I don’t write a lot about the Crusades. My formal education in history was poor and incomplete, so although I have a sense from my general reading that the conventional wisdom about them is somewhat off, I wouldn’t dare try to do any debunking myself.
However, even I can see the ridiculous error in this Washington Post piece, pointed to by Get Religion, about conflicts between Muslims and Christians in the nation of Turkey:
The tension dates at least to the 13th century, when Christian Crusaders sacked what is today Istanbul.
"What is today Istanbul." Hm. Why do you think they didn’t say what it was in the 13th century? Could it be because the name might clue us in to something… important? As I’ve said before on this blog, thank goodness for They Might Be Giants:
Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks
Ah, that was fun. What is today Istanbul was, at the time the Christian Crusaders sacked it, not Istanbul at all but rather Constantinople. Ring a bell yet? Let’s look at a timeline shall we? Follow this link to the Wikipedia article and look at the right side of the page. Highlights:
330 – Constantine makes Constantinople his capital. (Remember Constantine? The Christian emperor?)
1054 – Schism. Split between Church in Rome and Church in Constantinople.
1071 and following: Several notations about the loss of Byzantine Christian cities to conquest by Turks, i.e., Muslim invaders. However, Constantinople is not among them. It remains an Eastern Christian city. Hence, it is still called Constantinople, recalling that long-ago Christian emperor.
1204 – Constantinople conquered by Crusaders. This is the 13th-century sacking referred to in the article. Who sacked whom? Western Christians sacked Eastern Christians. Now, you tell me, as Get Religion pointed out — how is this the source of the tension between Christians and Muslims in modern Turkey?
1261 – Constantinople reconquered by Michael Palaeologus, Byzantine emperor of Nicaea. OK, now the Eastern Christians have gotten Constantinople back.
1453 – Ottoman Turks (i.e. Muslim invaders again) conquer Constantinople.
After that, it was called Istanbul. But it wasn’t called that when Christians sacked it. Because it was Christian too. Do you think perhaps it might be more accurate to say that tensions between Muslims and Christians date to the 15th-century sacking of what was then Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks?
Maybe, if the 65,000 or so Orthodox Christians in Turkey were attacking the 35,000 or so Catholics in Turkey, that might make sense…
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