1,000 Years of Religious Conflict
Under Emperor Theodosius (reigned 379–95), Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. Most of the Jews departed. The Holy Land, with its shrines and relics, began to attract Christian pilgrims from Europe.
A new doctrine, Monophysitism, arose in Constantinople and was accepted by the Eastern Orthodox (Byzantine) Church, but was then rejected. Another doctrine, Nestorianism, was introduced by the Byzantine patriarch, but was later condemned. Many churches in the Middle East refused to renounce these doctrines and separated from the Byzantine church. Often these conflicts resulted in massacres and destruction.
The Muslim, or Islamic, religion was founded in Arabia early in the seventh century by Mohammed. He claimed to be the last prophet of the Biblical God, whom he called Allah. The Arabians were quickly won to his cause, and Muslim armies advanced into adjacent lands. The Persians and Byzantines, enfeebled by their perpetual warfare, were easily defeated. By 700 all the Middle East but Asia Minor was under Muslim control. Arabic became the common language. The conquered peoples, except for Christians and Jews, were forced to convert to Islam. Jews began returning to Palestine.
The Arabs, secure in their control of the land, turned to the sea. Soon they had monopolized trade in the Indian Ocean and were sailing to China for silk.
The Arab caliph (the civil and religious ruler of the Muslims) governed first from Medina, then from Damascus. Dissension soon developed, however. The caliphate was seized by a dissenting faction in 750 and a new capital, Baghdad, was founded in 762. Arab influence declined and the Muslim world came to be controlled by the Persians, under whom a brilliant Islamic culture developed. But internal conflict brought divisions in the Muslim faith. Meanwhile, the Turks known as Seljuks were migrating from Central Asia into Persia, where they were converted to Islam. In the 11th century they became the rulers of all the central portion of the Middle East to the Mediterranean, and overwhelmed the Byzantines in eastern Asia Minor.
The Crusades began as a result of Turkish interference with Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land and pleas for aid from the Byzantine emperor. The arrival of the first Crusaders in 1097 was the beginning of two centuries of European occupation in the Middle East. The First Crusade took the Syrian coastal area and most of Palestine including Jerusalem.
Within 50 years the Muslims had begun winning back territory, and additional Crusades sought, unsuccessfully, to retake it However, the Crusaders were also interested in taking loot, and on one expedition, 1202–04, they turned against the Byzantine Empire, conquered it, and stripped it of its treasure. In 1261 the Europeans were expelled from Constantinople and in 1291 from Acre, their last stronghold in the Holy Land.
The Muslims had regained the Middle East under leaders from Egypt—first Saladin and his heirs, then the Mameluke dynasty. Crusader seaports, when captured, were destroyed, and trade was redirected from the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean shore) to Egypt.
In 1258 the Mongols, or Tatars, of Genghis Khan conquered Persia, but in several westward thrusts could not defeat the Mamelukes. The Mongols subjugated the Seljuk Turks, however, and drove another group, the Ottoman Turks, into Asia Minor. Some of the Mongols were Christians, but gradually all were converted to Islam.
Mongol authority soon waned. The Ottomans absorbed the Seljuks and began conquering the remainder of the Byzantine Empire. Beginning in 1380, the Tatar chieftain Tamerlane reconquered much of the Middle East in a long campaign accompanied by vast destruction. This restoration of the Mongol Empire did not long survive Tamerlane's death in 1405. The Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453, ending the Byzantine Empire.
