Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam

by Andrew Wheatcroft

  62. This is Bernard Lewis’s expression. See Lewis, Political Language, p. 129.

  63. See Bonner, Aristocratic Violence, pp. 155–6.

  64. See Hillenbrand, Crusades, pp. 304–8, and Lewis, Discovery, p. 22.

  65. The point at which they came to be called saliba, “cross,” is difficult to determine precisely.

  66. Gabrieli, Arab Historians, pp. 77–8.

  67. See Hillenbrand, Crusades, p. 280.

  68. “Tale of Umar b. Numan,” The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, 4 vols., trans. J. C. Mardrus and Powys Mathers, London: Routledge, 1994, vol. 1, p. 442.

  69. Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, Kitab al-fath, cited and translated in Hillenbrand, Crusades, p. 290. I wonder whether the stabling of horses in Al-Aqsa was either the source of the story for the Ottomans stabling horses in the Holy Sepulchre or a memory that provoked them to do it.

  70. Ibn Wasil, Muffarij al-kurub, cited and translated in Hillenbrand, Crusades, p. 291.

  71. On the building of Muslim Jerusalem and its transformation, see Oleg Grabar, The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

  72. For the near-complete separation of Muslim and Latin Christian societies in Palestine, see Benjamin Z. Kedar, “The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant,” in Powell (ed.), Muslims, pp. 135–74.

  73. Postilla super librum Sapientiae, c. 5, lecture 65: “Non enim est possibile docere vitam Christi nisi destruendo et reprobando legem Machometi.” On Holkot, see Kedar, Crusade, pp. 188–9.

  74. It had been much copied in the scriptoria, and the early editions appeared in Reutingen, Speyer, Cologne, and Basel; Holkot remained in print well into the seventeenth century.

  75. Translated and cited in Throop, Criticism, p. 122.

  76. See Kedar, Crusade, p. 189.

  77. Dupront, Mythe, vol. 2, p. 976. The more than 2,000 pages of Dupront’s work Le mythe de croisade constitute one of the great works of modern historiography, but Dupront understood (and the book was published after his death) that he was able to explore only part of the vast spider’s web of connections that he uncovered.

  CHAPTER 8: CONQUEST AND RECONQUEST

  1. See Penny J. Cole, “ ’O God, the heathen have come into your inheritance’ (Ps. 78:1): The Theme of Religious Pollution in Crusade Documents 1095–1188,” in M. Shatzmiller (ed.), Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993, pp. 84–111.

  2. Cited in Prawer, World, p. 91.

  3. Richard G. Salomon, “A Newly Discovered Manuscript of Opicinus de Canistris: A Preliminary Report,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XVI (1953), 1, pp. 45–57. The full treatment of the Opicinus MSS and his life appeared in Richard G. Salomon, Opicinus de Canistris: Weltbild und Bekenntnisse eines Avignonesischen Klerikers des 14. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., London: Warburg Institute, 1936. The second volume consists of a set of images of the various elements within the MSS. Opicinus de Canistris was obsessed with impurity, to the degree that Richard Salomon classed him a sexual psychopath. But he also observed, “Of course, not everything in the work of a psychopath is pathological.” The supremely diabolical quality of the carnal connection between Muslim Africa and Christian Europe offended doubly against the law of God. There was no better (or more readily identifiable) means of depicting the corruption of the world than by suggesting a sexual union between a Christian and an infidel. In Opicinus’s day, the loss of Jerusalem to the Muslim enemy was still an open wound. He struggled vainly to present the complexity of the political and theological world that confronted him; inevitably, his sheets remained a work in progress, unfinished and experimental. They were littered with images of God, Jesus Christ, doves with vast embracing wings, the Virgin Mary, strange and mythical beasts; yet in his own mind all were worked back into the themes embodied in his texts and captions.

  4. See Jörg-Geerd Arentzen, Imago mundi cartographica: Studien zur Bildlichkeit Mittelalterlicher Welt- und Ökumenkarten unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Zusammenwirkens von Text und Bild, Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1984, p. 315. Chapter 4, “Die Karte als Sinnbild in den Zeichungen des Opicinus de Canistris,” pp. 275–316, is the most thorough recent treatment of Opicinus. Commisceo has the sense of mixing or mingling, in this case perhaps relating to seminal and vaginal emissions.

  5. Richard G. Salomon, “A Newly Discovered Manuscript of Opicinus de Canistris: A Preliminary Report,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XVI (1953), 1, p. 53.

  6. Ibid., p. 52.

  7. His sexual obsession has caused one scholar to observe that “for Opicinus, earth cartography is tantamount to exposing the fornicating world … a cartographer’s attempt to represent the world as a netherland that embodies—incorporates—corruption and sexual sin.” See Gandelman, Reading Pictures, pp. 84–5. Richard Salomon also noted “his tendency towards prurience” and cited Opicinus’s remark in his text: “While I was working on this, a simple priest from Lombardy came to see me, and I had to cover the abdomen of the woman with a piece of paper in order not to shock him.”

  8. H. Hagenmayer, Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100: Eine Quellensammlung zur Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges, Innsbruck: Wagner, 1901, p. 147. Cited and translated in Riley Smith, First Crusade, p. 91.

  9. Cited and translated in Peters (ed.), Christian Society, p. 141.

  10. Cited in Kedar, Crusade, pp. 161–2.

  11. See Hillenbrand, Crusades, pp. 141–61, for the growing importance of Jerusalem within Islam.

  12. Cited and translated ibid., p. 112.

  13. William of Tyre, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, trans. James Brundage in The Crusades: A Documentary History, Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1962, pp. 79–82.

  14. Runciman, History, vol. 2, p. 234.

  15. 2 Thessalonians 2:4.

  16. For the heroic self-image, see Renard, Islam, and Bridget Connelly, Arab Folk Tale and Identity, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986, pp. 4–6. The Sirat al-Zahir Baybars chronicles the wars of the Mamluk Sultan Baybars against the Mongols, Persians, and Christian Crusaders. The Dhat al-Himma recounts deeds of the Arabs against the Byzantines and the Franks. “However, while the fourteenth-century polemicist Philippe de Mézières praised the chivalry of the Turks it was a means only to condemn the ‘Saracens’ who occupied Jerusalem and to chastise the failures of Christians who behaved worse than the Turks.” See Petkov, “Rotten Apple.”

  17. Malcolm C. Lyons, The Arabian Epic, 3 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, vol. 3, p. 112.

  18. Cited in J. A. C. Brown, Techniques of Persuasion: From Propaganda to Brainwashing, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963, p. 19.

  19. Pavlov’s experiments 1901–1903 demonstrated that specific behavior could be “conditioned.” His research investigated how dogs digested their food and he wanted to see if external stimuli could make them salivate. At the same time as he fed them he rang a bell. After a while, the dogs—which had previously responded only when they saw and ate their food—would begin to salivate when the bell rang, even if no food were present. When he published his results he called this response a “conditioned reflex.” This kind of behavior had to be learned, and Pavlov described this learning process (where the dog’s nervous system linked the sound of the bell with food) as conditioning. But, just as significantly, he also discovered that this conditioned reflex weakened if the bell rang repeatedly and there was no food. If that happened, the dog eventually stopped salivating at the sound of the bell. If the stimulus was not effectively “reinforced,” the conditioned reflex decayed and failed. See Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Essential Works of Pavlov, ed. Michael Kaplan, New York: Bantam Books, 1966.

  20. Dupront, Mythe, vol. 1, p. 19.

  21. Emmanuel Sivan demonstrates convincingly that in the Muslim world malediction based on “Crusade” vocabulary was a product of secular modernism. The words “Crusade/Crusaders” then mobilized and
revived the earlier antagonism to the image of the cross. See Emanuel [sic] Sivan, “Modern Arab Historiography of the Crusades,” Asian and African Studies: Journal of the Israel Oriental Society 8 (1972), pp. 109–49. Similarly, jehad or jihad was first recorded as being used in English in 1869, although knowledge of the Muslim Holy War had existed since the later Middle Ages. Thus the concept was used avant la lettre.

  22. See Sivan, Islam, p. 7.

  23. For the crusading period, see Michael A. Köhler, Allianzen und Verträge zwischen fränkischen und islamischen Herrschen in Vorderen Orient: Eine Studie über das zwischenstaatliche Zusammenleben vom 12. bis 13. Jahrhundert, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991.

  24. See Smail, Crusading Warfare, p. 215: “Every strong place had, however, the same fundamental importance. Wherever it stood, it was the embodiment of force, and therefore the ultimate sanction of the Latin settlement.” Saladin acquired a curious position as the “noble Arab” in Western eyes. Gladstone in his attacks on the Turks in 1876 talked of the “noble Saladins,” meaning the Arabs. But Sultan Baybars did not attract anything of the same favorable Western response as Saladin.

  25. See Adrian J. Boas, Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East, London: Routledge, 1999, pp. 91–120.

  26. Cited by Colin Imber, “The Ottoman Dynastic Myth,” Turcica 19 (1987), pp. 7–27.

  27. See Godfrey Goodwin, A History of Ottoman Architecture, London: Thames and Hudson, 1971, p. 35.

  28. Cited by Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire, New York: Morrow, 1977, pp. 46–7.

  29. Ransoms were demanded for the most eminent and profitable captives.

  30. This was remarkable, because in 1402 the Ottomans were beaten by the Mongol ruler Timur in Anatolia, and Bayezid was taken prisoner. A long period of Ottoman political turmoil ensued, when a Crusade could have retaken the Ottoman possessions in Europe. However, after Nicopolis there was little enthusiasm for a new enterprise.

  31. Stavrianos, Balkans, p. 54.

  32. His ally the Albanian Skenderbeg arrived just too late to turn the tide of battle in Hunyadi’s favor.

  33. Vlad Tepes believed in a puritan moral order, and in addition to many of his political rivals and the wealthy classes of Wallachia, what he deemed “unchaste” women suffered the most terrible deaths under his rule.

  34. See Mitchell B. Merbeck, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacles of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, London: Reaktion Books, 1999, pp. 126–57.

  35. Doukas [sic], Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks: An Annotated Translation of “Historia Turco-Byzantina,” trans. Harry J. Magoulias, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1975, pp. 231–5.

  36. Letter of Bessarion, July 13, 1453, to Doge Francesco Foscari.

  37. See D. C. Munro, Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, series 1, vol. 3:1, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1912, pp. 15–16.

  38. Doukas, Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks: An Annotated Translation of “Historia Turco-Byzantina,” trans. Harry J. Magoulias, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1975, pp. 231–5.

  39. Babinger is dubious about the motives for killing Notaras. He points out that Kritoboulos (a fifteenth-century historian and governor of Imbros) discounted Mehmed’s sodomitical lust and replaced it with a political rationale. See Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Life, ed. William C. Hickman, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978, pp. 96–7.

  40. Some, like ardent enthusiast for the war against the infidel Philippe de Mézières, came to blame the sinful schismatics, the Orthodox, for the triumph of Islam. See Petkov, “The Rotten Apple.”

  41. Cited in Robert A. Kann, A Study of Austrian Intellectual History from the Late Baroque to Romanticism, London: Thames and Hudson, 1960, pp. 74–5.

  42. On some of its nineteenth-century forms see Elizabeth Siberry, The New Crusaders: Images of the Crusades in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

  43. Over 170 million copies of Hymns Ancient and Modern were sold over a period of 120 years.

  44. These were processions that accompanied the traditional Whit Monday festivals in Yorkshire.

  45. Thus Thomas Jefferson’s “crusade against ignorance” of 1786 eventually becomes the presidential “Crusade in the Classroom” in the first year of the third millennium. This was the title of a school test volume in the United States. The description read: “ ‘Crusade in the Classroom’ is a practical nonpartisan guide to the changes and choices you can expect from the Bush administration. In clear, jargon-free language, Dr. Douglas Reeves explains the Bush policies for school reform, predicts how these new programs will change our schools, and helps parents understand their options.” Captest catalogue, 2001, http://www.Captest.com.

  46. Midian was, like Ishmael, a son of Abraham, but born to Keturah. However, the Ishmaelites were elided with the Midianites, as in Judges 7:12, where “all the children of the east lay along in the valley as numerous as locusts.” Later “Midianites” became for Christians another term for the desert Arabs, like Agarenes.

  47. Thomas Moore’s hymn of 1816—

  Come, ask the infidel what boon he brings us,

  What charm for aching hearts he can reveal,

  Sweet is that heavenly promise Hope sings us—

  “Earth has no sorrow that God cannot heal.”

  —was given a new concluding verse in 1831:

  Here see the bread of life, see waters flowing

  Forth from the throne of God, pure from above.

  Come to the feast of love; come, ever knowing

  Earth has no sorrow but heaven can remove.

  48. There were numerous Protestant and Catholic missions—English, Scottish, French, German, Italian, American, and Austrian—to Palestine but they concentrated on winning over the Orthodox and did not seek to convert Muslims, which could have endangered convert and missionary alike.

  49. The “King’s Cross Victory Crusade” has reported with pride that between 1976 and 2001 it has delivered more than one million Bibles to India. The nature of the victory was not specified. See Bibles for India campaign, http://victorynetwork.org/VictoryIndia.html.

  50. Al’Akhbar al-saniyya fi’il-hurub al-salibiyya, Cairo, 1899. See Emanuel Sivan, “Modern Arab Historiography of the Crusades,” Asian and African Studies: Journal of the Israel Oriental Society 8 (1972), pp. 124–5.

  51. The archbishop of Beirut wrote of the al-Ifranj al-Salibiyyun in the sixth volume of his History of Syria in 1901.

  52. Especially in the works of Sayyid al-Qutb.

  53. Joseph-François Michaud, Histoire des croisades (4th ed., Paris, 1825, vol. 1, p. 510), cited and translated in Kim Munholland, “Michaud’s History of the Crusades and the French Crusade in Algeria Under Louis Philippe,” in Chu and Weisberg (eds.), Popularization, p. 150.

  54. Ibid., p. 154.

  55. Ibid., p. 164, citing the Salle de Constantine in “Versailles et son Musée Historique.”

  56. The Congregatio de Propaganda Fide was established in Rome by Pope Gregory XV in 1622. It was charged with supporting missionary activity and was at the center of a large system of colleges and other educational institutions.

  57. Reissued in the 1920s and twice more in the 1950s.

  58. Even today, the high passes are a severe challenge to an ill-prepared automobile.

  59. In 1537, the Tyrolese cartographer Johann Putsch produced a map of Europe called “Queen of Europe.” It was subsequently reproduced in the 1588 edition of Sebastian Munster’s famous Cosmographia. In Putsch’s design, the Balkans are on the fringe of Europe, the queen’s “skirt,” but with Greece, “Scythia,” and Muscovy, they are unquestionably “Europe.” “Tartary” to the east is conveniently separated by a river from Europe proper, and Constantinople is depicted as a Western city on the hem of the queen’s garment.


  60. John Hale, The Civilisation of Europe in the Renaissance, London: HarperCollins, 1993, pp. 5–6. Hale is citing Denys Hay, Europe: The Emergence of an Idea, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1957, p. 109.

  Part Four

  CHAPTER 9: BALKAN GHOSTS?

  1. Jephson, With the Colours, pp. 158–62.

  2. In some sources it is the Landstraße.

  3. Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History, New York: Vintage, 1994, p. 32.

  4. Ibid., p. 227.

  5. See Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Time of Space and the Space of Time: The Future of Social Science,” Tyneside Geographical Society Lecture, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1996, Political Geography XVII, 1 (1998).

  6. Ibid.: “They are arguing in terms of episodic geopolitical TimeSpace … the Serbians [asserted that] current population figures and current boundaries are simply irrelevant; Kosovo was part of Serbia morally because of things that happened in the fourteenth century. These are arguments using structural TimeSpace. Kosovo’s location in Serbia was said to be structurally given. There is no way of resolving such a debate intellectually. Neither side can demonstrate that it is right, if by demonstrating it we mean that the arguments are sustained by the weight of the evidence in some scientific puzzle.”

  7. Ibid.: “It was assumed (and one has to underline the verb ‘assumed’) that, if they were ‘primitive’ in the present, there could have been no historical evolution, and therefore that their behaviour in the past must have been the same as their behaviour in the present. They were therefore ‘peoples without history.’ For this reason, ethnographies were written in what was called ‘the anthropological present.’ ” The anthropological present has produced one important study on the differential concepts of time, by Johannes Fabian, and a notable spat with another anthropologist, Maurice Bloch. But both Fabian and Bloch operate within the same spectrum, both accepting that time is relative, to varying degrees, depending on the character of an individual culture. See Fabian, Time and the Other, and Maurice Bloch, “The Past and the Present in the Present,” in his Ritual, History and Power, pp. 1–18. His foreword describes his disagreement with Fabian. Both these approaches are extremely important in the kind of myth-history with its own time structures that emerged in the Balkans.