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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ibnanv" data-source="post: 10662058" data-attributes="member: 218596">CONTINUEDIII. Carnage in Turkey     Escorted by Byzantine ships in the summer of 1096, the invading Crusaders, led by the fanatic leader Pierre L'Ermit, crossed the Bosporus into the land of Islam in Turkey. After pillaging and plundering many Greek churches on their way, the Crusaders were heard proudly shouting that they had come to the land of Islam "to exterminate the Muslims." [13] The Crusaders foraged the Turkish countryside, plundered villages and farms and set them on fire. They mercilessly massacred Muslim peasants and burned their young children alive. [14] As pure racists, the cruel Crusaders directed their violence towards any dark-skinned peoples and those who simply wore different clothes from them, regardless of their religions. Pierre L'Ermit's peasant band even attacked non-Latin Christians and slaughtered them in heavy numbers, hung their babies on cooking spits, roasted them over open fires, and ate their flesh. [15] Even Princess Anna Comnena, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I (who had the original idea of the Crusade but who came to dislike the Crusaders like his daughter) reported how they piled up the corpses of their victims to form a high mountain. She also included a description of Crusaders tearing off the limbs of children and roasting others on fire for food. [16]      Nevertheless, the Crusaders' very first encounter with a Muslim army in 1096 in Nicaea (now modern Iznik in Turkey) ended in a crushing military defeat for them and their leader, Pierre L'Ermit, at the hands of Kilij Arsalan (the Red Lion), the Turkish Sultan of that city. But this Muslim victory was short-lived. The next year, in June 1097, the Crusaders mounted a larger military force and, with some help from the Byzantine army, inflicted a major military defeat on the Muslim forces in Nicaea. This time Arsalan was severely beaten at the Battle of Dorylaeum, and the Muslim Turkish army was cut into pieces. The Crusaders killed, pillaged, and took many Muslims prisoners who were later sold into slavery. News of the defeat of the Turkish Muslims spread like fire into the Arab world and caused a great deal of panic and pain. All Arabs and Muslims considered this first defeat of the scientifically and culturally superior Muslims at the hands of the backward Western Crusaders to be very shameful. It was compared to the old defeat of the highly advanced Roman Empire at the hands of the northern European barbarians.     After their victory in Turkey, the barbaric Crusaders moved south to the Arab lands in their destination towards the Arab province of Palestine. Every Arab village, town, and city in their path was totally gripped by fear. Many Arabs and Muslims fled for their lives, leaving behind their homes and properties. The news of the Crusaders' advances from town to town was closely followed as Arab men and women in complete shock began to whisper to each other and pray in fear.     IV. Bloodbath in Antioch     In February 1098 the Crusaders invaded Edessa (now the modern city of Urfa in Turkey), a large Armenian community located immediately north of Syria, known to the Arabs as al-Ruha. The Crusaders ruthlessly massacred a large number of Edessa's inhabitants and turned the city into the first Latin Kingdom (European colony) in the Muslim world under the leadership of Baldwin I of Boulogne, France. Baldwin I was a knight notorious for his brutality and complete lack of scruples. After he forced the Christian Armenian prince and princess of Edessa to abdicate, he proceeded to murder both of them even though he had already accepted them as his "adopted parents". [17]     Following their easy invasion of Edessa. The Crusaders moved south to destroy Arab Antioch, then the largest city in the Arab region of Syria (now the modern city of Antakya in Turkey). Antioch was well fortified and impossible to penetrate. It had plenty of food and was well protected against invasions and sieges. Its 12,000-meter-long walls were very strong and indestructible. It had about 400 large towers, each of which was 60 feet high. More than 50,000 heavily armed, bloodthirsty, fanatic Crusaders stood at Antioch's gates and laid siege to it for eight long and cold months during the rainy seasons (from October 1097 to June 1098). Their long siege was unsuccessful. Actually, while the Arabs inside Antioch were enjoying plenty of food, the Crusaders stationed outside it, faced severe hunger and starvation. As a result, the Crusaders invaded, killed, ravaged, and pillaged the surrounding Arab towns and villages, in and around Aleppo, to steal livestock and crops. Frustrated by their long unsuccessful siege of Antioch, the Crusaders finally decided to frighten the city into submission by gruesomely showering it with the mutilated severed heads of murdered Arab Aleppens, catapulting them over the city's strong walls like rain. [18] In fact, the Crusaders' savagery found no boundary. One day they caught a spy, killed him, roasted him on fire and ate his flesh while proudly shouting that this would be the fate of anyone who spied on them! [19]     However, the siege of Arab Antioch suddenly came to a quick and horrific end for its inhabitants. At 4 in the morning on June 3, 1089, one of Antioch's gates was opened for them. A Muslim traitor of Armenian origin by the name of Fairuz, who was facing serious charges of black-market trading and had been slapped with heavy fines by the authorities in Antioch, decided to seek revenge. For a large bribe of gold and land from the European invaders, he allowed the Crusader leader Bohemond I (son of the Prince of Taranto, Italy) to enter Antioch through one of the five main gates that he was guarding.  A swarm of Christian European warriors fell upon the sleeping city like uncontrollable madmen. In a short time the Crusaders turned the entire city of Antioch into an incredible scene of fire and blood. Wherever the European Christians found Arab and Muslim women in the city, "they ran their lances through their bellies." [20] All the men, women, and children who tried to flee in the heavy rain through muddy back-alleyways were tracked down by the European knights and slaughtered on the spot. As the day wounded down, cries of pleading, fear, and agony from the dying, injured, and fleeing Arabs and Muslims were gradually replaced by loud, cheerful off-key singing of the drunken Crusaders who were by then plundering the entire city of Antioch at will. [21]     Such genocide by the Europeans against the inhabitants of Arab Antioch continued for an entire week as the city itself was reeling under fire and smoke. All Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) and even native Christians (also Arab and non-Arab alike) were tortured and killed by the thousands, their houses looted and destroyed. By the end of that dreadful week, scarcely a Muslim remained alive, and the streets of Antioch were piled high with Arab and Muslim corpses of both sexes and all ages. [22] Such genocidal episodes punctuated the ruthless Crusaders throughout their brutal occupation of Arab territories.      When an Arab army from Mosul, Iraq arrived too late to save Antioch, its leader Karbuqa and his troops were completely stunned and paralyzed because of what they had seen at Antioch. In fear and total shock, Karbuqa asked the Crusaders for a truce, but without even responding to his offer, the Crusaders charged at him and destroyed his army, which quickly disintegrated "without a stroke of sword or lance, without the firing of a single arrow." [23] After this day of great shame for the Arabs and Islam (especially with the Baghdad Arab caliphs crippled and powerless in the face of the rapidly growing power struggle between them and their Turkish and Persian soldiers) there was no longer any Arab force that could stop the vicious Crusaders from controlling all of the vast Arab region of Syria. Thus, Arab Antioch became the first Latin Kingdom or a European colony in the Arab world (the second one in the Muslim world after Edessa). Antioch fell under the ruthless leadership of the butcher, Bohemond I.</blockquote>

Verification: Hathara warak wissa keeyada? (Hathara wadi karanna 20)

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