Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy (34 page)

From the same sources we know that Muhammad’s first violent action against the Jews involved the Qaynuqa tribe, who dwelt at Medina, under the protection of the city. Muhammad “seized the occasion of an accidental tumult,” and ordered the Qaynuqa (or Kainoka) to embrace his religion or fight. In the words of Gibbon, “The unequal conflict was terminated in fifteen days; and it was with extreme reluctance that Mahomet yielded to the importunity of his allies and consented to spare the lives of the captives.” (
Decline and Fall
, Chapter 50) In later attacks on the Jews, the Hebrew captives were not so fortunate.

The most notorious of all Muhammad’s attacks against the Jews was directed at the Banu Quraiza tribe. This community, which dwelt near Medina, was attacked without warning by the Prophet and his men, and, after its defeat, all the males over the age of puberty were beheaded. Some Islamic authorities claim that Muhammad personally participated in the executions. The doomed men and boys, whose numbers are estimated at anything between 500 and 900, were ordered to dig the trench which was to be their communal grave. All of the women and children were enslaved. These deeds are mentioned in the Koran as acts carried out by Allah himself and fully sanctioned by divine approval.

The Massacre of Banu Quraiza was followed soon after by the attack on the Khaybar tribe. On this occasion, the Prophet ordered the torture of a Jewish chieftain to extract information about where he had hidden his treasures. When the treasure was uncovered, the chieftain was beheaded.

What caused Muhammad’s seemingly implacable animosity towards the Jews? According to Gibbon, it was their refusal to recognize him as their long-awaited Messiah that “converted his friendship into an implacable hatred, with which he pursued that unfortunate people to the last moment of his life; and, in the double character of apostle and conqueror, his persecution was extended into both worlds.” (
Decline and Fall
, Ch. 50)

It is a widely-held fiction that, aside from the Prophet’s persecution of the Jews of Arabia, Muslims in general and Islam as a rule was historically tolerant to this People of the Book, who were generally granted dhimmi (“protected”) status in the Islamic Umma, or community. But dhimmi status, also accorded to Christians, did not, as Bat Ye’or has demonstrated at great length, imply equal rights with Muslims. On the contrary, dhimmis were subject, even at the best of times, to a whole series of discriminatory and humiliating laws and to relentless exploitation. At the worst of times, they could be murdered in the streets without any hope of legal redress. One of the most noxious measures directed against them was the requirement to wear an item or color of clothing by which they could be easily identified: identified for easy exploitation and abuse. Bat Ye’or has shown that this law was enforced in Islam right from the beginning. The violence was not continuous, but the exploitation was, and the pattern of abuse initiated by Muhammad in Arabia in the seventh century was to be repeated throughout history. The first massacres of Jews in Europe, carried out by Muslim mobs in Spain, were preceded by other massacres carried out in North Africa, and clearly formed a continuum with Muhammad’s massacres of that people in Arabia.

There was, however, at times, a semblance of tolerance for both Jews and Christians. It could not have been otherwise. When the Arabs conquered the vast territories of Mesopotamia, Syria, and North Africa during the seventh century, they found themselves a small minority ruling over enormous populations comprising mainly Christians and, to a lesser degree, Jews. As such, they needed to proceed with caution. Like all conquerors, the Arabs were quick to exploit any internal conflicts; and it was in their interests, above all, to divide the Christians from the Jews. This was particularly the case in Spain, where the Jewish population was very large. A united Jewish and Christian front could have proved extremely dangerous, and it was entirely in the interest of the conquerors to sow mistrust and suspicion between these communities. In the words of Bat Ye’or, “The [Arab] invaders knew how to take advantage of the dissensions between local groups in order to impose their own authority, favoring first one and then another, with the intention of weakening and ruining them all through a policy of ‘divide and rule.’”
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Jewish communities, both in Spain and elsewhere, tended to be both educated and prosperous. Jewish doctors, scientists and merchants could be usefully employed by any ruling group. And employed they were by the Arabs. Some, such as Ibn Naghrela, rose to positions of great prominence. The international connections of the Jews and their mastery of languages proved invaluable to the new rulers. The Jews frequently found themselves in the role of intermediaries between Muslims and Christians. Yet such favors as they enjoyed was transitory and uncertain. There was never any real security, as the massacres of 1011 and 1066 illustrate only too well. On the other hand, it was entirely in the interests of the Muslims that the Christians believed the Jews were favored. And part of that myth was the notion that “the Jews” had actually assisted the Muslims in their conquest of the country.

The likelihood that this story was true is vanishingly small, especially when we consider the massacres of Jews carried out in Arabia by Muhammad himself just a few decades earlier. No people had better international links than the Jews, a nation of merchants par excellence, and those of Spain would have been very much aware of Muhammad’s behavior long before the first Muslim armies landed on Spanish soil. Nonetheless, the story got out that the Jews had helped the Muslims, and there can be little doubt that this story was fostered by the Muslim invaders themselves, as part of the policy of divide and conquer.

All during the tenth and eleventh centuries, the war for possession of the Iberian Peninsula raged between Christians and Muslims. This conflict was to grow into a real clash of civilizations, as both groups called in the assistance of co-religionists from far and wide. The Shrine of Santiago de Compostela became a rallying symbol for the Christians of the north and for those of France and Germany, who crossed the Pyrenees to join the struggle against Islam. Their Christian allies in Spain already had the conviction that the Jews were secret allies of the Muslims. They were convinced that the Jews had assisted the Muslims in their conquest of the country; and they came into contact with Muslim antisemitic attitudes – attitudes which the Christians began to imbibe. It is an acknowledged fact that it was in Spain that the warriors who later joined the First Crusade learnt their antisemitism. In the words of Steven Runciman, “Already in the Spanish wars there had been some inclination on the part of Christian armies to maltreat the Jews.”
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Runciman notes that at the time of the expedition to Barbastro, in the mid-eleventh century, Pope Alexander II had written to the bishops of Spain to remind them that there was all the difference in the world between Muslims and Jews. The former were irreconcilable enemies of the Christians, but the latter were ready to work for them. However, in Spain “the Jews had enjoyed such favour from the hands of the Moslems that the Christian conquerors could not bring themselves to trust them.”
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This lack of trust is confirmed by more than one document of the period, several of which are listed by Runciman.

Just over a decade after the Christian knights of France and Germany had helped their co-religionists in Spain to retake the city of Toledo from the Muslims, some of them prepared to set out on the First (official) Crusade. Before they did so, a few of them took part in the mass murder of several thousand Jews in Germany and Bohemia – an atrocity unprecedented in European history.

In view of the fact that these pogroms were committed by warriors some of whom had learned their trade in Spain, and in view of the fact that such atrocities were hitherto unknown in Europe, we may state that there is strong circumstantial evidence to suggest that the Christians had been influenced by Islamic ideas.

To conclude, I am not trying to argue that antisemitism did not exist among Christians before the rise of Islam. Obviously it did. Yet the influence of Islam, and the terrible struggle between the two intolerant ideologies of Christianity and Islam which began in the seventh century, had a profoundly detrimental effect upon the Jews; and it was then, and only then, that the virulent and murderous antisemitism so characteristic of the Middle Ages entered European life.

* * *

The undoubted negative influence of Islam upon the character and culture of Spain and the other Mediterranean lands should not blind us to the fact that the Christian message was never completely lost nor the church as an institution completely corrupted. Following the rise of the Germanic kingdoms in the fifth century, the church worked hard to uphold the rights of slaves and the peasants against the cupidity and passions of the fierce warrior-class which now ruled Spain, Gaul and Italy. This continued during the period of the Muslim and Viking invasions and afterwards. “The tenth and eleventh centuries saw a struggle between the lords and the church over the rights of these people [the peasants]. The lords wanted to deprive the serfs of all the rights of human beings, to say that they had no souls and to refuse to call their unions marriages.”
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The church, notes the above writer, won this battle, but not without fierce resistance on the part of the nobles. This struggle on behalf of the poor continued right throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, and we have already noted how the monasteries, for example, provided free medical care, as well as alms and shelter, to the poor and destitute all throughout this epoch. And the church further protected the poor by ensuring the enactment of laws against speculation, such as the fixed price of bread and grain, and the various rules which governed the business of the guilds. Even war was regulated by the church, and medieval conflicts, at least within Europe, were not nearly as violent as many imagine. As Sidney Painter notes; “Even when kings and feudal princes fought supposedly serious wars in the early Middle Ages, they were not bloody. At the great and decisive battle of Lincoln in 1217, where some 600 knights on one side fought 800 on the other, only one knight was killed, and everyone was horrified at the unfortunate accident.”
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There is no question that the medieval custom of ransoming important hostages provided an economic motive for this remarkable unwillingness to use lethal force; but it is equally clear that the idea of chivalry, with its strongly Christian overtones, exerted a powerful moderating influence.

Nor should we forget that during the centuries which followed the First Crusade, when we might imagine Christians in Europe to have become thoroughly accustomed to the idea of fighting and killing for Christ, there is much evidence to show that this did not happen. The idea of violence in the name of Christ was, in the words of Jonathan Riley-Smith, “without precedent” when it was first promoted in the eleventh century.
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“So radical was the notion of devotional war,” says Riley-Smith, that it is surprising that there seem to have been no protests from senior churchmen”
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Be that as it may, Christians could never be fully at ease with the idea, and enthusiasm for crusading soon waned. Riley-Smith notes that, following the success of the First Crusade, the supply of new recruits immediately dried up, even among those groups and families who had been its strongest supporters. These reverted, instead, to the traditional non-military pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
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We should note too individual statements like that of the English Franciscan Roger Bacon in the 1260s, who criticized the very idea of Crusading, arguing that such military activities impeded efforts to peacefully convert Muslims.
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Contrast this with the attitude in Islam, where all warriors who died in the Jihad were “martyrs” and guaranteed an immediate reward of 72 virgins in Paradise. And the contrast is seen very clearly in the words of Gregory Palamas, an Orthodox metropolitan, who was a captive of the Turks in 1354: “ … these infamous people, hated by God and infamous, boast of having got the better of the Romans [Byzantines] by their love of God. … They live by the bow, the sword, and debauchery, finding pleasure in taking slaves, devoting themselves to murder, pillage, spoil … and not only do they commit these crimes, but even – what an aberration – they believe that God approves of them.”
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And when the Spaniards began the conquest of the New World, one should not forget that the great majority of the excesses carried out were by individual and unregulated adventurers, over whom the royal and church authorities had little control. Nor should we neglect to mention that it was owing to the enormous and sustained pressure of many humane and courageous churchmen that the custom of enslaving the native inhabitants of the New World was finally abandoned.

Thus it would be a mistake to imagine, amidst the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the colonization of the Americas, that the original spirit and teaching of the Carpenter of Galilee was irretrievably lost. Nonetheless, the violent world in which the church found itself put many strains upon it; and the message of Christ was undeniably diluted.

* * *

The removal of Roman power in the fifth century and the flooding of the western provinces by barbarian armies produced in Europe a revival of the military and warrior spirit which had characterized Rome herself in her earlier days. But the barbarians themselves became “softened” by the settled lives they began to lead in the western provinces and by the influence of the Christian faith. Even newly-arrived hordes, like the Franks and Langobards in the late fifth and sixth centuries, fell under the civilizing spell of Rome and of Christianity; and the fierce customs of the men who, just a generation earlier had dwelt in the forests and wildernesses of Germany, soon began to be softened in the vineyards of Gaul and the olive-groves of Spain. Then, however, early in the seventh century, when the West was about to be re-Romanized, there appeared a new enemy: one that could not be placated and could not be Christianized. To the normal horrors of war the Muslim invaders added a new and dangerous element: religious fanaticism. Here were conquerors intent not only on plunder and enslavement, but also on the extinction or at the very least subjugation of the Christian faith. Against the barbarians of Germany and Scythia, the Christians of the west might fight for the possession of their homes and their lands, but such enemies were not intent on the destruction of the Christian religion. Christians were free to worship as they wished; and indeed many of the barbarians showed, from the very start, that they could be influenced by and even converted to the Christian faith.