Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ibnanv" data-source="post: 10662073" data-attributes="member: 218596">CONTINUEDV. Butchery and Cannibalism in Ma'arra    Following their vicious capture of Antioch, the brutal Western Crusaders moved on southward, raiding and pillaging town after town on their way to Jerusalem. On their way south, the unfortunate Arab Syrian city of Ma'arra was situated. In December 1098, the city of Ma'arra, whose most important son was the Arab genius philosopher/poet Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri (973-1057), experienced horrific cannibalism against its Arab inhabitants at the hands of the barbaric European Crusaders. Ironically, this cannibalistic feast was predicted in a way by al-Ma'arri who died only 41 years before it happened. Actually, al-Ma'arri, who deeply influenced Dante, dared to attack religious fanatics (Christians, Muslims, and Jews) and even showed his irreligious audacity (in that early eleventh-century time) by writing: "The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: Those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains." [24]     The uncivilized Western Christian Crusaders proved al-Ma'arri right by quickly reducing his birthplace to a heap of ruins. A peaceful Syrian agricultural city, Ma'arra had no army or militia. Its economy was based only on grapes, olives, and figs. Its unarmed Arab inhabitants courageously resisted the crippling two-week Crusader siege of their city by all means available to them, including a desperate attempt by hurling packed beehives on the European invaders.      Hopeless and fearful of genocide similar to the one that had taken place in Antioch a few months earlier, most of Ma'arra's notables finally decided to accept the word of the Crusaders' leader, Bohemond, who promised to spare the lives of all the city's citizens if they would surrender. But Bohemond, the ruthless ruler and butcher of Antioch, proved once again that he was the vicious Western animal that he really was. In the words of one writer, on December 11, 1089, "The ... [Crusaders] arrived at dawn. It was carnage. For three days they put people to the sword, killing more than a hundred thousand people and taking many prisoners." [25]     The Crusaders' chronicler at the time, Radulph of Caen, not only admitted this genocide, but also added, with pride, the following horrifying words: "In Ma'arra our troops boiled pagan adults in cooking pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled." [26] Another Christian Crusader chronicler, Albert of Aix, who took part in the carnage of Ma'arra bragged, "Not only did our troops not shrink from eating dead Turks and Saracens [Arabs]; they also ate dogs!" [27]     Actually, even before the massacre of Ma'arra took place, its Arab inhabitants knew very well that there would be cannibalism by the European Christians. The Arabs had seen the fanatic Crusaders, the Tafurs, "roam through the countryside openly proclaiming that they would chew the flesh of ... [Arabs and Muslims] and gathering around their nocturnal camp-fires to devour their prey." [28] In fact, the barbaric Western Crusaders not only enjoyed cooking and eating the flesh of Arabs and Muslims, but they also found it even "better than spiced peacock." [29]     After the bloody nightmare of Ma'arra, the Western Crusaders moved on southward towards Jerusalem, leaving nothing but destruction and death in their wake. As a result of the two great horrific massacres in Antioch and Ma'arra, the Arabs began to look at the Westerners not only as beasts and wild animals for their brutality and strength, but also justifiably as savages and anthropophagi.     VI. Holocaust in Jerusalem     As the Western Christian armies of doom moved southward, all Arabs and Muslims, who lived in the villages and towns along the road to the Arab city of Jerusalem, took extreme precautions against the brutal Crusaders. The poorest Arabs took refuge by hiding in nearby forests and mountains, preferring to take their chances with hungry lions, bears, hyenas, and wolves in the wilderness rather than facing the invading barbaric cannibals from the West.     Pope Urban II's bloodthirsty warriors for Christ eventually reached their goal, the city of Jerusalem. The bizarre Crusader leader Pierre L'Ermit was appointed almoner of the Christian army and continued his outrageous preaching, this time at the Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem. The Crusaders laid siege to Jerusalem for 40 days. Then in preparation for their assault on Jerusalem, the soldiers of God fasted for three days, confessed their "sins", and received communion. Next, they marched barefooted around the walls of Jerusalem, chanting psalms and carrying crosses and relics, in abasement before the glory of the Lord. Suddenly, like madmen, they hurled themselves against Jerusalem's walls without carrying even a single ladder! From within Jerusalem's high walls, the Arab garrisons could do nothing but watch the wild Europeans in total horror and astonishment. [30]      Crusader leader Lord Tancred of Hauteville, France (Bohemond's nephew) promised that if Jerusalem surrendered all Arab and Muslim lifes in it would be spared and that the sanctity of all Muslim religious places, especially al-Aqsa Mosque, would be maintained. Accordingly, on Friday July 15, 1099, while the Muslims of Jerusalem were fearfully praying in the mosques for their lives, the Arab governor of Jerusalem surrendered without a fight to Lord Tancred. But once again, just as his uncle had broken his promises in Antioch and Ma'arra by butchering most of their Muslims and Arabs, so did Tancred in Jerusalem. Seized by a frenzy of vengeful blood lust, the heavily-armed European Christian warriors stormed Jerusalem like wild animals, spilling through the streets of the holy city with swords in their hands and indiscriminately butchering every man, woman, and child they could find. They sacked mosques, broke open stores, and plundered houses. Tens of thousands of noncombatants (Arab and non-Arab whether Muslim, Jew, or even native Christian) were beheaded, shot with arrows, thrown from towers, tortured, or burned at the stake.      When their killing finally stopped a week later on Friday, July 22, not a single Arab or Muslim could be seen alive within Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of Arabs and Muslims were lying dead in pools of blood in front of their own houses or stores and outside all of the holy city's mosques, especially around al-Aqsa Mosque, which was shamefully desecrated. It is estimated that more than 70,000 Arabs and Muslims were butchered in cold blood in and around the great mosque of al-Aqsa alone. [31] The Dome of the Rock next to al-Aqsa Mosque was converted to a church by the Crusaders and was stripped of hundreds of silver candelabra and dozens of gold ones. The bodies of the dead Arabs and Muslims in the holy city were slashed open in search of gold or silver coins they might have swallowed. His "holiness" Pope Urban II had decreed that any spoils of war were possessions the faithful could keep. [32] At nightfall, still dripping with the blood of their Arab victims, the Europeans knelt at the "Holy Sepulcher" and folded their bloody hands in prayer, "sobbing for excess of joy." [33]     Some lucky Arabs and Muslims had taken advantage of the chaos to slip away, escaping through gates battered down by the Crusaders. In tears and in pain, the last Arab and Muslim survivors in and around Jerusalem were forced by the Crusaders to perform the most horrible tasks: to drag the bodies of their own dead relatives, to heave and dump them in enormous vacant and unmarked lots, and finally to set them on fire. After performing these horrible tasks, the Arabs were then beheaded, forcibly drowned, or sold into slavery. [34] Religious historian Ronald Bainton reported that before Jerusalem's murdered Arabs and Muslims were buried en mass, their bodies were mutilated and "a whole cargo of noses and thumps sliced from [them]" were shipped to Europe as prized trophies! [35]     One proud report to Pope Urban II (who died two weeks later on July 29 without knowing that Jerusalem had been captured by Christ's soldiers) read, "If you could hear how we treated our enemies at Jerusalem ... our men rode through the unclean blood of the Saracens [Arabs], which came up to the knees of their horses." [36] One eyewitness of the dreadful scene in Jerusalem not only wrote that "piles of heads, hands, and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city," but that the European Christian murderers had "to pick their way over the bodies of men and horses" all throughout the holy city. [37] Describing the holocaust in Jerusalem, the Archbishop of Tyre (modern Sur) wrote the following:     "… they laid low, without distinction, every enemy encountered. Everywhere was frightful carnage, everywhere lay heaps of severed heads, so that soon it was impossible to pass or to go from one place to another except over the bodies of the slain. ... It was impossible to look upon the vast number of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them..." [38]     The fate of the Jews (Arab and non-Arab alike) of Jerusalem was no less atrocious. During the first few hours of the carnage in Jerusalem, the entire small Jewish community of the holy city gathered in their own main synagogue to pray. The Western blond knights barricaded the exits and stacked all the bundles of wood they could find in a ring around the synagogue. The Temple was then put to the torch. Those Jews who managed to escape were massacred in the neighboring alleyways. The rest were burned alive. [39]     The monuments of saints and the tomb of Ibraheem (Abraham) were also completely destroyed by the Crusaders. One eyewitness wrote that at the Temple of Solomon, where about 10,000 Jews were slaughtered, "men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins." [40] In writing about the mutilated Jewish corpses that covered the Temple area, the priest Raymond of Aguilers joyfully quoted Psalm 118: "This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." [41]     Because of their dark ages mentality, racism, brutality, and deep hatred for any alien culture, the Crusaders did not even spare their coreligionists in the Arab world from their bloodbaths as many native Christians were murdered. The Crusaders proceeded to expel from the Church of the "Holy Sepulcher" all the priests of the Orthodox and Monophysite Oriental rites - Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Georgians, and Copts - who had formerly worked together peacefully for centuries under Arab/Muslim rule in Jerusalem to officiate Christian religious ceremonies. Completely dumfounded and deeply indignant at this cruel treatment, the local Orthodox Christian priests refused to tell the European invaders where they had hidden the True Cross on which Jesus died. Totally frustrated, the European occupiers arrested the Orthodox priests, tortured them and forced them to reveal its secret location. In addition, Arab and other non-Latin Christians lost their churches and properties, and were displaced from their patriarchates and bishoprics. Even the Arab Maronite Christians (who were in communion with Rome) were contemptuously treated as second-class citizens in their own native Arab land by these invading Westerners. [42] Also, in addition to the "heretic" Muslims and Jews, the Crusaders banned the Arab Coptic Christians of Egypt from going to Jerusalem to conduct their pilgrimage.     For the official celebration of murdering tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian Muslims, Jews, and Christians in cold blood, and for the brutal torture and displacement of local Christians, the victorious European faithful held several glorious Christian religious processions conducted in the streets of Jerusalem by none other than that firebrand preacher, Pierre L'Ermit. Thus Arab Jerusalem became the second European colony in the Arab world (a Latin Kingdom like Arab Antioch) ruled by the bloodthirsty Godfrey (Duke of Lower Lorraine, Germany) from the French City of Bouillon (now located in southern Belgium). Godfrey made his official residence (of all places) in the sacred Muslim al-Aqsa Mosque of Jerusalem. On the other hand, the perfidious Lord Tancred became the proud Prince of Galilee.     Although the Arabs and Muslims knew very well that they were scientifically and culturally far superior to the Western hordes in every area of science and art, they still feared the European invaders and had nothing but deep hatred and profound contempt for them. One Arab chronicler at the time, Usamah Ibn Munqidh, who had become the leading Damascene specialist on the Crusaders, recorded his observations about the Western Christian fanatic enemies as follows:     "Their soldiers are of mighty courage and in the hour of combat do not think of flight but prefer death. But you shall see none more filthy [sic] than they. They do not cleanse or bathe themselves more than once or twice a year, and then in cold water, and they do not wash their garments from the time they put them on till they fall to pieces. They are a people of treachery and mean character." [43]     A few days after the holocaust in Jerusalem, the first Arab Palestinian refugees arrived in Damascus. Although they were sick in their hearts at having been forced to run for their lives and having to abandon their homes and properties in Palestine - the same way their descendants did in 1948 when the Western Zionists brutally settle-colonized Palestine - they were determined never to return to Palestine until all the European invaders had departed from it forever. They resolved then to awaken the conscience of their Arab and Muslim brothers all over the land of Islam to rise in an Islamic "holy war" or Jihad to expel the Western invaders.     The Arab defense against the savage Western onslaught, however, was a dismal failure from the beginning. The Arabs were, as they are now, divided and in conflict with each other. The Abbasid State was fragmented and had deteriorated into a commonwealth of semiautonomous quarrelsome states governed by Arab or Turkish military commanders. The Abbasid capital city of Baghdad was totally paralyzed, and the weak Arab Abbasid Caliph, al-Mustazhir, was crippled by the power struggle among Arabs, Persians, and Turks.</blockquote>

Verification: Winadiyakata thappara keeyak tibeda?

Top Bottom