Jerusalem's Importance in Early Islam

            While the expanding Islamic state had shown many internal weaknesses by the 11th century, the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries were seen as “The Renaissance of Islam” including great economic and cultural expansion. Islam’s continuing conquest of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe came to an end during the 11th and 12th centuries. At that time, almost simultaneous attacks by both external and internal enemies began to take place.

            From the east, the Steppe people (better known as the Turks) began what would become their ascendency to the vanguard of political Islam; in Africa, a new Berber empire arose in Spain and parts of Arab North Africa; the two Arab tribes of Sulaym and Hilal came out from Egypt and swept across Libya and Tunisia; in the north, the Georgians reestablished their empire and pressed into Muslim territory. At the same time Christian Europe awoke and in their re-conquest wrested vast territories away from the Islamic empire. It was during this process of fragmentation and weakness in the

Islamic world that Crusades reached the Middle East.     

            The capture of Jerusalem by the Christian Crusaders in 1099 is featured prominently in today’s Islamic world, however, as Bernard Lewis explains, judging by the Arabic historiography of the period, it aroused very little interest in the region at the time.^[32] The appeals by local Muslims to Damascus and Baghdad remained unanswered and the Crusader principalities from Jerusalem to Antioch quickly fit into Middle East politics, including crossreligious alliances between and among Muslim and Christian princes.

            The counter-Crusade that Salah al-Din (Saladin) led that ultimately freed the Middle East from Christian Europe, was launched nearly a hundred years after the fall of Jerusalem and its cause had very little to do with Jerusalem. Reynald of Chatillon, the Crusader leader who held fortress in Kerak (modern-day southern Jordan) between 1176 and 1187 began to launch a series of raids against Muslim caravans and commerce in the surrounding area. It is important to note that the Crusaders did not advance on the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Because these raids also threatened the Muslim routes of pilgrimage to Mecca, Saladin and the Crusader king of Jerusalem entered into a deal to protect the pilgrims during the Hajj.

            In 1182, Reynald violated the truce and looted more caravans, some of which were bound for Mecca. Lewis explains: “Even more outrageous, from a Muslim point of view, was his threat to Arabia and notably, a buccaneering expedition in the Red Sea, involving attacks on Muslim shipping and the Hijaz ports which served Mecca and Medina. It was these events that led directly to Saladin's proclamation of a jihad against the Crusaders—a vivid illustration of the central importance of Arabia in the Islamic perception. The victories of Saladin and his capture of Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187 have long been and are today a source of inspiration to Arab leaders.”^[33]

            After the success of the jihad and recapture of Jerusalem, Saladin and his successors seem to have lost interest in the city, and in 1229 one of them even ceded Jerusalem to the emperor Fredrick II as part of a general compromise between the Muslim ruler and the Crusaders. However, after the Crusaders tried to make Jerusalem a purely Christian city, Muslims retook the city in 1244. Jerusalem again entered a long period of obscurity only to be reawakened in the nineteenth century by Europeans quarreling over Christian holy places and Jewish immigration.[34]