The Mamluk caliphate in Islamic history has always fascinated me: as children, they had grown up in slavery but organized a rebellion which ultimately overthrew the Abbasid caliphate. Armstrong doesn't go into much detail about how this actually occurred, besides explaining that they converted to Islam, were drafted in high regiments of the Muslim army, and then seized control of Egypt and created a new Mamluk state. I wonder if there are any other major ancient powers that were formerly slaves or of poor economic classes...
I found the book to be much more interesting to read once the Crusades started coming into play. They were obviously extremely significant events that affected Jerusalem and the entire region in various ways. I have never studied the Crusades, so I was very shocked to read how gruesome and violent the Christian armies were in conquering Jerusalem. It's disturbing to me that religion was and still is used to justify atrocities to that magnitude. I was very struck by Karen Armstrong's description of Jerusalem and its resemblance of a "ghost-town" after the First Crusade: there had previously been 100,000 people living in Jerusalem, but afterwards there were only a few thousand, if that. All the bodies had been left rotting in the street for five months. It's kind of mind-blowing to think about just several hundred years prior, Jerusalem was a city of low importance that the kingdoms were having trouble populating. But in 1000 AD and after, major global powers were causing mass destruction in their attempts to conquer it. It's rather ridiculous how much destruction and reconstruction Jerusalem has experienced...
After finishing Karen Armstrong's book, I have rather conflicting feelings about it. At the beginning, particularly when the history is rather dry and before the chaos of Christianity and Islam, I found Armstrong to be almost detailed to a fault. There were so many names and dates that I stopped trying to remember things because it seemed impossible for me to understand what was going on. It is so purely historic in context that it becomes difficult to read. Shouldn't there be some opinions mixed in? Any opinions at all? But at the same time, this clearly gets the point across to the reader of the insanely tumultuous history that Jerusalem has had for about 5000 years and counting. It is impossible for one person to fully comprehend the cultural and religious significance that Jerusalem holds for so many different types of people. Yet I think this point is crucial to understand the conflict as it is now: there is no easy fix since religious and cultural identities are so complexly entwined in the city itself. And Karen Armstrong does a great job in presenting all this madness to the reader, while allowing them to form their own ideas on the matter.
I now feel like I have adequate knowledge about Jerusalem's history (or at least as good of an understanding as it's going to get) to be able to zoom forward to the current issues going on right now, and to be able to analyze these issues in as unbiased of a way as possible.
I found the book to be much more interesting to read once the Crusades started coming into play. They were obviously extremely significant events that affected Jerusalem and the entire region in various ways. I have never studied the Crusades, so I was very shocked to read how gruesome and violent the Christian armies were in conquering Jerusalem. It's disturbing to me that religion was and still is used to justify atrocities to that magnitude. I was very struck by Karen Armstrong's description of Jerusalem and its resemblance of a "ghost-town" after the First Crusade: there had previously been 100,000 people living in Jerusalem, but afterwards there were only a few thousand, if that. All the bodies had been left rotting in the street for five months. It's kind of mind-blowing to think about just several hundred years prior, Jerusalem was a city of low importance that the kingdoms were having trouble populating. But in 1000 AD and after, major global powers were causing mass destruction in their attempts to conquer it. It's rather ridiculous how much destruction and reconstruction Jerusalem has experienced...
After finishing Karen Armstrong's book, I have rather conflicting feelings about it. At the beginning, particularly when the history is rather dry and before the chaos of Christianity and Islam, I found Armstrong to be almost detailed to a fault. There were so many names and dates that I stopped trying to remember things because it seemed impossible for me to understand what was going on. It is so purely historic in context that it becomes difficult to read. Shouldn't there be some opinions mixed in? Any opinions at all? But at the same time, this clearly gets the point across to the reader of the insanely tumultuous history that Jerusalem has had for about 5000 years and counting. It is impossible for one person to fully comprehend the cultural and religious significance that Jerusalem holds for so many different types of people. Yet I think this point is crucial to understand the conflict as it is now: there is no easy fix since religious and cultural identities are so complexly entwined in the city itself. And Karen Armstrong does a great job in presenting all this madness to the reader, while allowing them to form their own ideas on the matter.
I now feel like I have adequate knowledge about Jerusalem's history (or at least as good of an understanding as it's going to get) to be able to zoom forward to the current issues going on right now, and to be able to analyze these issues in as unbiased of a way as possible.
I agree with the fact that I have some conflicts with different parts of the book as well. I thought that the beginning of the book was very difficult to read and although dry, it was needed in order to put everything into perspective. However, she did do the best in order to provide biased opinions and gave me a good knowledge of Jerusalem's history which will help with the rest of the class.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that the first part of the book was the most difficult to read. I don't have any religious background and so learning all the names dates and different rulers was not only overwhelming, but impossible to grasp. The text was so dense that I found myself having to read the same page twice just to understand what was happening. I agree I think the text really took a turning point at the beginning of the Crusades, and I found the second part of the book much more interesting with the introduction of Islam. Although, I agree the descriptions were a bit graphic.
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