/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>648935

The first Wojack pic is specifically talking about the First Crusade and the events leading up to it. The second pic is cherry picking incidents that happened at different points and involved different groups over the course of half a millennium, most of which had nothing to do with the original goal of reconquering the Holy Land. It's always funny to see people use the Sack of Constantinople as a reason why the crusades were bad. That happened because Venetian mercenaries were pissed off at the Byzantines for the Latin Massacre of 1182. The Pope flat out told the Venetians not to sack the city under the threat of excommunication and they did it anyway, yet they want to say the attack was religiously motivated? Calling the Thirty Years War and the Saxon Wars crusades is flat out retarded. If we're being that loose with the definition we might as well call the Russo-Turkish wars, or even the European conquests of the Americas, crusades. And giving the Mongols credit for preventing Muslims from conquering Europe is even more retarded than that. The Siege of Baghdad happened over a 150 years after the First Crusade and over 20 years after the Mongols themselves began invading Europe. The Muslims were a huge threat in the late 11th Century and the First Crusade did a lot to diminish that threat(it also is largely responsible for the 12th Century Renaissance.) The Europeans would have winnie the poohed if they had waited around for the Mongols to save them.

>>648966

What destroyed the "Islamic empire" was the rise of competing dynasties like Saffarids. But it's worth debating whether it was already bound for destruction since the fitna events destroyed any semblance or hope of keeping things together for them. As if there ever was.

The shiite Fatimids were pretty isolated for instance, but they were a match for the sunni caliph, and all these different shifting dynasties can't be treated as an empire. The real danger and military threat was Isfahan and the Seljuqs which overran Asia Minor after the battle of Manzikert. They were in fact defeated by their own factions, again, and eventually the Mongols.