Part 10

Whether the Byzantines were moving against Islamic forces on their own initiative or as a reaction against Muslim movements, the ultimate conclusion is that this state began to realize, more and more, the extent of the new challenge and began to prepare to stop it. It is true that on some occasions these preparations were not at the right level, which may have been due to lack of precise information on which the Byzantine leadership based its plans, but the outcome was that the fire of conflict broke out and intensified immediately after the death of the (Messenger (SAAW) and after Islamic forces started pouring into the lands under Byzantine control.14 The Byzantines were expelled from their possessions in Asia and parts of Africa at the hands of the Rightly Guided Caliphs. During the subsequent period, which witnessed many attacks and counterattacks carried out by the Byzantines on land and sea, most of which ended in failure, the Byzantines soon retreated as a result of the persistent pursuit of the Umayyads,15 starting with Mu'awiyah, the founder of the Umayyad state, and the era of 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan and his sons, especially al-Waleed and Sulayman. This is discussed in detail in my book Ad-Dawlah al-'Umawiyah (The Umayyad State). This active pursuit of the Byzantines continued after the Umayyad era, in Syria, Egypt and North Africa. They withdrew completely from North Africa and vast areas of the Mediterranean, and were confined to Anatolia and their possessions in Europe itself. With the passage of time, the danger of counterattacks grew less, because they were concentrated along a line stretching across Anatolia and the Euphrates Valley, rarely able to penetrate any deeper due to the alertness of the Islamic leadership, who fortified the borders and also launched ongoing attacks against the Byzantine state, penetrating deep in the direction of Constantinople itself. This did not leave the Byzantine Emperor, in most cases, any room to broaden the scope of his counterattacks, except at the beginning of the fourth century AH, when the Abbasid state had grown weak. The emergence of the Seljuks then gave a new impetus to the Islamic Jihad movement; during the reign of the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan they were able to inflict a crushing blow to the backbone of the Byzantine forces in the battle of Manzikert (463 AH). That victory spelled the end of the challenge posed by the Byzantine state and its counterattacks, and it remained ineffectual until it fell, many centuries later, to the Ottomans.16 I have discussed this in detail in my book, Ad-Dawlah al- 'Uthmdniyah: 'Awdmil an-Nuwould wa Asbdb as-Suqoot.11 The Spanish From the earliest stages the Andalusian arena witnessed persistent counterattacks from the north, where the Spanish had fortified themselves in areas of rugged terrain. These attacks resulted in a bitter conflict throughout which the Umayyad leadership confronted these counterattacks for nearly three centuries, during which they contained the threat and forced the enemy to retreat to northern pockets in the Iberian Peninsula. There were two bursts of renewed Islamic energy, the first of which was at the hands of the Almoravids (al-Murabitoori) who came from Morocco,18 and who achieved a magnificent victory at the battle of Sagrajas (az-Zallaqah) against the Spanish Christians in 479 AH. The second came at the hands of the Almohads (al-Muwahhidoon) who came after them and succeeded in inflicting a crushing defeat on the Christians in the battle of Alarcos (alArak) in 591 AH.19 Thus Islam was able to survive in Andalusia by confronting challenges and resisting Spanish counterattacks on an almost equal footing, and this continued for almost four centuries.20 But the Muslims there soon became exhausted and ever more weakened by division and bloody conflicts among themselves. This tipped the balance in favour of the Christian leadership, which was ultimately able to bring down the last Islamic government there, the Kingdom of Granada, which fell in 897 AH. Soon after that, under the leadership of Ferdinand and Isabella, came the worst massacre in human history, when the state, church and Inquisition joined forces and were able, by methods which showed no respect to human — let alone religious — values, to destroy the Islamic presence in Andalusia and erase it from the map of Spain, and to assimilate the Muslim masses by force into a society that claimed to be Christian in religion, culture and conduct.21 The Crusader movement The Crusader movement was a reaction against Islam by the Christians, the roots of which go back to the emergence of the Muslims from Arabia, when they confronted the Byzantine state. This movement developed like a living entity over centuries, hardly emerging from one phase before it entered another. The period between 488 and 690 AH (1095-1291 CE) was only one of its stages. The fact that this phase is so prominent that it almost outshines all other stages is due to many complex and interconnected factors, which a researcher may find in the motives and reasons that led to the onslaught of the huge waves of Crusades at that time.22 Historians agreed to use the word "Crusades" or "Crusader" to apply to the entire Crusader, colonialist movement that was born in Western Europe and took the form of armed attacks against Muslim lands in Syria, Iraq, Anatolia, Egypt and Tunisia, in order to eradicate Islam and Muslims and take back Jerusalem.