Is it just me, or is this another one of those "they killed more of us than we did of them, so we're better" arguments?
MP
From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [M-R] Fwd: Radical Islam not a response to Crusades but, indeed, a cause
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 16:55:27 -0600
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Sunday, January 1, 2006, at 2:31 pm, V. Kerry Inman wrote, quoting
Richard Ostling's AP summary of Curp's piece:
> > > Christians' situation in the East began to deteriorate militarily
> > > in 903 when Muslims sacked Thessalonica, the Byzantines' second-
> > > ranking city, and enslaved 30,000 inhabitants. In 931 they took
> > > Ankariya (present-day Ankara) and enslaved thousands more.
>
> Opinion: and in Sicily and Andalusia? There are horror stories on
> all sides.
Was there in fact mass enslavement of Sicilian Muslims by the island's
eleventh-century Christian conquerors? If there was not, what horror
stories of equal magnitude from that set of events are there to be set
against the mass enslavements reported to have occurred at Thessaloniki
and Ankara? If there are none (and subjection to a Christian equivalent
of dhimmitude, though not pretty, should not be equated with actual
enslavement), what scholarly purpose is served by suggesting that there
were?
> > >
> > > In 1064 the Turks seized the capital of Christian Armenia,
> > > slaughtering the populace and imprisoning 30,000 people. Then, in
> > > the climactic Battle of Mantzikert in 1071, the Muslims virtually
> > > crushed Byzantine military power.
> > >
> > > In Curp's telling, it was that disaster that provoked the Crusades
> > > in response.
>
> Opinion: and in Sicily and Andalusia? There are horror stories on
> all sides.
Again, were large Muslim populations in Sicily actually slaughtered or
imprisoned, or even deprived of previous freedom of mobility to the
extent that the surviving Armenians of Kars seem to have been
immediately after their conquest by Alp Arslan or the Greeks of
Philomelium (today's Aksehir) are reported to have been between _their_
Turkish conquest and their removal by the emperor Manuel in 1146? If
they were not so slaughtered or imprisoned, what comparable horror
stories are there from eleventh-century Sicily? And if there are none,
what scholarly purpose is served by suggesting that there were?
Best,
John Dillon
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