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ABSTRACT
Throughout the period of the Arab National Renaissance (al-nahḍa), which unfolded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Arab intellectuals frequently referred to the age of the crusades, drawing parallels between that historical epoch and modern-day relations between Europe and the Muslim world. After analyzing the works of representatives of the three major ideological movements of that period: pan-Islamism, pan-Ottomanism, and Arab nationalism, the present article formulates the following major interpretations of the role of the crusades in the history of the Arab Middle East: (a) as a punishment for the distortion of the original Islam of the Prophet and his companions (for which some blamed the Seljuk Turks, others the Muslim mystics or Sufis); (b) as a reason for the subsequent prosperity and progress of Western societies after their contact with a superior Muslim civilization; (c) as a source of religious fanaticism in the Middle East; (d) as the events that foreshadow the modern military conflicts around the Mediterranean and beyond, especially the Mahdist rebellion in the Sudan and the Crimean War; (e) as an era that demonstrated the weakness of religion as a force of mass mobilization; (f) as a period when the Muslims of the Middle East protected Middle Eastern Christians from the Westerners. Moreover, at the end of the nineteenth century, some Arab intellectuals for the first time described the medieval crusader states of the Levant as ‘colonial’ (al-duwal al-musta’mira al-ifranjiyya).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999), 590.
2 Ibid., 589–616.
3 Ibid., 590.
4 Umej Bhatia, Forgetting Osama bin Munqidh, Remembering Osama bin Laden: The Crusades in Modern Muslim Memory (Singapore, 2008), 19–20.
5 Jonathan Phillips, ‘“Unity! Unity between All the Inhabitants of Our Lands!”: The Memory and Legacy of the Crusades and Saladin in the Near East, c. 1880 to c. 1925’, in Perceptions of the Crusades from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century, ed. Mike Horswell and Jonathan Phillips (Abingdon, 2018), 79–106.
6 Jonathan Phillips, The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin (New Haven, 2019), 329–55.
7 Werner Ende, ‘Wer ist ein Glaubensheld, wer ist ein Ketzer? Konkurrierende Geschichtsbilder in der modernen Literatur islamischer Länder’, Die Welt des Islams 23–24 (1984): 70–94.
8 Omar Sayfo, ‘From Kurdish Sultan to Pan-Arab Champion and Muslim Hero: The Evolution of the Saladin Myth in Popular Arab Culture’, The Journal of Popular Culture 50 (2017): 65–85.
9 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (London, 2002), 153.
10 Roland Barthes, ‘The Discourse of History’, in idem, The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (New York, 1986), 138–40.
11 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London, 2006), 6.
12 Yasir Suleiman, The Arabic Language and National Identity: A Study in Ideology (Washington D.C., 2002).
13 Peter Webb, Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam (Edinburgh, 2017).
14 Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss, ‘Language, Mind, Freedom and Time: The Modern Arab Intellectual Tradition in Four Words’, in Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda, ed. Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss (Cambridge, 2016), 1–36.
15 ‘Alī al-Ḥarīrī, Al-Aḫbār al-saniyya fī al-ḥurūb al-ṣalībiyya [Outstanding Tales of the Crusades] (Cairo, 1985).
16 Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afġānī, Al-Radd ‘alā al-dahriyyīn [Rebuttal of the Materialists] (Mansoura, 1902), 40–1.
17 Ibid., 42–3.
18 Muḥammad ‘Abduh and Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afġānī, Al-‘Urwā al-wuṯqā [The Firmest Bond] (Cairo, 2014), 59.
19 Ibid., 89.
20 Ibid., 247, 253, 276, 403, 413.
21 Jirjī Zaydān, Shajarat al-durr [Shajarat al-Durr] (Cairo, 2012), 46.
22 Mark Sedgwick, Muhammad Abduh, Makers of the Muslim World (London, 2010), 75.
23 Ibid., 62.
24 François Guizot, Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe (Paris, 1838), 206–29.
25 Sedgwick, Muhammad Abduh, 29.
26 Muḥammad ‘Abduh, Risālat al-tawḥīd [Message of Monotheism], ed. Muhammad Amara (Cairo, 1994), 160–5.
27 Ibid., 166–70.
28 Bhatia, Forgetting Osama bin Munqidh, 20.
29 Phillips, ‘Unity! Unity between All the Inhabitants of Our Lands!’, 89.
30 Al-Munāẓara al-dīniyya bayna al-shayḫ muḥammad ‘abduh wa faraḥ anṭūn [The religious debate between Sheikh Muḥammad ‘Abduh and Faraḥ Anṭūn], ed. Mishal Juha (Beirut, 2014), 227–8.
31 Ibid., 228.
32 Faraḥ Anṭūn, Falsafat ibn rushd [Philosophy of Ibn Rushd] (Cairo, 2012), 60.
33 Muṣṭafā Kāmil, Al-Mas’ala al-sharqiyya [The Eastern Question] (Cairo, 2014), 9.
34 Ibid., 14.
35 Ibid., 80.
36 Ibid., 81.
37 Itzchak Weismann, Abd al-Rahman al-Kawākibī. Islamic Reform and Arab Revival (London, 2015), 63.
38 Ibid., 97.
39 Ibid., 38–9.
40 Al-Shahbā’. Aleppo, 1877. № 3. 6 January.
41 ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Kawākibī, Umm al-qurā [Mother of Cities], ed. Mustafa Muhammad (Cairo, 1931).
42 Ibid., 214.
43 ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Kawākibī, Ṭabā’i‘ al-istibdād wa maṣāri‘ al-isti‘bād [The Nature of Despotism] (Cairo, 2010), 100.
44 Al-Kawākibī, Umm al-qurā, 150.
45 Jazeera here is the name of the upland region in the northern Middle East; nowadays it spans northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey.
46 Rafīq al-‘Aẓm, Al-Jāmi‘a al-islāmiyya wa urūbā [Pan-Islamism and Europe] (Cairo, 2014), 6–7.
47 Ibid., 10.
48 Ibid., 25.
49 Ibid., 15.
50 Ibid., 15–16.
51 Muḥammad al-Ḥallāq, ‘Abd al-ḥamīd al-zahrāwī. Dirāsat fī fikrihi al-siyāsī wa-l-ijtimā‘ī [‘Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Zahrāwī. Studies of his political and social ideas] (Damascus, 1995), 161.
52 Ibid., 161–2.
53 Rashid Khalidi, The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York, 1991), 116.
54 ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib (599–661): the fourth Righteous Caliph, during whose rule the civil war (fitna) in the Caliphate flared up.
55 ‘Alūsh Najmī, Madḫal ilā qirā’at ‘abd al-ḥamīd al-zahrāwī [Introduction to the reading of ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Zahrāwī] (Damascus, 1995), 66.
56 Ḥasan al-Bannā, Majmū‘at al-rasā’il al-imām al-bannā [Collected works of Imām al-Bannā] (Cairo, 2010), 384.
57 Faraḥ Anṭūn, Ṣalāḥ al-dīn wa mamlakat ūrshalīm [Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn and the Kingdom of Jerusalem] (Cairo, 1923), 62.
58 Ibid.
59 Rashīd Riḍā, ‘Ḏikra ṣalāḥ al-dīn wa ma‘rakat al-ḥiṭṭīn’ [Memory of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn and the battle of Hittīn], Al-Manār 32 (1932) [Jumādā al-ūlā 1351], 593–606.