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diff --git a/papers/3606midtern_2.tex b/papers/3606midtern_2.tex new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d4b156c --- /dev/null +++ b/papers/3606midtern_2.tex @@ -0,0 +1,92 @@ +\documentclass[12pt]{article} +\usepackage{setspace}\doublespacing\usepackage{indentfirst} +\usepackage[left=1in,right=1in,top=1in,bottom=1in]{geometry} +\pagenumbering{gobble} +\begin{document} + +The Crusades facilitated an interaction between the Muslim and Christian worlds brought on by conquest. +These new kingdoms faced challenges surrounded by Muslim ruled neighbors, as well as challenges from the Muslim population inside the crusader states. +Many Christians would eventually start to blend their native Frankish culture along with the native Muslim cultures of their subjects to create a fusion of two separate worlds. + +One of the first things that happened after the creation of the crusader states was the beginning blend of two distinct cultures. +The Franks saw the Muslims as outsiders and lesser than them, and many Muslims saw the Franks as oafish overlords that only cared for themselves. +Some Franks, especially new arrivals, were especially confused by the Muslims praying: +``One day I entered this mosque, repeated the first formula, `Allah is great,' and stood up in the act of praying, upon which one of the Franks rushed on me, got hold of me and turned my face eastward \dots A group of Templars hastened to him, seized him and repelled him from me'' +(ibn Munqidh, p. 290). + +The Knights Templar and other Franks that had been in the Holy Land for a long time were more tolerant of the Muslims than the newer Franks, who would see their religious practices as wrong. +The new Franks had likely never seen a Muslim before, and they were not familiar with the Islamic faith or its practices. + +The converse was true for the Muslims as well. +Few if any Muslims knew of the practices of the Western European crusaders. +The Muslims were more tolerant of the Crusaders, but still saw many of their practices as barbaric. +This is best displayed with their medical practices: +``We had in our country a highly esteemed knight who was taken ill and was on the point of death \dots When the priest saw the patient, he said `Bring me some wax.' We fetched him a little wax \dots and he stuck one in each nostril. The knight died on the spot. We [the Muslims] said to him [the priest], `He is dead.' `Yes,' he replied, `he was suffering great pain, so I closed his nose that he might die and get relief''' (ibn Munqidh, p. 293). +The Muslims' reaction to this and the rest of the medical practices seen in the Levant was nothing short of both amazement and horror. +The relations between the Muslims and the Crusaders was also expressed with taxes. + +The new crusader states had to establish themselves in a majority-Muslim world. +Some cities would largely treat both religions as equals, sharing crops and animals. +Others would treat the Muslims as second-class citizens in crusader lands. +This was largely done with a similar but opposite tax on goods on the opposing religion. +``The Christians impose a tax on the Muslims in their land which gives them full security; and likewise the Christian merchants pay a tax upon their goods in Muslim lands. Agreement exists between them, and there is equal treatment in all cases'' (Ibn Jubayr, p. 215). +The taxes angered many Muslim merchants who were not used to paying these new taxes. +This especially effected the Maghrebi, who were taxed extra. +``The greater part of those taxed where Maghrebis, those from all other Muslim lands being unmolested. This is because some earlier Maghrebis had annoyed the Franks'' (Ibn Jubayr, p. 216). +This punitive tax was levied on them because the Maghrebis travelled to attack the Crusaders along with the native Muslims of the Levant. +Many Christian rulers also had Muslims in leading positions in their respective lands. +This was done to calm their subjects, as a Muslim is more willing to hear the problems of a Muslim than a Christian. + +The crusader states, established by the bloody conquest of the holy land from its Muslim inhabitants and overlords, brought two separate worlds together in a few small kingdoms and counties. +The Franks and Muslims would view each other as outsiders, but eventually their cultures would begin to blend together and become something distinct. + +\pagebreak + +The Black Plague was devastating as it spread throughout Europe. +During these years, many would search for someone to blame for their misery. +The blame would end up being shifted onto the Jews in the area. +This was largely stemmed from previous anti-Jewish accusations and the views of relative success and unharmed populations compared to the Christians by both the lower and upper classes. + +One of the major events of anti-Jewish violence before the Plague was during the First Crusade. +In 1096, crusaders in the Holy Roman Empire would launch a crusade against the Jews in the cities. +``In the spring of 1096 bands of crusaders – poor people as well as experienced knights – attacked and injured the Jewish communities of Speyer, Mainz, Worms, Cologne, Metz, Trier, Regensburg and Prague. Jews were massacred, their property was despoiled and destroyed'' (Bronstein, p. 1268) +The contemporary historians note that both the poor and rich would engage in these massacres, and would emphasize forced conversions. +This was not shared with later historians. +Later historians see the massacres as less of forced conversions and more of rampant looting and murder among the poor. +Others argued that both the richer and the poorer Christians engaged in this and other violence with another motivation: that of economics. + +Throughout the middle ages moneylending to Christians was seen as a sin by the Church, so Christians were forbidden from engaging in moneylending. +This was not extended to the Jews. +Many Jews would end up as lenders to those both rich and poor. +The nobility in turn would protect them in return for giving them this money: +``Christian dependence upon Jewish moneylenders constituted a major irritant in Jewish-Christian relations in the High and later Middle Ages'' (Cohen, p. 84). +Much anti-Jewish violence was instigated by the European nobles and the poor who were indebted and wanted to be forgiven by force. +The Catholic Church was also opposed to moneylending, and would attempt multiple times to force all the monarchs of Europe to ban moneylending in every kingdom. +This would largely come to a boil as the Black Plague began to spread throughout Europe from the east. + +The Black Death devastated Europe in the 14th century. By the end of the plague, more than a third of the population was dead: +``In the year 1349 there occurred the greatest epidemic that ever happened. +Death went from one end of the earth to the other, on both sides of the sea, +and it was even greater among the Saracens than among the Christians'' (von +Königshofen, p. 155). +The disease affected all, Christians and Jews alike. +Some were not convinced that this plague was natural. +Eventually it was spread through Europe that the group to blame on the disease was the Jews in the area. +They were accused of all sorts of heinous crimes: +``when in anticipation of, or shortly after, out-breaks of plague Jews were accused of poisoning food, wells and streams, tortured into confessions, rounded up in city squares or their synagogues, and exterminated en masse'' (Cohn, 4). +These accusations were rarely tried in a court and those that were tried were usually found guilty through duress confessions or other forms of coercion, including loaded trials. +Cohn argues that instead of the peasants instigating the violence it instead was the nobles and aristocrats who were largely the perpetrators. +Few debters were poor, and many were rich. +The rich were the ones who were most likely to be the ones to blame, since the poor were rarely in debt, unlike the nobles. + +Einbinder goes into more specifics on specific groups that were affected by the violence. +His emphasis on the graves in Tàrrega emphasizes the violence done to the Jews: +``There is more evidence that the dead were buried hastily and in unusual circumstances. Jewish burial practice calls for the body to be garbed only in a shroud and unaccompanied by personal possessions. Yet these individuals were clothed at the time of burial, and a fascinating trove of objects was recovered with their remains, including coins and buttons, buckles and jewelry, a thimble, and the cover of a decorative box'' (Einbinder, p. 131). +These hasty, delayed burials were likely also done by Jews, since they were buried following some of the Jewish burial customs. +Another thing Einbinder emphasizes is the trauma on many of the remains. +A majority of those in graves had traumatized remains. +His last point is that he agrees with other historians that the violence was more caused by the aristocrats then the peasants. + +Throughout the 14th century, the Black Plague was used as a \emph{casus belli} against the local Jewish populations. This was largely instigated not by the peasants but by the aristocrats, nobles and the wealthy. +These massacres were largely caused by similar reasons to previous massacres, which were largely economic instead of religious. +\end{document}
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