The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the Near East were raiding, skirmishing and petty internecine struggles over power, land and wealth. 10 In theory, however, Muslim troops could be called upon to fight for a supposedly higher cause–that of holy war.
    Islam had, from its earliest days, embraced warfare. Muhammad himself prosecuted a series of military campaigns while subjugating Mecca, and the explosive expansion of the Muslim world during the seventh and eighth centuries was fuelled by an avowed devotional obligation to spread Islamic rule. The union of faith and violence within the Muslim religion, therefore, was more rapid and natural than that which gradually developed in Latin Christianity.
    In an attempt to define the role of warfare within Islam, Muslim scholars turned to the Koran and the hadith , the ‘traditions’ or sayings associated with Muhammad. These texts provided numerous examples of the Prophet advocating ‘struggle in the path of God’. In the early Islamic period there was discussion about what this ‘struggle’ or jihad (literally ‘striving’) actually involved–and the debate continues to this day. Some, like the Muslim mystics, or Sufis , argued that the most important or ‘Greater jihad ’ was the internal struggle waged against sin and error. But by the late eighth century, Sunni Muslim jurists had begun to develop a formal theory advocating what is sometimes termed the ‘Lesser jihad ’: ‘rising up in arms’ to wage physical warfare against the infidel. To justify this they cited canonical evidence, such as verses from the ninth sura of the Koran, including: ‘Fight the polytheists totally as they fight you totally’, and hadith , such as Muhammad’s declaration that: ‘A morning or an evening expedition in God’s path is better than the world and what it contains, and for one of you to remain in the line of battle is better than his prayers for sixty years.’
    Legal treatises from this early period declared that jihad was an obligation incumbent upon all able-bodied Muslims, although the duty was primarily seen as being communal, rather than individual, and the responsibility for leadership ultimately rested with the caliph. Making reference to the likes of the hadith ‘The gates of Paradise are under the shadow of the swords’, these treatises also affirmed that those fighting in the jihad would be granted entry to the heavenly Paradise. Jurists posited a formal division of the world into two spheres–the Dar al-Islam , or ‘House of Peace’ (the area within which Muslim rule and law prevailed); and the Dar al-harb , or ‘House of War’ (the rest of the world). The express purpose of the jihad was to wage a relentless holy war in the Dar al-harb , until such time as all mankind had accepted Islam, or submitted to Muslim rule. No permanent peace treaties with non-Muslim enemies were permissible, and any temporary truces could last no more than ten years.
    As the centuries passed, the driving impulse towards expansion encoded in this classical theory of jihad was gradually eroded. Arab tribesmen began to settle into more sedentary lifestyles and to trade with non-Muslims, such as the Byzantines. Holy wars against the likes of Christians continued, but they became far more sporadic and often were promoted and prosecuted by Muslim emirs, without caliphal endorsement. By the eleventh century, the rulers of Sunni Baghdad were far more interested in using jihad to promote Islamic orthodoxy by battling ‘heretic’ Shi‘ites than they were in launching holy wars against Christendom. The suggestion that Islam should engage in an unending struggle to enlarge its borders and subjugate non-Muslims held little currency; so too did the idea of unifying in defence of the Islamic faith and its territories. When the Christian crusades began, the ideological impulse of devotional warfare thus lay dormant within the body of Islam, but the essential framework remained in place. 11
    Islam and Christian Europe on the