Jihad is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with God's guidance, such as struggle against one's evil inclinations, proselytizing, or efforts toward the moral betterment of the Muslim community (Ummah), though it is most frequently associated with armed conflict. In classical Islamic law (sharia), the term refers to armed struggle against unbelievers, while modernist Islamic scholars generally equate military jihad with defensive warfare. In Sufi circles, spiritual and moral jihad has been traditionally emphasized under the name of greater jihad. The term has gained additional attention in recent decades through its use by various insurgent Islamic extremist, militant Islamist, and terrorist individuals and organizations whose ideology is based on the Islamic notion of jihad.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem, also known as the Latin Kingdom, was a Crusader state that was established in the Levant immediately after the First Crusade. It lasted for almost two hundred years, from the accession of Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099 until the fall of Acre in 1291. Its history is divided into two periods with a brief interruption in its existence, beginning with its collapse after the siege of Jerusalem in 1187 and its restoration after the Third Crusade in 1192.
The Second Crusade (1147–1150) was the second major crusade launched from Europe. The Second Crusade was started in response to the fall of the County of Edessa in 1144 to the forces of Zengi. The county had been founded during the First Crusade (1096–1099) by King Baldwin I of Jerusalem in 1098. While it was the first Crusader state to be founded, it was also the first to fall.
The Battle of Hattin took place on 4 July 1187, between the Crusader states of the Levant and the forces of the Ayyubid sultan Saladin. It is also known as the Battle of the Horns of Hattin, due to the shape of the nearby extinct volcano of that name.
The Zengid or Zangid dynasty was an Atabegate of the Seljuk Empire created in 1127. It formed a Turkoman dynasty of Sunni Muslim faith, which ruled parts of the Levant and Upper Mesopotamia, and eventually seized control of Egypt in 1169. In 1174 the Zengid state extended from Tripoli to Hamadan and from Yemen to Sivas. Imad ad-Din Zengi was the first ruler of the dynasty.
Imad al-Din Zengi, also romanized as Zangi, Zengui, Zenki, and Zanki, was a Turkoman atabeg of the Seljuk Empire, who ruled Mosul, Aleppo, Hama, and, later, Edessa. He was the namesake and founder of the Zengid dynasty of atabegs.
Taqī al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm ibn ʿAbd al-Salām ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Numayrī al-Ḥarrānī, commonly known as Ibn Taymiyya, was a Sunni Muslim scholar, hadith traditionist, judge, ascetic, and proto-Salafi and iconoclastic theologian. He is known for his diplomatic involvement with the Ilkhanid ruler Ghazan Khan at the Battle of Marj al-Saffar, which ended the Mongol invasions of the Levant. A legal jurist of the Hanbali school, Ibn Taymiyya's condemnation of numerous folk practices associated with saint veneration and visitation of tombs made him a contentious figure with many rulers and scholars of the time, which caused him to be imprisoned several times as a result.
War against Islam is a term used to describe a concerted effort to harm, weaken or annihilate the societal system of Islam, using military, economic, social and cultural means, or means invading and interfering in Islamic countries under the pretext of the war on terror, or using the media to create a negative stereotype about Islam. The alleged perpetrators are non-Muslims, particularly the Western world and "false Muslims", in collusion with political actors in the Western world. While the themes of the "War against Islam" mostly concern general issues of societal transformations in modernization and secularization as well as current international power politics, the Crusades are often given as its starting point.
The Seventh Crusade (1248–1254) was the first of the two Crusades led by Louis IX of France. Also known as the Crusade of Louis IX to the Holy Land, it aimed to reclaim the Holy Land by attacking Egypt, the main seat of Muslim power in the Near East. The Crusade was conducted in response to setbacks in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, beginning with the loss of the Holy City in 1244, and was preached by Innocent IV in conjunction with a crusade against emperor Frederick II, Baltic rebellions and Mongol incursions. After initial success, the crusade ended in defeat, with most of the army – including the king – captured by the Muslims.
Majd ad-Dīn Usāma ibn Murshid ibn ʿAlī ibn Munqidh al-Kināni al-Kalbī or Ibn Munqidh was a medieval Arab Muslim poet, author, faris (knight), and diplomat from the Banu Munqidh dynasty of Shaizar in northern Syria. His life coincided with the rise of several medieval Muslim dynasties, the arrival of the First Crusade, and the establishment of the crusader states.
Shaizar or Shayzar is a town in northern Syria, administratively part of the Hama Governorate, located northwest of Hama. Nearby localities include, Mahardah, Tremseh, Kafr Hud, Khunayzir and Halfaya. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Shaizar had a population of 5,953 in the 2004 census.
Religious fanaticism, or religious extremism, is a pejorative designation used to indicate uncritical zeal or obsessive enthusiasm that is related to one's own, or one's group's, devotion to a religion – a form of human fanaticism that could otherwise be expressed in one's other involvements and participation, including employment, role, and partisan affinities. Historically, the term was applied in Christian antiquity to denigrate non-Christian religions, and subsequently acquired its current usage with the Age of Enlightenment.
The Battle of al-Babein took place on March 18, 1167, during the third Crusader invasion of Egypt. King Amalric I of Jerusalem, and a Zengid army under Shirkuh, both hoped to take the control of Egypt over from the Fatimid Caliphate. Saladin served as Shirkuh’s highest-ranking officer in the battle. The result was a tactical draw between the forces, however the Crusaders failed to gain access to Egypt.
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Christian Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these military expeditions are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were intended to conquer Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Muslim rule. Beginning with the First Crusade, which resulted in the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, dozens of military campaigns were organised, providing a focal point of European history for centuries. Crusading declined rapidly after the 15th century.
Ibn Asakir was a Syrian Sunni Islamic scholar, who was one of the most prominent and renowned experts on Hadith and Islamic history in the medieval era. and a disciple of the Sufi mystic Abu al-Najib Suhrawardi. Ibn Asakir was an accomplished jurist, hadith specialist and a prolific writer. He was the pre-eminent figure of the Asakir dynasty, whose family members occupied the most prominent positions as judges and scholars of the Shafi'i school of the Sunni law in Damascus for almost two centuries.
The History of Jerusalem during the Kingdom of Jerusalem began with the capture of the city by the Latin Christian forces at the apogee of the First Crusade. At that point it had been under Muslim rule for over 450 years. It became the capital of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, until it was again conquered by the Ayyubids under Saladin in 1187. For the next forty years, a series of Christian campaigns, including the Third and Fifth Crusades, attempted in vain to retake the city, until Emperor Frederick II led the Sixth Crusade and successfully negotiated its return in 1229.
Abū Muḥammad ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz bin ʿAbd al-Salām bin Abī al-Qāsim bin Ḥasan al-Sulamī al-Shāfiʿī, also known by his titles, Sultan al-'Ulama/ Sulthanul Ulama, Abu Muhammad al-Sulami, was a famous mujtahid, Ash'ari theologian, jurist and the leading Shafi'i authority of his generation. He was described by Al-Dhahabi as someone who attained the rank of ijtihad, with asceticism and piety and the command of virtue and forbidding of what is evil and solidity in religion. He was described by Ibn al-Imad al-Hanbali as the sheikh of Islam, the imam of the scholar, the lone of his era, the authority of scholars, who excelled in jurisprudence(Fiqh), theology(Aqidah) and the Arabic language, and reached the rank of ijtihad, and received students who traveled to him from all over the country.
The Barons' Crusade (1239–1241), also called the Crusade of 1239, was a crusade to the Holy Land that, in territorial terms, was the most successful crusade since the First Crusade. Called by Pope Gregory IX, the Barons' Crusade broadly embodied the highest point of papal endeavor "to make crusading a universal Christian undertaking." Gregory IX called for a crusade in France, England, and Hungary with different degrees of success. Although the crusaders did not achieve any glorious military victories, they used diplomacy to successfully play the two warring factions of the Ayyubid dynasty against one another for even more concessions than Frederick II had gained during the more well-known Sixth Crusade. For a few years, the Barons' Crusade returned the Kingdom of Jerusalem to its largest size since 1187.
The Crusade of 1129 or the Damascus Crusade was a military campaign of the Kingdom of Jerusalem with forces from the other crusader states and from western Europe against the Emirate of Damascus. The brainchild of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem, the crusade failed to meet its military objectives. Its diplomatic preliminaries, however, secured the succession to the throne of Jerusalem and papal backing for the Knights Templar.
The Kitāb al-wāḍiḥ bi-l-ḥaqq, known in Latin as the Liber denudationis, is a Copto-Arabic apologetic treatise against Islam. It was written by a Muslim convert to Christianity, Būluṣ ibn Rajāʾ, around 1010 in Fāṭimid Egypt. Its purpose is to provide a refutation of Islam on the basis of the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth (tradition). It was translated into Latin in the 13th century, probably in Toledo. It had much greater influence in translation than in its original language.
