Christendom vs the Caliphate: Simon Mayall Interview

Simon Mayall

Soldier and scholar Simon Mayall has carefully laid out the conflicts and their causes to paint a clear picture of why the Middle East is so troublesome today.
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Christendom vs the Caliphate: Simon Mayall Interview

The term Christendom is a rather medieval term, and then there’s the Caliphate. Could we start by defining what the two are?

The Caliphate was an organizing principle of the Muslim world. Although it moved around, there was always an assumption that there was a successor to the Prophet Muhammad who had died in 632AD. There were originally the Rashidun who were very much the righteous successors: ‘caliph’ means righteous successor. The great split in Islam took place during that time between Sunni and Shia. It then moved to the Umayyads, largely an internal Arab civil war, then moved to people called the Abbasids. Eventually the Abbasids, to an extent, were destroyed by the Mongols. So the Caliph, as the legitimate spiritual leader of the Islamic world, all Muslims, was then became what they call the shadow Caliphs in Cairo.

Eventually the Ottomans destroyed the Mamluks in 1517. And as part of that, in many ways, the Ottomans just inherited the Caliphate. it was really Selim the Grim and then his son, Suleiman the Magnificent, which consolidated that the Ottomans would be both Sultan and Caliph. And the Caliphate really existed from the death of Muhammad, to the destruction of the Ottoman Empire. And Ataturk abolished both the Sultanate and the Caliphate.

Christendom was slightly more amorphous. It was understood as dominions where Christianity and the practice and governance of it was the duty of rulers. But from an early stage, because of the split of the Roman Empire, Christendom always had two parts. It had the Orthodox and the Catholic. And there was, to an extent, a bit of a punch-up between who had precedence. The East still had military dominance.

The West had rather fractured the barbarians, but there was a pope in Rome. Different from the successor of the Prophet Muhammad, but clearly the senior disciple, Peter, “You are Peter and on this rock I’ll build my church.” Whereas in the Muslim world, there was at times for the right people, Sultan and Caliph. In the Christian world, there was obviously a pope and periodically an emperor.

Both of them had a secular approach to the world, which was very much at a time when religion was hugely important to people collectively and individually. They had a temporal side, which was the end of the arm. Of course, with these two great ideological power blocks in competition, the temporal did often very much dominate because war was a late motif. It underpinned the structure that was the culture of the time.

Christendom, to an extent, was very badly split with the rise of Protestantism. Within the Caliphate, you find the Muslim world split between Sunni and Shia, a big division between Arab, Iranian, Egyptian, Turk, which might be familiar with your thinking modern politics, and of course, within Christianity, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant. Within that, the long struggle between England and France; the fight between the Valois and the Habsburgs.

So one could talk about Christendom and the Caliphate and they both have real relevance, but they’re equally as well as in opposition to each other contain very strong divisions, many of which continue to the contemporary world, even though they look rather historical.

And both sides will view each other as heretics or infidels, depending on whether Christian or Muslim?

It’s quite difficult in the modern world, certainly in the liberal, secular West, to understand religion, let alone being religious. There was always an element of inter-religious conflict. But quite often it was not so much religions against each other, but religions in which the contenders were people of religion.

Again, it’s difficult to understand those individual motivations, issues of heaven and hell and salvation and damnation and the infidel, the heretic, the apostate were really important. People felt strong enough to go to the stake or burn other people from their own religion at the stake. They were quite prepared to massacre people: the Sunni Turks would massacre the Shias with gay abandon.

The Thirty Years War saw [mass] depopulation. That was between Christians! Thucydides talked about wars normally being driven by fear, honour and interest; collective and individual on both sides. But he was talking in a time of polytheism. When you bring in monotheistic religions (the Romans didn’t really fight for a pagan religion): the Persians, the Zoroastrians, are not quite the same as the monotheism of Islam and Christianity.

What you then find, (I put it down as God, glory and gold) is a very strong religious element you cannot remove either individually or collectively. There is an issue of glory, that’s what drove the leaders of society, were largely from the martial classes. The Pope, and the Caliph would harness this religious fervour with martial ardour. Then there is gold; so God, glory and gold. There was a genuine requirement, you could only be a knight if you could afford armour. To get that armour you needed to have land. The same with the Ottoman world. You needed to be a Ghazi warrior because that gave you slaves; money; status and land. With these obligations were the basis of feudalism which gave you the capacity to have a horse and armour and bring other knights and in return the obligation is to war [together].

In many cases [war is joined] willingly because that’s the basis of status in society. It’s a very interesting cultural coming together of religion and the way society was organized and some of it based on very long standing human passions and ambitions.

How much has the Crusades, and the legacy of the Crusades driven further clashes between the two?

You can go back further, of course, because interestingly it was only about five years after the death of Mohammed that the Islamic armies took Jerusalem from the Christians. Obviously Jerusalem is hugely iconic for Judaism, it’s hugely iconic for Christianity – even though Christianity was a persecuted sect for first 300 years until Constantine largely begins to adopt it as the official religion of the Roman Empire. And then for 300 years, the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire really adopt Jerusalem as this iconic city.

But in 637AD, the Muslims take it. And of course, in Islamic theology, Muhammad had flown there on the winged steed Burak and then been taken up to heaven by Gabriel and then back down and left a footprint.

Suddenly from that time, Jerusalem becomes really important for Islam. Now for many, many years until quite recently, the Jewish interest in Jerusalem is really not of any particular historical significance. It’s obviously very important to Jews, but more for the clashes between Christians and Muslims.

There’s a feeling for a long time that the Muslims have taken Jerusalem and they’ve expanded hugely – they’ve destroyed the Persian Empire. This is all seventh and eighth century AD.  They rocked back the Byzantine Empire, they’ve taken the Levant and the Holy Lands, taken all of North Africa, completely overrun Iberia and gone on as far as Tours. To an extent, you then have about 400 years in which Christianity is very firmly on the back foot.

The Crusades get a bad name sometimes among [some] people because of multiculturalism and modern attitudes to this. In some ways it was very much a counter-offensive. At the core of it was religious fervour, martial ardour and glory and gold and, “Let’s go and take Jerusalem”. And they do take Jerusalem in 1099.

One of the main reasons they take it is the Islamic world at that stage is so fractured. The Crusaders come in at that time of history where if you fed it into a computer nowadays, nine times out of 10, they would dribble out in Anatolia or around Antioch. But Jerusalem is taken and it becomes iconic. In many ways, Jerusalem is only held for 100 years. Saladin takes it back after Hattin. The Third Crusade, Fourth Crusade, none get it back. The Islamic world, the Caliphate, the Mamluks, they’ve destroyed this Christian enclave.

Interestingly, the modern issue is how much certain people in the Muslim world view the state of Israel as a modern manifestation of Western encroachment back into the Middle East. If you look at the borders of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and the borders of the state of Israel, and the Christian communities in Lebanon: there’s an overlap.

And the book opens with Osama bin Laden using these historical reference points that he knows strike a chord: Zionists and Crusaders are in the land of the prophet, in the land of the holy cities, et cetera. So although in many ways it’s a fascinating point of view, the Crusaders, the crusading kingdom. It does mark quite a strong dividing line. The sack of Jerusalem in 1099 is often used to demonstrate that Christians and Muslims are going to be in perpetual confrontation, but the reality is it doesn’t last that long in historical terms.

Many fundamentalists say, “Well, it took us 200 years to get rid of the Crusaders, and the state of Israel has only been here for 80 years, notwithstanding the historical links of Judaism with that part of the Middle East. We will also in due course get rid of that.”

The modern resonances, although they weren’t terribly strong after the expulsion of the Crusaders, continued. For a while, what was left of the Crusader kingdoms were destroyed, but Cyprus and Crete remained under the Venetians, the Lusignans were there, and of course our great medieval heroes, the Knights of St. John of the Hospital hung on in Rhodes until the beginning of Suleiman the Magnificent. That was nearly 250 years later.

If you are a moderate in the Middle East, how insulted are you going to be by a mistaken or unwise use of a word? Note in the recent World Cup in Qatar, for England games, as is tradition amongst some fans, to put on the fake chainmail and the white cloak with the red cross.

Yes, the Templar motif and the Templars were looked on as very much the absolute stock troops. They were like the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire. They were the most disciplined, the most militarily effective. Of course, it was the cross of St. George. So it has resonance, as does the Cross. You just need a little bit of empathy here and words carry meanings.

Much of the educated world in the Middle East understand the world has moved on. But there are a lot of young men, because of the nature of Middle East societies, without employment, who can’t get employment, they can’t have a job, they don’t have money, they can’t set up their own house. You won’t be able to marry, have children, have dignity that goes with all that

There are a lot of people who are susceptible to being given a sense of purpose through going back to the days when there was huge expansion in the Islamic world, from the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Within a hundred years they were knocking on the door of Tours and only defeated by Charles Martel.

The only reason you could have that extraordinary expansion and military victory would have been if you are spiritually pure and God has given you that. Every religion goes through renewal and decline. Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who did declare himself Caliph in 2014, prey on that because it gives people a narrative and we all know this is why young men join gangs because they are looking for role models and purpose. If you can use selective historical entitlement, inspiration and grievance you can build up a very powerful narrative that is very attractive to some people. You only have to look at the number of people who were prepared to do ghastly things supporting ISIS. Absolutely shocking stuff, particularly with regard to the Yazidis.

Simon Mayall is a historian, former soldier and the author of House of War: The Struggle between Christendom and the Caliphate.