Posted: Jun 01, 2010 11:12 am
U-96 wrote: is this idea not that well regarded in historical circles Tim???
No. And for the reasons I made clear in my review of Stark's book:
This last point can be extended into a key criticism of Stark's wider thesis as well. If the Crusades were, as he tries to argue, simply a reaction to Muslim encroachment into the European "homeland", why is it we do not see this reflected in any of the vast amount of material we have on the preaching of the First Crusade or any of the material we have on the motivations of the Crusaders? Did Pope Urban and the other instigators of the Crusades forget to mention this? And if this was the "true" motivation of the Crusaders, then launching a vastly expensive and highly dangerous 2500 mile long-distance military strike into Palestine, of all places, was an extremely weird way to carry it out. It is not like Jerusalem was the religious heartland of Islam (that was Arabia) or even its political centre (that was, if anything, Cairo) or even its intellectual centre (which was Baghdad).
If the real objective was to turn back the teeming tides of fanatical Muslim expansion from the gates of Europe, as Stark tries to make out, then the obvious target was far closer to home: in Spain.
So why would they attack Palestine and not Spain? Or Egypt? This idea simply doesn't make sense.