the empire
together in an administrative sense, and it's at that point

(35:10):
that the Sultanate of Room really starts to emerge as
an independent thing under a man named Killage Arslan, the
first who was I think Silliman's Sun had been held.
You know, there had been some some you know, clashes
between the Celjoics of Room and the Celjus of the
Great Empire, and he he had wound up being a

(35:32):
hostage of the Shah. But you know, after Malik Shaw,
after Nizamamulk dies ten ninety two, and then Malikshaw, the
Sultan died. Shortly after that, killoge Arslan is released. He
emerges in Anatolia as the ruler of this clearly independent
now principality of the Sultanate of Room, and then from

(35:54):
there they go on to try to consolidate control over Anatolia,
which there's is something they're still doing when the Crusaders
turn up. Like these principalities that emerged after Mansukkurtle, some
of them are still there and still challenging the Seljuks
for control. There's one called the Danish Men's who wind
up playing a somewhat tangential role in the Crusades. But

(36:16):
there's still a going concern at this point. So the
Celjics haven't managed to haven't consolidated Anatolia fully yet, Derek.

Speaker 5 (36:26):
One of the things that strikes me here, and I
think that we get it from two varying sides of
the historiography. Is that there's a tendency from people in
the global North and you know, let's be real white
people to kind of think about Muslims at this point
as being this unified whole. Right, there's this other that

(36:50):
is sitting over you know, quote unquote the Middle East,
and then you've got like the Christians, who, you know,
you can have all kinds of different flavors, you know,
you can have Franks or English or a time, but
then there's just like these Muslim hordes over there. And
sometimes that comes to us, I think from a really
negative position like anti Islam, like really kind of white supremacist,

(37:12):
but it also comes to us from well meaning people
like I see people who are attempting to fight against
what they see as kind of a European supremacist worldview
by saying, oh, well, what about the Islamic Golden Age
and wasn't everything great going on over there? But when
you actually look at it, you're having exactly the same
issues that Europeans are having. Is you've got a bunch

(37:32):
of white guys kind of rolling around in the dirt
and Europe and you've got the same thing happening over
in Asia. You know that you've got people who are
squabbling there. There's no unified front here, and so people
have this tendency to say, oh, well, there's these issues
with Muslims. But I mean, really, here the Europeans are
experiencing problems with the Celjuks, but they're also experiencing white

(37:54):
problems with the Fatinids. Can you tell us a little
bit more about the Fatmins in all of this?

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Right?

Speaker 6 (38:00):
So, I mean we got to the point where the
Caliphate sort of emerges in North Africa because Mathi at
this point has been chased by the Abbasids all the
way out to Morocco. He's like taking refuge in Morocco,
but his missionaries are still out there, the ones who
haven't split. I think, like the history of the Fountain
Is itself shows that, like these guys were always splitting

(38:23):
off from each other and like fighting with each other
because they couldn't agree on who was the rightful ruler,
who was the rightful of mom and all these you know,
other things. But he's sort of hiding out on Matthey's
sort of hiding out in Morocco. His missionaries are still
doing some work. There's one in particular's name is Abu
a de La She who does a tremendous job converting

(38:47):
Berbers in North Africa, one particular tribe known as the Kutama.
He's able to bring them into the fold, and they're
very large, very potent militarily. Try that is able, as
I said, to conquer the prominence of Ifrikia from its governors.
A dynasty known as the Aghla bids in nine o nine.

(39:12):
Within the next year, Abu Abdullah She has gone to
Morocco and sort of brought al Mati out of his
cocoon or his safe house in Morocco and carded him
to Ifrikiya, to the city of Cairowan eventually, I think,

(39:35):
and puts him on the throne, makes him the caliph.
The first pretty much the first thing Almati does is
he has Abu Abdullah She put to death because he's
that becomes a threat to the throne, which is another
common thing that happens a lot of times with the
abassadors did the same thing. They had a guy named
Abu Muslim who was sort of their chief representative and

(39:57):
leader of their army. As they were rebelling, and Steve
Mayad's pretty much the first thing they did when they
took power was put him to death because he was
a potential threat to the monarchy. So this is not
a this is the thing that repeats. It's sort of
a pattern. But they they take power, Matti takes power.
As I said, they eventually come east and re establish

(40:18):
the center of their caliphate in Cairo, if they found
the city of Cairo. But they take Egypt in nine
sixty nine and then are stymied in their invasion of Sirius.
They're attempting to get to Baghdad. They go to war
with the Seljuks because this is an ongoing militant military frontier,
like this is an ongoing concern. At one point in

(40:41):
the late ten fifties, like ten to fifty eight, they
get they're so successful that briefly they're actually able to
have the Hootbow, which is the Friday sermon read out
in the name of the Fotimid Imam or the Fatimid
Caliph in Baghdad. So they're that successful. The Seljuks quickly
to put an end to that, and about a year

(41:01):
later come back in and retake Bagdad, and everything goes
sort of back to the way it was. But it's
interesting that they're so successful in this because at the
same time, like the central node of the Fatima Caliphate
is starting to decline. It starts to decline really with
the accession of a caliph named almostancer Bela in ten

(41:24):
thirty six, because he's only seven years old when he
takes the throne, and so as a seven year old,
probably not the most effective leader, right, So there's a
lot of room at that point for bureaucrats, for anybody
tangentially related generals, anybody with a high position at court.

(41:45):
There's a lot of room for them to kind of
muck around, and you get a lot of factionalism that
emerges during the reign of Almustanzer that winds up costing
the Caliphate a bunch of its territory. They lose much
of North Africa. They lose Sicily, which they had held
as part of you know, having taken North Africa from

(42:07):
the Aglobitz. Syria came along with that. They lose that
to the Normans. As we talked about last time, they
really start to struggle with a there's a rivalry that
emerges between the Turks and the Berbers in the Fontomen
military and eventually Almostansera points an Armenian general, a guy

(42:27):
named Badra al Jamali, as his vizier to kind of
put an end to all of this infighting. He's bad
Jamali's operating in the Levan. He brings him back to
Cairo and installs him as as the vizier, and from
that point onward, the viziers really become the power of

(42:48):
the more powerful figure. The calypse are more kind of figureheads.
The viziers are really running the show, and they, you
know again, kind of continue this conflict with cells. Badar
is eventually succeeded by his son al Afdal, who Luke
mentioned earlier in ten ninety four. This sparks another splintering

(43:10):
of the dynasty. Al Afdal decides when al must Stancer
finally dies shortly after he takes takes power as vizier.
Al Mustencer is very old at this point, finally passes away,
decides that while the succession should probably fall to Almustancer's
older son, Nizar, Nazzar is not going to be as

(43:33):
easy to control as the very young child son, a
man named al Musta Ali, so he puts al Mustali
on the throne. Nizzar rebels. He's eventually killed, but his
followers of coalesce into another movement, leave the fat Macaliphate,
move into Iran and the Levant under a man named

(43:53):
Hassani Sabah. They take a capture of fortress at Alamu.
These are the assassins that the Nazar. Sorry it's my
eleague branch that survives to the present day. If you
just read, you know, just heard about the passing of
the aga khon that that's the same movement. But they
established themselves as what become known as the Assassins and

(44:16):
do take their rage out let's say on the cell
j just for example, on you know, sometimes on the Crusaders,
although the Crusaders get very savvy about hiring them to
do some of their dirty work for them. So it's
a little bit more of a complicated relationship.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
So now I think we should probably move into talking
about you know, we talked about it a little bit before,
but talking about Jerusalem and why it is important, why
it is important in Islam, and you know.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
What the status of the city was.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Either, you know, when the crusaders arrive, when they start going,
whether it's under the seljoux of the Fatomids. So, you know, Derek,
what is the importance of the city of Jerusalem in Islam?
Why do they why do they attach such significance to it.

Speaker 6 (45:17):
I mean, it's important because it's the place where the
Hebrew Scriptures happen, right, It's the place where Jesus happens.
It's important for all the same reasons that it's important
to the Europeans, because Islam couches itself in that tradition
as the next you know, Muhammad is the next prophet
in this tradition of prophets that go all the way
back to the Hebrew Scriptures. So it's important because all

(45:41):
these people kind of you know, lived or worked or
functioned in some way in the orbit of this city Jerusalem.
There are mentions of what is generally regarded to be
Jerusalem in the Qur'an. There's particular in particular the story
of Muhammad's night journey, in which he was carried off

(46:03):
on a winged horse by the angel, the archangel Gabriel
to Jerusalem. The actual saying is to the farthest mosque,
which is taken to mean the Temple mount or Alexa
today the Alexa Mosque, and you know, it's sort of
carried off. He sees the city, and then he's carried

(46:24):
up into heaven where he meets with you. At each
level of the heavens, he meets with a different prophet
of old and then eventually talks to God. I love
this story because there's like, there's this it's it's like
a funny part, you know, not to to make light,
but there's this part of the story where he finally

(46:45):
gets you know, he makes his way up through the
heavens and he's talked to Jesus, He's talked to Moses,
he's talked to Abraham, and finally he talks to God
and they're sort of discussing, you know, what should this,
you know, new faith look like that You're you're telling
me to preach to people?

Speaker 7 (46:59):
What are the tales?

Speaker 6 (47:00):
And at one point he asks God how many times
should should Muslims pray? Or how many times should my
followers pray a day? And God says fifty times, and
he they says, okay, fifty times, and he gets sent
back down to Earth where Moses happens to be there.
And Moses said, well, what did God tell you, and
Muhammad says, he told it. He told me we should
pray fifty times a day. And Moses like, are you nuts?

(47:22):
People aren't going to pray fifty times a day.

Speaker 7 (47:24):
You can't.

Speaker 6 (47:24):
You got to go back up there and tell him, no,
fifty times, it's way too many. And this happens like
over and over again. He gets a different number from God.
It goes back down and Moses like, yeah, that's crazy.
Nobody's going to pray that many times. You can't do it.
Go back and finally they whittle it down to the
five times of prayer. This is how we get to
the five prayer times of the day. And I always

(47:45):
love that story. But we also know, aside from the Koran,
aside from you know, the early hadith and the saying
so Muhammad, we know that Jerusalem was important because it
was the direction of prayer prior to Mecca. So there
was a point at which Muhammad, while he was in Medina,

(48:05):
and this is in the Qoran, was told to change
the direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca. There is
a passage in the Koran where he preaches this. There
is also there are also mosques. There's one in Medina.
There's one in the Horn of Africa. I believe that
those may be the only two, but there are at
least two of them, very old mosques that have two

(48:30):
directions of prayer. Basically, they're called kibla, so they're called
masada kiblatin, which means two Kibla's Arabic has a dual form,
and you know, one goes in the direction of Jerusalem,
the other one goes in the direction of Mecca. So
we know that this was a thing because there's physical
evidence of it. So clearly Jerusalem had kind of pride

(48:51):
of place in this religion. And the reason for the
change of direction is tied up in sort of Mohammed's
struggles with the Jewish communities and Medea, they didn't accept
him as a prophet. It was very got very heated.
Then of course, the Arab armies captured Jerusalem. They take
Jerusalem from the Byzantines in six thirty eight, around the

(49:15):
sort of the sixth nineties, the late seventh century, the
Caliph Abdomatic, the Omaya Caliph Abdomanic builds. The structure is
still there today, the dome of the Rock, which is
supposed to encase and house, the stone that Muhammad stood
upon before he was lifted up in heaven, which I

(49:35):
think also has some significance as far as that rock
is believed to have some significance as far as the
Old Temple is concerned. But the Dome of the Rock
is an interesting structure. It's not a mosque, but it
does contain some religious messages inscribed on the walls, some
of the earliest references to God not having a son,

(49:56):
so a clear division with Christianity.

Speaker 5 (50:00):
UH.

Speaker 6 (50:00):
That that is interesting. It's interesting that this is where
they appear. But it's, you know, a very important sight,
regarded as the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca
and Medina Medina because the prophet lived there and died there.
So yeah, it's it's It's definitely got a hefty amount

(50:21):
of weight as far as Muslims are concerned.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
I would also add that the the Dome on the Rock,
in addition to being important to UH, for Jews for
their own reasons similar to UH to those in Islam. UH,
it is extremely important to a lot of pre millenarian
UH evangelical Christians that the Jews hold the Dome on

(50:47):
the Rock.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Because of UH.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
Some passage in the Book of Revelation, blah blah blah,
the end Times, the you know, if you've ever heard
of you know, if you know, I ever heard the
Left Behind series and all that, it's it's all kind
of falling off of that. So yeah, it's it's really
important to various for various Yeah, I mean, like the

(51:12):
building of the Temple, right, the rebuilding of the Temple
is important for Jewish, you know, since or Jewish some
Jewish groups, but it's also important for Christians except at
the end of it, like the Jews will all, you
know die basically if they don't.

Speaker 6 (51:26):
Accept Jesus double edged thing, but the Temple so that
they can all, you know, eventually face their fate.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
I mean that was like when I when I was
an evangelical growing up, the reads, Like the thing was that,
like the evangelicals that believed in like the rapture and
stuff like that, Like the moment that they rebuilt the
temple on the rock, Jesus is coming back and you
know that's that like the second the final stone is laid,
you know that's happening, and so like that was the

(51:56):
dry that was. I think it's a lot more crass now,
but that was a driving effort and driving ethos for
why so many conservative Christians in America, you know, supported
Israel to such a degree because you know, they think
that they you know, it's anti Semitic, but you know,

(52:16):
they need to They need the Jews to take it
back over so that Jesus can come back and kill
all their enemies.

Speaker 5 (52:24):
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, I mean, and this certainly exists
within medieval Christianity as well, and indeed it is part
of anti Christ exit Jesus. So the idea is that
it's going to be Antichrist himself who has the temple
rebuilt and has himself worshiped within it, which is going
to rile Jesus up. Jesus is going to come back.

(52:48):
So you know, yeah, it's it's an important place for
any number of reasons. Bonkers and otherwise I think we
could all agree, you.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
Know, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's pretty wild. So you know, uh,
Derek talked about it a little earlier. But control of
the city we talked about, you know, the Fatimids conquered
it after Egypt, and then it was you know, Derek,

(53:18):
I believe you said some Turkic mercenaries took it and
they were like, hey, uh hey, seljuks, you guys want
to come hang out?

Speaker 2 (53:26):
That'd be really.

Speaker 6 (53:27):
Cool, right, Yeah, I mean when the pantomists were like,
you know, hey, we want that back, they sort of
turned to the Seljuks and said, can you help us out?
You know, help a brother out. I mean, Turkic mercenaries
were a nuisance for much of this period. Like there's
the the Abassaid captivity at Samorrow, which takes place in

(53:47):
the ninth century where their Turkish soldiers basically just like
held the Caliphs hostage in the city of Samaraw for
for decades and really was one of the things that
caused the Abasads to start to lose con roll over
their empire. But yes, this is just like the importation
of these these folks as slave soldiers mostly or higher mercenaries,

(54:10):
depending on where you were at any given time, but
they tended to assert themselves in political ways that were
not always so great for the people who had brought
them in.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (54:21):
Yeah, I mean, do you want ottomans because this is
how you get ottomans?

Speaker 7 (54:25):
Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
It's trouble.

Speaker 5 (54:27):
It's trouble.

Speaker 7 (54:30):
There's there's two waves of this, right.

Speaker 6 (54:31):
There's the wave that's pulled in either as slave soldiers
and taking as slaves and kind of brought into the
system that way or purchased, you know, hired as mercenaries
and brought in that way. There's a wave that comes
with the Seljuks as sort of it's like an invasion
slash migration of Turkic peoples into the region. But the
big wave, the wave that the Ottomans ride, really is

(54:54):
the one that comes along in the middle of the
thirteenth century, which is in the like ahead of Mongols,
like the Mongols are coming and we're trying to get
out of the way and sorry, we're coming through because
we've got to get out of the way of these people.
And that's that's when you get a lot of groups
that wind up, especially on the fringes of what was
at that point the Islamic world, like the Ottomans, who

(55:16):
wind up, you know, on the basically the doorstep of
Constantinople are are part of that wave.

Speaker 5 (55:23):
I guess I've got a question for you here, Derek
as well, because one of the big cause of Belli
for the crusades here, you know, Obviously, there's just the
whole crew decorps. Retake the Holy Land is something something,
Jesus something something. Obviously there are the Byzantines who are saying,

(55:47):
please come help us because we need it. But also
one of the things that gets noted very often in
Western Europe is they say the new rulers Jerusalem are
persecuting Christians, and they say that, you know, everyone who's
trying to go on pilgrimage, which are still a lot

(56:07):
of people, are being a torture, They're having their goods stolen.
There are rumors that the priests at the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher have been massacred. There are all these
implications that there are there's violence being meted out on
Christians by the rulers at this time. Do we see

(56:29):
any indication of that from the Muslim side?

Speaker 6 (56:34):
The big event here, I think is the destruction of
the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Right, I mean, I'm
sure there are liberties being taken with pilgrims. I'm not
sure it's an official policy by anybody to take liberties
with pilgrims. But of course you've got you know, people,
you know waylaying pilgrims, you know, taking their goods, treating

(56:56):
them badly like that. That seems part and parcel of
any kind of uh like a lot of lawlessness.

Speaker 7 (57:04):
Right.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Yeah, that happened when they were going on pilgrimage in
Europe too, bands for a problem everywhere.

Speaker 6 (57:09):
Yeah, right, So I don't know that there's official policy
about that, but the breakdown certainly of what had been
you know, when the Abacids were powerful, had been sort
of a coherent empire, you get you get that replaced
with a frontier between the Fotomens, the Fatimid controlled territories,

(57:30):
and the Celgia controlled territories, which winds up breaking up
into a lot of different kind of dominions domains. I guess,
you know, everybody's got you know, each a mear's got
his own city. They don't always get along with each other.
Sometimes they fight with each other. It creates I think
a sense of just general generalized kind of local violence

(57:51):
and uh you know, kind of loss of order. So
I don't doubt that that there was it things got
more treacherous for pilgrims going through this region. But that said,
I think a lot of it has to do with
the destruction of the church or the Holy Sepulcher in
ten o nine. And this is the result of one guy,
basically the fat Caliph at the time Alamallah, who uh

(58:15):
there was not something not.

Speaker 7 (58:17):
Right with this guy.

Speaker 6 (58:18):
I mean, like, you know, nobody likes to diagnose people
with the with issues, you know from this great historical remove.

Speaker 7 (58:26):
But he was.

Speaker 6 (58:27):
He was definitely a capricious, capricious ruler. He's very important.
He's important, particularly in the rise of the Druze faith.
He was like the central figure for drus as they
were emerging, and there was one branch of the faith
that actually, you know, or there's sort of coalesced around

(58:48):
the idea that al Hackam was the incarnation of God,
which al Hackem himself seems to have been uncomfortable with.
He preferred to think of himself as you know, the
chief emissary of God on earth or the appointed kind
of uh you know, regent of God, but not as
God himself. That's a bit, you know, that's yeah, yeah,
you know, I mean, you can want to go so

(59:08):
far here. The modesty is is still still important. So
he's very important in that regard. But but he's known
in this context for having wildly shifted his policies toward
religious I want to say minorities, although this includes Sunnis,
and Sunnis were always the majority population wise in Egypt

(59:32):
under the Fatimids. They were a Shia dynasty, but they
ruled over a majority Sunni population. But they were still
you know, the Sunnis were still regarded as as you know,
not part of the official religion of the caliphates, so
you know, the official kind of religious direction of the Caliphate.

Speaker 5 (59:48):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (59:48):
So they're they're.

Speaker 6 (59:49):
Included here like his treatment of non Shia basically, and
and this goes through the historians who study the Fatimids
will divide this to basically three periods. There's there's an
initial period. Al Hakim becomes caliph in around nine to
ninety six at a very young age. For the for

(01:00:11):
the first decade or so, he's mostly under the control
of regents. You know, he's not ruling in his own
right very much. And and there's a general sense of
tolerance for non Shia face and particularly for non Muslim face.

Speaker 7 (01:00:27):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:00:27):
There are some considerations like you have to wear you know,
special indications that you're a Christian or a Jew. You
have to pay obviously the the the Jizy attacks, which
is incumbent upon all non Muslim peoples living under a
Muslim rule at this point, but generally speaking they're allowed
to do sort of what they want. As you get closer,

(01:00:50):
you get more, i mean deeper into the the one thousands,
like ten oh four, ten oh five, and Al Hakim
starts to come out of this shell that he's in
and ruling, starts ruling his own right more and more
you see things creeping in where he starts to ban holidays,
He starts to ban religious Christian holidays. He bans the

(01:01:11):
use of wine and religious services, which is a big
blow to Christians and Jews or bands wine in general,
not just in religious services, just bans it in general.
And you know, you see more indications that, like, you know,
we have to set these people apart. So it's not
just a little thing that maybe somebody has to wear.
You've got to wear like, you know, completely different, like

(01:01:32):
your entire outfit almost is picked out for you if
you're a Christian, like what you have to wear every
day to identify yourself. So it becomes more kind of strident.
Then we get into what historians regard as the second
period in his caliphate, which runs from like ten six
or so through the middle of the ten tens, ten twelve,

(01:01:56):
ten thirteen, where he's just outright hostile, not so much
to Sony streats, Sonny's pretty well, but outright hostile to
Jews and Christians. And it's at that period that he
orders the destruction of synagogues and churches throughout the Fatimid realm.
And the one that sticks obviously in the European consciousness

(01:02:18):
is the Church of the Holy Supulcal because the sits
on the site of Jesus crucifixion and his tomb is,
you know, one of the holiest places for pilgrimage in Christendom.
There's a legend that that al Hackamu went to the
church for I think it was the Epiphany. I can't

(01:02:40):
remember when there was. There's this miracle, you know, quote
unquote miracle that the priests used to do in the
Church of the Holy Sepulcher around Epiphany where they would
like the fire, some fire would descend and it would
look like they were calling down the Holy Spirit. And
al Hackem supposedly kind of observed this and figured out
how they did it like how they did it. Got
so angry that he felt like they were playing a

(01:03:02):
trick on the worshippers that he, like in a rage,
was like destroyed, you know, to tear this place down.
This is you know, bullshit. I can't tolerate this. I mean,
I think it was more just a part of this
kind of coming out. You know, he was feeling his oats.
Really he was ruling in his own rights and felt
like historians have speculated, like why why did this sudden shift,

(01:03:23):
Like why did he go so far you know over
to like you know, persecuting Christians and Jews eventually even
ordering like forced conversions, and then yanked back again like
came back. There was a third period after like ten twelve,
ten thirteen, up until his disappearance in ten twenty one,
where he like allowed anybody who had forcibly been forcibly

(01:03:44):
converted to go back to their old faiths, which is
you know, supposed to be apostasy, You're supposed to be
put to deaths for that in Islam, allowed that to
take place, like ordered the rebuilding of all the churches
that he had you know, torn down just like this
very like the arbitrary shift in and his stories are
speculated like maybe his mother was Christian. Maybe he felt

(01:04:05):
like he had to make some demonstration that he was
not Christian meanings he had.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
To like after all that, after all that time, he
was like, oh wait, mom's Christian maybe maybe.

Speaker 6 (01:04:18):
Or like or you know, there was some other thing
that he felt like he needed to demonstrate that he
was a good you know, Muslim to to you know,
persecute the Christians and Jews, uh, to make some kind
of bonafide statement about his adherence to the faith. And
then he like forgot about it or something, or like
you know, just changed his mind. And this is I mean,
this is where you get some of the speculation that

(01:04:40):
he was maybe not well, not like a well person,
and and there are other things like you know, he
at one point we're told that like he he got mad.

Speaker 7 (01:04:49):
He like one night he heard a.

Speaker 6 (01:04:51):
Lot of dogs barking in the city and he ordered
like every dog in Cairo killed because it pissed him
off so much. Like just some some very strange kind
of decisions that were made while A. Hacken was in charge.
He disappeared in ten twenty one and like went out
for a ride. He was known for like just going
out at night and kind of going for these solitary

(01:05:14):
rides to you know, to be on his own, and
one night he never came back, probably was murdered, although
for the Drews, I think the belief is that he
was taken up to be with God and occultation, which
is a recurring theme also.

Speaker 7 (01:05:30):
So yeah, you.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Know, I like so so you know, you don't know
what what.

Speaker 7 (01:05:36):
Was going on here?

Speaker 6 (01:05:37):
Really, like why he made these kind of drastic policy decisions,
why he you know, made these wild shifts and policy
you know, the second this second period, he was very
nice to Sonny. He's very nasty to Christians and Jews.
Then in this the third period, like towards the end
of the last you know, nine or ten years of

(01:05:57):
his reign, he was better utter with Christians and Jews,
pretty mean to the Sunnis. So like, why, what what's
going on? What are these you know, what's the the
common thread here? And I don't think anybody's ever really
been able to figure one out.

Speaker 7 (01:06:10):
It seems irrational.

Speaker 6 (01:06:12):
Uh. And then you know that's where you get into
the notion that you know, maybe he just you know,
kind of was was off kilter.

Speaker 7 (01:06:18):
Somehow.

Speaker 6 (01:06:20):
Yeah, but then you know that's that's the thing. It's
the destruction of the church. I think that fuels a
lot of this stuff. And obviously, you know, uh, Eleanor
and Luke, you guys can speak to how that was
received in Europe. But it's it's it felt, it feels
like it's sort of a wake up call for European
Christians that that things have been okay to this point,
like we're not maybe thrilled with the idea that all this,

(01:06:42):
you know, Holy Land is under Muslim control, but at
least people are able to make pilgrimage, at least, you know,
it's it's being taken care of, the church is being
taken care of. But now all of a sudden, this
is this is bad like this, you know they if
they can tear down the Church of the Holy sepulch
or what can't they do?

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
I when I was I was reading up on on
an article last night for this episode, and I was
looking h he was talking about just specifically Muslim accounts
that we have of the First Crusade, And an interesting
thing that I saw the the the historians and chroniclers

(01:07:21):
who come up in the in the later decades and
centuries following what we call the First Crusade. Like al Azimi,
who I mentioned earlier, we mentioned a couple of times
in the eleven sixties or yeah, in the eleven.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Sixties, he was.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
He saw the crusade effort as an ongoing holy war
that stretched from like some it really came into focus
after the after al Hakim destroyed the Church of the
Holy Suffulcher, and he specifically pointed to, you know, the

(01:07:58):
Moors in Spain breaking up Christians, retaking Toledo in modern
day Spain, Normans and Sicily that we talked about, et cetera,
et cetera. So he pointed to this as like a
long thing. So in his mind it was more like
an ongoing crusade that had its roots in in one
thousand and nine and then started in you know, the

(01:08:19):
ten forties and fifties and went from there.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
So I just thought that was very interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
But you know, Eleanor, I'm sure there's specifics about how
medieval Christians were not happy about this.

Speaker 5 (01:08:29):
Yeah, I mean like this is this is a direct affront,
is basically what it comes down to. And you're right, Derek,
because for them previously set Lee up until this point.
If you're a Western European, who care you know that
that much about who is controlling the Holy Land? Because
it ain't us, right, you know, like the Byzantines. Who

(01:08:50):
knows what esoteric things that they are doing over there, right,
But again, it is central to the year Psyche and
the way that they think about Christianity that they might
someday go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and that's very important
to them. Indeed, so what matters to them the most
is just that there is some form of stability and

(01:09:15):
that they would be able to go there, see the
sites and kind of make their way through. Is this
going to involve some bribing people in order to get
through safely? Yeah, of course it is. You know, like
every single bridge you ever come to is going to
have somebody shaking you down, whether it's in Europe or Asia.
That just is how it is. But they expect to

(01:09:36):
be able to get to Jerusalem and to see the
Holy Sepulcher, you know, they expect to be able to
walk in the footsteps of Jesus. They're going to attempt
to do, you know, the stations of the Cross. They're
going to want to wander around and feel in communion
with Christ. And when the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
is destroyed, then every other thing that happens to Christians

(01:10:00):
as well on the way is suddenly interpreted as being
a part of this persecution of Christians. So if you
then get held up at Spear Point on the way
by you know, some muggers, they're going to be like, ah,
because I'm a Christian. It's like, yeah, well what about
when it was happening to you over all the Peloponnesis
And it's like that's different. That's different, right, So everything

(01:10:23):
basically has a lens about anti Christian sentiment from this
point forward.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
And I do I do think I do think you
can see a noticeable uptick in preaching specifically against Islam
after this, because there was there was a distinct flare
up of it before the Crusades where you know, you
just got the you know, like Muslims are evil, they

(01:10:52):
worship three gods. You know, you have all this extremely
incorrect info floating around in the ether, and uh, you
know they were using that to just roll up, you know,
roll up the locals against uh. You know, at that point,
some people they thought they might never see, but you know,
they showed them wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
I guess.

Speaker 6 (01:11:15):
I do have to correct myself. The Holy Fire thing
is not Epiphany. The ceremonies held on this Saturday before Easter.
So I don't want to offend any Orthodox listeners.

Speaker 5 (01:11:24):
Shout out to the Orthodox, shout.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
Out, Shout out to all religions.

Speaker 7 (01:11:31):
I'm doing the.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
Doing, the Krusty the clown have a merry Christmas, a
happy Hanukkah, and a very solemn Ramadan, crazy Kwans and
a very solemn Ramedan. Yeah, all right, Derek, before we
go today, we've mentioned a couple of different sources from
the Muslim side, So what what are the Muslim sources

(01:11:58):
that do exist for the First Crusade? And why, you know,
why aren't there very many.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
At this point?

Speaker 6 (01:12:07):
So this gets back to something I think I said
a couple of episodes ago, which is that the First Crusade,
just like the Crusades in general, just weren't that big
a deal to the Islamic world. But for the most part, certainly,
the First Crusade was unexpected. Like you didn't have anybody
you know, looking at this and saying, wow, I should
be taking this down. This is a historic event. I

(01:12:28):
have to be chronicling this, so you don't have anything
really contemporary. The closest thing we have to a contemporary
source is something called the Damascus Chronicle by a man
named Ibanel Colin COLINISI, who was kind of, you know,
writing working for the rulers of Damascus in the middle
of the twelfth century, but had lived through and he's

(01:12:49):
old enough that he had lived through the Crusade, the
First Crusade, so he's sort of a contemporary witness. But
he's writing about Damascus, which is not not all that
connected to the to the First Crusade, but that's the
one that is most commonly mentioned that is at least,
you know, has a claim to being a contemporary source.

Speaker 7 (01:13:15):
Really, what we really get.

Speaker 6 (01:13:17):
Is stuff that comes out later, and in some cases
much later. Like the main Arab source that I used
to see cited for the Crusades is i an Lscar.

Speaker 7 (01:13:26):
He wrote.

Speaker 6 (01:13:28):
The Complete history something called in Arabic, it's called out
Kama futarich the perfect history or the complete history. And
he lived in the middle of the thirteenth century or
died I should say in the middle of the thirteenth century.
He obviously was using sources that were available earlier than

(01:13:49):
that that have not survived. But ibn Ls there's chronicle
has it covers pretty extensively the Crusades. The there are
parts dedicated to you know, there's one part section dedicated
to the coming of the Franks and the Muslim response,
and you know, there's all these there's a lot of

(01:14:09):
sections on the Crusades. And that's a very common it's
been translated, it's very commonly used, very commonly cited. That said,
like em Nls there is big What he's really known
for is is talking about the Mongol invasion because he
lived through that. I mean that was toward the end
of his life, but he experienced that firstthand but nevertheless,

(01:14:30):
that's the one that's that's usually cited or usually used
for an Arab perspective. There are other sources that emerge
mostly around the time of Saladin, so like Third Crusade
and a little bit prior, because Saladin.

Speaker 7 (01:14:48):
Was you know, he's the ruler of his.

Speaker 6 (01:14:50):
Own state, he had court scribes around him, he was
an important man who knew he was an important man
and obviously wanted people to be you know, writing about
his career, so he was able to sponsor these guys.
There's one guy named Immadadina lis Fahani who wrote about
his served in Saladin's court as a chancellor and wrote

(01:15:12):
about it. There's another man named Osamib Munkid who also
served under the Zengid dynasty, which was Saladin's precursor, and
then served with Saladin. Those guys wrote chronicles that include
discussion of the Crusades up to the point of the

(01:15:34):
retaking of Jerusalem by Saladin. But yeah, there's there's not
a lot, like there's not a ton that survived. There's
we don't have many sources on just in general, on
the Fontamens or on the Great Celtic Empire. There are
a few sources that talk about the Celjics of Rum,

(01:15:56):
but if you want to go back be prior to that,
it's very spot, very hit or miss. The fontima is.
There's there's some later stuff. There's a man named al
Makreezy who wrote a very famous history of very widely
cited history under the Mamelukes, like you know, some time later,

(01:16:22):
but he traced and he wrote in the fifteenth century,
so this is a long time after. But actually traced
his ancestry back to the Fatimid, so he was very
interested in writing about them in his chronicles. So that's
a that's a pretty widely cited sort for people who
are doing Fatimid historiography. But yeah, it's it really is
kind of a kind of a hit or miss thing

(01:16:43):
for for this period.

Speaker 5 (01:16:44):
It relinds me if you know that that meme with
the guy who's kind of like spring champagne everywhere and
kissing a chick and then it like zooms out and
it turns out he's on like the third pedestal of.

Speaker 7 (01:16:56):
Like one.

Speaker 5 (01:16:58):
Like that's where the white boys are this one like
I'm afraid that you know, if you if you ask,
if you ask anybody around in the in the area
at the time, it's like the the invasion that you
worry about is the Mongols. Like the fact that a
bunch of Normans showed up is neither here nor there,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:17:15):
I think I think something interesting about uh ibanella Theater's
history is that he goes through and he lists all
of these these these precursor events uh that happened before
the First Crusade and the First Crusade, But he just
saw it he didn't see it as a religious thing.
He saw it as like a land grab and they
wanted Jerusalem back specifically like that, Like he he saw

(01:17:38):
it as like a series of land of land grabs,
which I find interesting because he's like, you know, he's
writing this intent history of the Mongols, and he's just like, yeah,
that stuff happened over there. You know, they took back Jerusalem,
what you know, whatever, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
It's it's it's whatever it is.

Speaker 1 (01:17:54):
And then you know, so I just I think it's
interesting that they were able to grasp, like, you know,
some of.

Speaker 2 (01:17:59):
The geopolitical aspects of this.

Speaker 6 (01:18:02):
You know, yeah, I mean I think for guys for
m An ls Here and you know, guys who wrote
later than him there, you had the benefit of hindsight,
like this wasn't going to last. You know, even in
An ls Here, who wrote while there were still Crusader states,
knew that like Jerusalem had not stayed in Christian hands
and that you know, these guys turned out to be

(01:18:23):
somewhat dysfunctional mess after a while, so it's not like
they were ever. You know, with the benefit of hindsight,
you can say this wasn't a huge threat to anybody.
And you know, I do wonder if if there were
more contemporary Arab sources on the Crusades, if the picture
would be different, if there would be like more kind
of oh my god, what's happening? This is terrible, you

(01:18:45):
know kind of kind of discourse. But since most of
this stuff comes later after the Crusaders have sort of
beclowned themselves, like it does kind of have the sense
of like, yeah, okay, I mean it happened, but whoa
like the Mongol, what the hell is that?

Speaker 7 (01:19:01):
Like that's terrible?

Speaker 5 (01:19:02):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:19:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Well, I think, uh,
I think that is going to about do it today
for this episode of Welcome to the Crusades. Next time
we'll be back. We're going to talk about the the
view from Constantinople, what it looked like, why they cared so,

(01:19:24):
why the Battle of Mans the current matters so damn
much to people, why they called in the cavalry, why
that was their only option, and how it ended up
killing the empire in the end, and how oh boy,
who boy did that all backfire? Like you know, man, Alexios,

(01:19:45):
I get that it was your only option, but buddy,
I really wish you hadn't unleashed all those forces on
the world because we're still hanging out with him.

Speaker 2 (01:19:53):
It's great.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
Yeah, that'll be fun, but we'll be back next time
with that. I I don't remember specifically what Dan says
to end the episode, so I'll do it.

Speaker 7 (01:20:03):
Uh, how I'm rocking in the Free World.

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):
I'm absolutely not saying. I'm just I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No,
I'm kidding. Thank you so much for listening. Keep on
rocking in the Free World, and we'll see you next time.

(01:20:26):
Welcome to the Crusades.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
The First Crusade is co hosted by Daniel Bessner and
Derek Davison of the American Prestige podcast and Doctor Eleanor
Yannica and Luke Waters of that We're Not So Different Podcast.
Music by Jake Aaron, cover art by James Montalbano. The
show is co edited and co produced.

Speaker 2 (01:20:45):
By Jake Aaron and Luke Waters. Thank you very much
for listening.