What the Crusades Accomplished—And What TheyDidn'tThe jihad in Eastern Europe
What did the Euro pean s do in the face of the Isla mic onsl augh t? They
contin ued to cal l Crus ades , but ins tea d of figh tin g over Jer usa lem or
Damiet ta, the y fou nd the mse lve s fig hti ng the jih adi sts eve r clo ser to
home and finall y in Europe itsel f, with their backs incre asingl y again st
thewall. The kin gdom of Jer usa lem beca me the kin gdo m ofCyp rus,
whosekin greta ined the titleKingof Jeru salem,Butthat titl e was now-
fiction. One king of Cyprus, PeterI (1359-1369), triedtogathersupport
in Europefor a new Crusade, and actuallyseizedAlexandriain1365. But
he had towithdraw after receiving no help from a Europe distracted by
its internal problems. In 1426. Cyprus itself fell to the jihad of the
EgyptianMamluks,
The Crusa ders were pushe d rele ntles sly west ward. A larg e Crusa der
forc ewas defea ted in Nicopo lis, a town on the Danube , in 1395. All
of Europ enowlay open to the Turks, with virtually nothing standing
in the wayof their conquest ofRome. Paris, or even London.It looked
as though the Muslims' attempt to conquer Europe was finally going to
succeed. It hadbe gunse ve nhun dre d yea rs ea rli er, whe n the ji had
ar mie s fir st bes ie ged Constantinople and entered Spain, and had been
fueled over all those centur ies by the theolo gy and legal
superst ructur e of jihad as mandat edby the Qur'an and the words and
deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. For the fir st tim e in ove r a
tho usa nd yea rs, sin ce befor e the Rom an Emp er or Constanti ne
proclaimed himself a Christia n and legalized Christian ity, the smart
money was on the complete disappearance of Christianit y and the
relegationofvirtually every Christian in the world to dhimini status.Help from an unlikely quarter
But then arose a mos t unlikely source of aid forChri stend om. the
Mongols"These were notthepaganMongols of a century before. hoping to