One of the many is The Crusades through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf. I have a number of books of this ilk but this one is, so far, the most engaging and compelling.
The book was first published in 1984, 32 years before the current events of the Middle East. None-the-less, the prologue of events in August 1099 sound as if they could be describing Syria in 2016. In keeping with the Arab centric perspective, the Franj below are who we would know as the Franks out of France and Germany.
Baghdad, August 1099.I am both fascinated and repulsed by the history of the Middle East and the Crusades in particular. You want to find some redeeming aspect to the great conflict but all there is is the ebb and flow of bloodshed and cruelty from the conquest of Greco-Christian Middle East by barbarous Islamic Arabs out of the desert in the 700s to the attempted reconquest by the similarly barbaric Franj in the 1000s.
Wearing no turban, his head shaved as a sign of mourning, the venerable qadi Abu Sa'ad al-Harawi burst with a loud cry into the spacious diwan of the caliph al-Mustazhir Billah, a throng of companions, young and old, trailing in his wake. Noisily assenting to his every word, they, like him, offered the chilling spectacle of long beards and shaven heads. A few of the court dignitaries tried to calm him, but al-Hawari swept them aside with disdain, strode resolutely to the center of the hall, and then, with the searing eloquence of a seasoned preacher, al-Hawari proceeded to lecture to all those present, without regard to rank.
“How dare you slumber in the shade of complacent safety, leading lives as frivolous as garden flowers, while your brothers in Syria have no dwelling place save the saddles of camels and the bellies of the vultures? Blood has been spilled! Beautiful young girls have been shamed, and must now hide their sweet faces in their hands! Shall the valorous Arabs resign themselves to insult, and the valiant Persians accept dishonor?”
“It was a speech that brought tears to many an eye and moved men’s hearts,” the Arab chroniclers later wrote. The entire audience broke out in wails and lamentations, but al-Harawi had not come to elicit sobs.
“Men’s meanest weapon,” he shouted,”is to shed tears when rapiers stir the coals of war.”
If he had made this difficult trip from Damascus to Baghdad, through three long summer weeks under the merciless sun of the Syrian desert, it was not to plead for pity but to alert Islam’s highest authority about the calamity that had just befallen the faithful, and to urge them to intervene without delay and halt the bloodshed. “Never have the Muslims been so humiliated,” al-Hawari repeated, “never have their lands been so savagely devastated.” All the people traveling with him had fled from towns sacked by the invaders, amongthe people were a few survivors of Jerusalem. He had brought them along so that they could relate, in their own words, the tragedy they had suffered just one month earlier.
The Franj had taken the holy city on Friday, the twenty-second day of the month of Cha'ban, in the year of the Hegira 492, or 15 July 1099, after a forty day siege. The exiles still trembled when they spoke of the fall of the city: they stared into space as though they could still see the fair-haired and heavily armoured warriors spilling through the streets, swords in hand, slaughtering men, women, and children, plundering houses, sacking mosques.
Two days later, when the killing stopped, not a single Muslim was left alive within the city walls. Some had taken advantage of the chaos to slip away, escaping through gates battered down by the attackers. Thousands of others lay in pools of blood on the doorsteps of their homes or alongside the mosques. Among them were many imams, ulama and Sufi ascetics who had forsaken their countries of origin for a life of pious retreat in these holy places. The last survivors were forced to perform the wort tasks: to heave the bodies of their own relatives, to dump them in vacant, unmarked lots, and then to set them alight, before being themselves massacred or sold into slavery.
The fate of the Jews of Jerusalem was no less atrocious. During the first hours of battle, some participated in the defense of their quarter, situated on the northern edge of the city. But when, in that part of the city, the walls overhanging their homes collapsed and the blond knights began to pour through the streets, the Jews panicked. Re-enacting an immemorial rite, the entire community gathered in the main synagogue to pray. The Franj barricaded all the exits and stacked bundles of wood in a ring around the building. The temple was then put to the torch. Those who managed to escape were massacred in the neighboring alleyways. The rest were burned alive.”
Maalouf does a great job of laying out the constant, bitter, titanic struggles between and among four great cultures (Greek, Persian, Arab, and Turk) along with the more minor players (Kurds, Armenians, Jews, etc.). A region in constant strife for more than a thousand years.
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