Steve Surfaro

BEFORE the #MIDTERMS #Election LEARN the #HISTORY of #ISLAM battling #CHRISTIANITY and get the GREAT @RaymondIbrahim5 book “SWORD and SCIMITAR.” a.co/d/07V06Iqs Early Islamic conquests, highlighted by the Battle of Yarmouk (636): the near ERADICATION OF CHRISIANITY: The early 7th-century Arab/Muslim conquests (especially the decisive Battle of Yarmouk in 636) did result in the rapid loss of the Levant, Egypt, and later much of North Africa—core territories of the late antique Christian world that had been under Roman/Byzantine rule for centuries. Historians such as Thomas Madden and others have described this as the loss of a large portion (sometimes phrased as roughly two-thirds to three-quarters) of the older, wealthier Christian lands outside the core of Western Europe. The later Crusades, Ottoman/Turkish expansions, Tatar/Mongol raids and conquests in Eastern Europe, and 19th–20th-century European colonial rule in parts of the Muslim world form a recognizable historical sequence, though each phase had its own complex causes and was not solely a direct reaction to the previous one. PART 1; Early Islamic conquests, highlighted by the Battle of Yarmouk (636): This 14th-century manuscript illustration (from a Catalan manuscript of Hayton’s Flor des Estoires, Bibliothèque nationale de France) depicts the Battle of Yarmouk. Muslim forces (shown with a star-and-crescent banner) face Byzantine troops (anachronistically in later-style armor with a star banner). The battle was the decisive victory for the Rashidun Caliphate under commanders including Khalid ibn al-Walid over the Byzantine army, after which Byzantine control of Syria and the Levant collapsed. It opened the way for the subsequent fall of Jerusalem (638), Egypt, and other Christian-majority territories of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. PART 2; The Crusades: Pope Urban II’s call at the Council of Clermont in 1095 is the conventional starting point of the First Crusade. This late-15th-century miniature by Jean Colombe (from Sébastien Mamerot’s Les Passages d’Outremer, Bibliothèque nationale de France, c. 1474) shows Urban II addressing the assembled clergy and nobility in a grand Gothic setting. The immediate triggers included Byzantine appeals for help against the Seljuk Turks (who had seized much of Anatolia after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071) and the desire to reclaim the Holy Land, which had been under Muslim rule since the 7th century. PART 3; Renewed Muslim conquests by Turks and Tatars: The Ottoman Turks’ conquest of Constantinople in 1453 ended the Byzantine Empire and marked a major phase of Turkish expansion into southeastern Europe. This 1903 painting by Fausto Zonaro (Mehmed II Conquering Constantinople) shows Sultan Mehmed II leading the Ottoman army, with the great cannon used to breach the walls, approaching the city. Parallel Tatar/Mongol (Golden Horde, Crimean Tatar) raids and conquests affected Russia, Poland, Hungary, and the Balkans for centuries after the 13th-century Mongol invasions. PART 4; European colonization of the Muslim world: From the late 18th century onward (beginning notably with Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt), European powers established direct or indirect control over large parts of North Africa, the Middle East, and other Muslim-majority regions. Horace Vernet’s monumental Capture of the Smalah of Abd el-Kader (1845, Château de Versailles) depicts the 1843 French capture of the mobile camp of the Algerian resistance leader Emir Abd el-Kader during the French conquest of Algeria (begun in 1830). Such works were often commissioned as official celebrations of colonial military success; Delacroix’s Women of Algiers in Their Apartment (1834) is a parallel example of the broader Orientalist visual culture that accompanied European presence in the region.

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