Allan Massie reviews The Second Crusade
Mark Waugh, the brilliant Australian cricketer whose batting all too often proved fatal to England's Ashes hopes, was first selected to play for his country a full five years after his twin brother, Steve. During that time, as Mark languished in the obscurity of domestic cricket, his team-mates took to calling him 'Afghanistan' - the forgotten Waugh.
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Allan Massie reviews The Second Crusade
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Review: The Enemy at the Gate by Andrew WheatcroftA nickname as witty as it was cruel: for it reflected something telling about the way in which some conflicts do indeed end up lacking in the celebrity stakes.
Everyone, for instance, has heard of the First Crusade, which resulted in the capture of Jerusalem, or the Third, which featured the play-off between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. What, though, of the one that came in between? Doubtless, had the Waugh twins been surnamed 'Crusade', Mark's nickname would have been 'The Second'.
Forgotten the campaign certainly has been. Not since 1866, Jonathan Phillips assures us in the introduction to his new book, has there been so much as a monograph devoted to it. The reasons for this neglect are not hard to guess. Unlike the First Crusade, the Second (1145-49) ended up - by and large - as a damp squib; unlike the Third, the kings who led it were decidedly unglamorous.
Evidently, despite the fact that we are all supposed to feel a bit embarrassed about the crusades nowadays, the preference of most of us is still for books that focus on Christian successes.
And yet, as Phillips points out, 'simply because the Second Crusade failed does not mean that it offers little of interest to the modern historian'. An assertion that his scholarly but never less than gripping study more than serves to justify.
Indeed, it is a key mark of Phillips's effectiveness as a historian that for much of the book he signally refuses to indulge in the condescension that is so often the consequence of hindsight. A telling achievement: for it enables him to view the preparations for the Crusade through the eyes of those who lived through them, and to demonstrate how all that was most innovatory about the crusaders' plans and ambitions tended to have been bred of a giddy self-confidence.
So dazzling had been the achievements of the First Crusade that those who followed in its wake, even as they yearned to blaze their own trail, had little doubt that God was bound to end up blessing their ventures. As a result, the Second Crusade was conducted on an even grander and more swaggering scale than the First had been.
So excitable were the crowds that turned out to hear the project's principal cheerleader, Bernard of Clairvaux, that sometimes, as Phillips nicely puts it, 'like a modern celebrity, he was forced to remain in hiding for his own safety'.
Instead of the dukes and adventurers who had led the First Crusade, the Second was headed by monarchs: Louis VII, the King of France, and Conrad III, the King of Germany, no less. Above all, rather than confining their attentions merely to the Holy Land itself, the enthusiasts for the Crusade hoped to see the frontiers of Christendom pushed back wherever they appeared under threat.
So it was that, even as the main expedition headed off for the Near East, other armies of crusaders were crashing through the dark Baltic forests to engage with the pagan Slavs, or else descending on the strongholds of Muslim Spain. 'The trumpet of salvation', as a Catalan bishop boasted, 'rings out throughout the world.'
And yet, in the event, it was destined to sound a most uncertain note.
True, there were a few notable successes, including, most significantly of all, the capture of Lisbon: an episode that Phillips recounts particularly stirringly. Nevertheless, Iberia could hardly compare with the Holy Land as a focus for Christian hopes and expectations; and even though the Kings of France and Germany did both finally limp their way into Jerusalem, that was about the limit of their achievements.
What on the First Crusade had been a succession of heroic triumphs was played out again on the Second as farce.
Battles against the Turks were humiliatingly lost; sieges of Muslim cities no less humiliatingly abandoned. Setting the seal on things, it was even rumoured that Eleanor of Aquitaine, the then Queen of France who had accompanied her royal husband on the expedition, had cuckolded him with her uncle, the Prince of Antioch.
Well might one chronicler have derided the entire crusade as having achieved 'nothing useful or worth repeating'.
Nothing useful, perhaps. Nevertheless, as Phillips convincingly demonstrates, it is a story that deserves better than to be glossed over. At a time when, for obvious reasons, public interest in the entire concept of holy war has never been greater, this is a book that deserves to be read by anyone with an interest in how the theology and practice of crusading evolved.
Aimed primarily at an academic audience though it may be, it also merits being read as a sequel to Thomas Ashbridge's racy and more populist account of the First Crusade. Like the Waugh twins, the two books make a most compelling pair.
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This is taken from staronline in Malaysia where saladin stories were widely accepted.
Thursday November 12, 2009
Saladin in animated form will be shown in TV series.
It will be making debut next month
It took about five years to make Saladin: The Animated Series and it is almost ready to be broadcasted. That was the message made by the executive general manager of Al Jazeera Children’s Channel, Mahmoud Bouneb.
He commented. “We are in the final stages now and will be ready to air the first season by Ramadan next year,” he said. “The first season will consist of 13 episodes and we have signed on for another 13 episodes after that.”
This series is a joint venture between the network which is based in middle east, Qatar and the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) in Malaysia which started production in 2004. Since then, a trailer and one episode have been shown.
“We had expected the delay. Delays are inevitable when working to create something this special,” said Mahmoud, who is a member of the MSC Malaysia International Advisory Panel.
“We had worked very hard, everybody from graphic artist, to copy writers, and hopefully the series will be a inspire the Muslim world to create more contents for movie and television.”
He said that most of today’s broadcasting, particularly that for children, comes from the West and there is little in those that Asian children can identify with from their own upbringing.
“We dont want to rely on Hollywood for TV content anymore,” he said. “Also, we are encouraged by the Malaysian Government’s efforts to nurture the creativity of its people in broadcasting and animation.”
There is a plan to produce a movie on Saladin sometime in the future, said Mahmoud.
“We are looking for a good script,” he said. “The movie should be about 90-100 minutes long and we hope to roll it out internationally.”
Saladin was a Kurdish Muslim who recaptured the city of Palestine from the Crusaders in 1187. He ruled over Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Hejaz, and Yemen.
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