"The reasons we're in Iraq are numerous, and mostly wrong -but they all date from a single battle that triggered the modern world."
Read on to see what I'm talking about, and let me know what you think about it. I thank Joshua Jenks' diary somewhat below this one for reminding me to post this, and to the books of John Julius Norwich, Sir Stephen Runciman and Jasper Streater's 1967 essay on the battle for research material. The ruminations on the effects are mine alone.
When I was growing up in my pre-teen years (6th grade, I think), my history class discussed the Ancient World, with cultures such as Egypt, Greece and Rome. Then we proceeded to skip 1000 years of history to go to the Renaissance. Our teacher soothed the class by saying "Don't worry - not much happened in between." Being a nerd, I wasn't satisfied with that answer, and I began reading about the so-called "Dark Ages" of Europe. And I found out that while the serfs of Western Europe were lucky to live to the age of 25, the lands around the Mediterranean Sea were doing just fine. The Byzantine Empire - originally the eastern half of Rome - survived the fall of its mother empire at the hands of the Germanic tribes and continued on in all its splendour.
This empire, its capitol situated in modern-day Istanbul - it was called Constantinople then, in honor of its Roman founder - was the most advanced of its day. In the year 1000AD it was part of a flourishing society that balanced sophisticated Christianity with an equally peaceful and advanced Islamic one. Sheltered on the banks of the Bosphorus, looking both east and west at the same time, Constantinople was a city of over 1 million inhabitants - more than all of Europe's cities at the time combined. Literature, art, science (particularly astronomy) and entertainment were wonders to behold for that era.
A little background, of course is needed. When the Islamic Prophet Mohammed died in 632AD, his followers in the Arabian Peninsula began to conquer neighboring lands, including most of the Middle East and Northern Africa (save for modern-day Turkey, which I'll get back to in a minute). Yet by 750AD, the Islamic empire drew its breath and settled down, founding massive cultural and economic centers such as Baghdad, Cairo and Cordoba. An uneasy truce existed between the armies of Islam and the armies of Byzantium, and the borders generally stayed constant until the new millenium.
And so, while the West was mired in poverty and constant, brutal warfare, the East lived in luxury and contentment. It didn't last, as you might expect, for both the Baghdad Caliphate and the Byzantines became increasingly impotent, as all empires do.
Around the year 1040AD, a band of Turkic warriors rose out of obscurity from around the Caspian Sea and formed a culture of their own. They were called "Seljuks" after their first leader, who passed his authority in 1063 to his nephew, Alp Arslan. The British historian John Julius Norwich describes the Seljuk Sultan as cultured, yet a fierce and brutal general. Arslan (as I will call him through the rest of this story) quickly began to move forward into the Middle East, capturing city after city in that region. Baghdad, Kirkuk and Antioch (in modern-day Syria) were conquered, and by 1070 he was at the gates of the Byzantine Empire.
The Byzantines had been in a marked decline since 1025 AD, when their last successful Emperor had died. Since then a parade of incompetent, pleasure seeking Emperors and Empresses had ruled, and none of them had cared for the Byzantine military or financial situations. As a result, the legions that up until the 11th century had governed the Mediterranean world in a partnership with Islam were in pathetic shape, and the treasury was empty. Think of France in 1789 before their revolution, combine that with Russia in 1914 before their revolution, and you've got Byzantium in 1070.
In 1068 a new Emperor came to power who was determined to change things. Romanus Diagones (Romanus in our story) was a general who married the widow of the recently deceased Emperor, allowing him to don the purple boots that represented the authority of the leader. He was a tough soldier and an able administrator, but was plagued by his own arrogance and the intense dislike of him by his court. He was an outsider to the ivory-tower walls of the Byzantine court, and so made few friends in Constantinople.
Trying to restore Byzantine authority in the Middle East, Romanus decided to wage war against the Seljuks, who had reached the borders of the Empire, where Turkey meets Iraq today. The bone of contention was Armenia (today the region is part of northeastern Turkey), which was under attack from both Seljuk and Byzantine armies in attempts to conquer the region. And so in early 1071 Romanus marched towards Armenia with an army of roughly 60-70 thousand.
Arlsan was in the process of attacking Egpyt when the Byzantine invasion came. He hurried back north with an army of roughly 40,000 (mostly lightly-armoured horse archers, perfect for the climate) and met Romanus' forces near the walled city of Manzikert.
The imperial army was no longer the great legionnairy body it had been under the Romans, or even just 100 years before. It was now mostly made up of mercenaries; the elite Varagnian Guard (Scandinavians), unhappy Armenian and Cuman cavalry, tired and underpaid Greek infantry and the soldiers of local lords who hated Romanus. Feudalism was spreading from Europe to the Byzantine lands, and a strong Emperor like Romanus threatened the nobility's hold on local power.
In short, Romanus' army was an international coalition of sorts, but one without unity, coherence or morale. By contrast, Arslan's army was well-trained and skilled in the art of defensive warfare: shooting arrows at the enemy to drive them towards you, exhausted, and then zoom in for the kill. The Crusaders would suffer the same fate in future battles to come.
Romanus was also plagued by disloyal officers, as I had briefly mentioned before. One of them, Andronicus Ducas, was the nephew of the previous Emperor, and was plotting to overthrow Romanus as soon as possible. Another major commander, Joseph Tarchenoites simply took a walk, taking half of the imperial army with him. By the time Romanus ran into Arslan at Manzikert (about 100 miles north of the Euphrates' starting point), his army was already unraveling.
It was in late August (Norwich says the 26th) of 1071 when the two armies met. For contemporary Byzantines it would be forever known as "that terrible day", one that was never discussed in polite company in Constantinople. According to the account of Michael Attelaites, who was one of Romanus' advisors present at Manzikert, the battle became a rout within minutes of actual combat occuring, as Ducas simply ordered his troops to run for their lives. Arslan simply had his archers form an arch in front of the Byzantines and pepper them with arrows, which set off a panic. This, combined with Ducas' act of treachery left Romanus outnumbered and soon surrounded, and while most of his troops escaped he himself was captured. It was the first time in eight hundred years that an Emperor was captured by an enemy army.
While Romanus was released on rather fair terms by Arslan, neither man survived for long. The Sultan didn't want to invade the Empire, as he was still determined to conquer Egpyt first; however, he was murdered by one of his generals, and his sons overran the hapless province of Asia Minor in a decade. Romanus was arrested by the Ducas family upon his return to the capitol, and had his eyes gouged out. He died in prison soon afterwards.
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Now, why does Manzikert matter? Let's start with the short-term effects. As the Seljuks conquered more and more of the Byzantine heartland in Asia Minor, the Byzantines finally wised up to the seriousness of the situation. After a decade of chaos a new Emperor, Alexius I Comenus siezed the throne. Alexius was a strong Emperor, but he was unable to take back the territories lost from the aftermath of Manzikert. His empire had lost its chief recruiting grounds to the Seljuks, and the imperial treasury was empty.
So Alexius made a fateful decision. In 1094 he sent a letter to Pope Urban II in Rome, asking him to call for troops from Western Europe to "liberate" his lost territories. One of those territories lost to the Seljuks had been Jerusalem, in 1078, and as a result Christian pilgrims heading to the city were unable to get there. In his letter, Alexius described (in the typical "razzle-dazzle 'em" way of 1094) the Middle East that Byzantine diplomats had used to wow the poor inhabitants of Europe; essentially, he was offering the West a glorified travel brochure.
But Pope Urban took the letter as an invitation to conquer, not to act as mercenaries for the Byzantines. Urban saw the Byzantine's desperate situation as one that the West could use to conquer new lands for themselves. By this time, Catholicism had split with Eastern Orthodoxy, and the idea of winning converts in the Middle East appealed to Urban immensely. He made his famous appeal in 1095 to the French lords at Clermont - promising salvation and riches galore for those who would go - and thus the 1st Crusade was born.
Without the Seljuk conquest of the Middle East, the Byzantines would have had no need to call for help to save their lost territories. Without the letter to Pope Urban, the West would not have had a reason to launch the Crusades, and they would not have existed for some time (if at all).
What does a world without the Crusades mean? In short, everything since 1095 changes. The Crusaders spent 200 years slaughtering the soldiers of Islam, turning the cultural oases of the Islamic world into ashes - or worse, into areas of hatred towards the West. They brought back to Europe the knowledge and creative powers that Byzantium and Islam had forged in the "Dark Ages" of the Mediterranean World. And with those resources the Renaissance came, and with it the eventual dominance of Europe in the modern world.
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When Europeans in the 19th Century invaded the Middle East once more, they stirred up the old antagonisms on both sides of the monotheistic spectrum. When Muslim terrorists call for Jihad against America, they're calling for revenge for the atrocities of the crusades. When Bush calls for "democracy" and "freedom" for Iraq, he's calling for the same movements that Pope Urban called for in 1095. Urban's subliminal message was to get Europeans out of their desolate Dark-Age poverty and go to where the wealth was. Likewise, Dubya "subliminable" message was for America to move from its turbulent cultural issues and go make money off of oil in Iraq instead. "Toujour le change, toujours la meme chose..."
It need not have been that way. For if Manzikert had never existed, it is likely the Byzantines would have recovered in the long run, and without foreign conquest of much of its soil. The Empire itself survived until 1453, when cannons finally succeeded in crumbling the mightly walls of Constantinople. It could easily have survived much longer, and held the Middle East as well without Manzikert to cause its collapse. The Islamic world and the Roman world would have remained partners in culture if not politically, and the West would gradually have been incorporated into a more peaceful, humane "Western" world.
Perhaps this is only a peaceful fantasy; after all, mankind has a way of screwing up every couple of generations or so. But it seems likely to me that without a battle in the deserted mountains of Turkey, only a few hundred miles away from the sands of Iraq, the world would be far better off today. Not to mention we wouldn't be losing lives in Baghdad right now.