6 Quotes by Raymond Ibrahim

All that is known of the True Cross’s fate is that Saladin ordered it to be paraded upside down in the streets of Damascus. From there, the Cross – discovered under Constantine, seized by Persians but recovered by Heraclius, smuggled to Constantinople during the Islamic siege of Jerusalem in 637 but then sent back to the Holy City when it was restored to Christendom – disappears from history and enters legend.

The best they did is make treaties with Sultan Tughril; and when roaming bands of Turks broke the treaty by invading and terrorizing Christian territory, and Constantinople objected, the sly sultan feigned innocence by saying he was unable to control these premodern “lone wolves,” even as they continued raiding deeper and deeper into western Anatolia.

As Steven Runciman put it, “The Battle of Manzikert was the most decisive disaster in Byzantine history. The Byzantines themselves had no illusions about it. Again and again their historians refer to that ’dreadful day.

Shocking as it may seem, love – not of the modern, sentimental variety, but a medieval, muscular one, characterized by Christian altruism, agape – was the primary driving force behind the crusades.

Even the ancient Visigothic church of Saint Vincent, the main basilica of Cordoba, which the invaders initially vouchsafed to Christians on condition of surrender, was coercively “purchased,” razed to the ground, and its precious materials cannibalized to construct the Great Mosque of Cordoba – on the heads of northern Christian slaves no less.

In previous wars with the Muslims the Byzantines had all too often been on the defensive, with the retaining of Christian territory their aim, not its expansion. However, both Nicephorus and John declared their wars to be for the glory of Christendom.