Subscribers can listen to the audio of this post here.
In 2016, President Barack Obama said, “Every great religion promises a pathway to love and peace and righteousness, and yet no religion has been spared from believers who have claimed their faith as a license to kill.” Christians, you listening? Your faith is no exception.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: June 7, 1099--
Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world, and its ancient stones are soaked with rivers of blood. The place holds special significance for the three major Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Over millennia, Jerusalem has been attacked more than 50 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, under siege almost two dozen times, and twice destroyed. It was on June 7, 1099, that one of the most historically significant sieges of Jerusalem began.
In 1095 Pope Urban II basically said, “I want the holy land back. Get it for me and all your sins are washed away. Killing infidels is fine, by the way.” And kill they did.
The siege lasted 38 days and represented the climax of the First Crusade. It had all the trappings of what you might see in a movie about medieval warfare: siege towers, battering rams, and mangonels (a form of trebuchet—a rock-throwing thingy).
On July 15 the crusaders entered the city and started killing in earnest. And by that, I mean everyone. Muslims and Jews alike, who had fought side-by-side to defend the city, were massacred; approximately 40,000 people were killed. The atrocities committed were considered excessive even by medieval standards, like there was a perverse need to cleanse the city with blood spilled in the most egregious ways imaginable.
That’s history for you. Brutality often pays off, at least for a while, and it’s usually the meanest motherfuckers who get to rule. The Christian crusaders held Jerusalem for almost a century, but were expelled in 1187 by Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria. Saladin had already captured most of the other crusader cities, and he didn’t want to wreck Jerusalem’s shit via an extended and bloody siege, so he offered terms. Most of the Christian inhabitants were able to buy their freedom to escape the city, although several thousand were enslaved by the conquering Muslims.
Of course, the Christians were pissed at having lost Jerusalem, so another crusade immediately followed, led by King Richard the Lionheart.
Subscribe to cool shit:
Get the book ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN.