Editing Palestine (section)

===Islamic Rule (Islamic Middle Ages - 1918)===

The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was born around 570 AD in Mecca, forging ties with other religious people and preaching Islam from Medina in modern-day Saudi Arabia to the Sinai Desert in Egypt. In fact, he sent the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (Hercules) an invitation to join Islam, which was rebuffed. The Caliphate waged extensive war on the Byzantines and other empires of the Levant and Fertile Crescent regions, such as the Sassanians (who laid the soil for Iranian civilization). 

Though some say Muhammad was a major figure in what Norman Finkelstein dubs "the dogma of eternal Gentile hatred", he honored Judaism and the Torah, and so did the Quran. Negative and violent references to the Jews in the Quran were not eternal nor genocidal-- they arose from wartime situations. Muhammad revered the Torah as bursting with "light and truth", the wisdom of the previous Prophets which guided the Jewish people. Ultimately, such divisive claims about non-Jews amount to ignorance in the face of the continuity and unity of the Abrahamic religions.

Later, after the Prophet's death, his greatest comrade and father-in-law, Abu Bakr (RA), took over as the first Caliph of the Rashidun (Rightly Guided) Caliphate. The first four caliphs were "Rightly Guided" due to their being taught by and directly witnessing the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. As Caliph, however, Abu Bakr and subsequent monarchs did not proclaim to be prophets themselves. 

Abu Bakr was the first to embrace Islam and, as caliph, he spread Islam beyond the bounds of the Arabian Peninsula into modern Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. He ruled for two years before his death in 634 AD, during which he spent large sums of money setting free Muslim slaves. 

Islamic history in the Holy Land was marked by the conquest of Jerusalem in 635/8 by Caliph Umar (RA). Umar was a close associate and father-in-law of the prophet Muhammad and served as his second successor, or khalifa, after Abu Bakr (RA). He began to take from Byzantium and integrate the cities of Syria and Egypt, picking them off one by one. Jerusalem, still referred to as Aelia by the Romans and nascent Islamic rulers, was conquered after a protracted siege, surrendering and thereby peacefully transitioning power to the Caliphate. According to Boston University, "Muslim rule over the city left the Orthodox Christian community and their buildings intact. Jews and heterodox Christians are subsequently readmitted to the city. [...] There is no evidence that, at this early point in Muslim history, the city was already identified as the "distant sanctuary" (''al masjid al-aqsa'') referred to in the story of the Prophet Muhammad's ascent (''al miraj'')." Byzantine Christians remained the major population in the Holy City, regulated by the Pact of Umar.

The Muslim state was keen on its religious administration. One demonstrative example of this was the treaty signed by the leader Khalid ibn al-Walid in Damascus:

"This is what Khalid ibn al-Walid would grant to the inhabitants of Damascus if he enters therein: he promises to give them security for their lives, property and churches. Their city wall shall not be demolished, neither shall any Muslim be quartered in their houses. Thereunto we give them the pact of Allah and the protection of His Prophet, the caliphs and the believers. So long as they pay the poll tax, nothing but good shall befall them."

Umar's Assurance granted the people of Aelia protection as Christians. It reads, as reported by al-Tabari:

"In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. This is the assurance of safety which the servant of God, ʿUmar, the Commander of the Faithful, has given to the people of Aelia. He has given them an assurance of safety for themselves, for their property, their churches, their crosses, the sick and healthy of the city and for all the rituals which belong to their religion. Their churches will not be inhabited by Muslims and will not be destroyed. Neither they, nor the land on which they stand, nor their cross, nor their property will be damaged. They will not be forcibly converted. And Jews will not live in Aelia with them. The people of Jerusalem must pay the taxes like the people of other cities and must expel the Byzantines and the robbers. Those of the people of Jerusalem who want to leave with the Byzantines, take their property and abandon their churches and crosses will be safe until they reachtheir place of refuge. The villagers [who had taken refuge in the city at the time of the conquest] may remain in the city if they wish but must pay taxes like the citizens. Those who wish may go with the Byzantines and those who wish may return to their families. Nothing is to be taken from them before their harvest is reaped.
If they pay their taxes according to their obligations, then the conditions laid out in this letter are under the covenant of God, are the responsibility of His Prophet, of the caliphs and of the faithful.”

The tax imposed upon non-Muslims by a Muslim state is called the ''Jizya''. It is required to be paid not for the sake of humiliation or economic gain, but in exchange for the administrative protection of those to whom Islam refers as "People of the Book", non-Muslims, or ''dhimmi''. In the Palestine region during this time, the dhimmi were made up largely of Byzantine and heterodox Christians as well as Jews. In many other areas, the ''dhimmi'' included Zoroastrians. non-Muslims were guaranteed their right to practice their religions, which was greeted with thunderous applause by the dhimmi across Egypt and modern-day Syria and Palestine. This, combined with the later expansion across the East, cemented the foundations of a shared Arab civilizational history and the notion of an Arab civilization-state.

According to islamichistory.org, "This policy was to prove successful everywhere. In Syria, for example, many Christians who had been involved in bitter theological disputes with Byzantine authorities- and persecuted for it- welcomed the coming of Islam as an end to tyranny. And in Egypt, which ‘Amr ibn al-‘As took from the Byzantines after a daring march across the Sinai Peninsula, the Coptic Christians not only welcomed the Arabs, but enthusiastically assisted them.

"This pattern was repeated throughout the Byzantine Empire. Conflict among Greek Orthodox, Syrian Monophysites, Copts, and Nestorian Christians contributed to the failure of the Byzantines – always regarded as intruders – to develop popular support, while the tolerance which Muslims showed toward Christians and Jews removed the primary cause for opposing them."

Assassinated in 644 AD, Hazrat Umar Farooq (RA) is remembered for bringing peace and stability to the caliphate, both religiously and economically. He built infrastructure and created an office for the administration of funds, as well as introducing the Islamic calendar during his ten-year reign.

Hazrat Umar set up a panel of the Prophet's ten most trusted companions prior to his death to choose his successor as caliph. It was thus decided that Hazrat Uthman (RA) would succeed him. He married two of the Prophet's daughters and spent his riches in the service of the ''ummah''. Before his untimely death at the hands of insurgents in 656 AD, Hazrat Uthman headed the reprinting of the Quran, which was spoken differently due to differing dialects. This was his greatest contribution to Islam, and the text produced is that which is accepted throughout the Muslim world today. His murder sparked a civil war between the Caliphate and Muiawiyah, governor of Syria, which lasted five years.

Hazrat Ali (RA), the fourth and final Rightly Guided caliph and son-in-law of the Prophet, controversially took over after Hazrat Uthman was murdered. He tried to unify Muslims and bring peace and security to the world, but met significant resistance from non-Muslims. He battled them, defeating most of the insurgents, conquering the Umayyad at the Battle of Nahrawan, and reforming the tax system. He reigned as caliph until 661 AD (40 AH), when he was killed by an insurgent with a poisoned sword while praying on the 20th of Ramadan. He was the last of the Rightly Guided caliphs.

This line of succession is the topic of distinction between Sunni and Shia Muslims, but this page is not focused on Islam so much as its contextualization of Palestinian resistance with regard to the modern State of Israel. Suffice it to say, Shiites were partisans of Ali (RA) who insisted upon blood lineage from the Prophet (PBUH), while Sunnis accepted the non-blood lineage and the first three caliphs.

=====Umayyads, Abbasids, Crusades, Mamluks, Fatimids, Ayyubids, Rum Seljuks, and Ottomans=====

Muiawiyah was governor of Syria (under the third caliph), the first caliph and founder of the Umayyad dynasty. This was the first Muslim dynasty, ruling from Damascus after Hazrat Ali's (RA) death in 661 AD. 

The move to Damascus signaled a shift in the Caliphate. The first four caliphs were humble, simple men; they were direct companions of the Prophet. The new dynasty was not at all related to Muhammad, and was thus seen as utterly illegitimate to the Shiites. Jerusalem, still called "Aelia" at this point, was waning in importance to Muslims, leaving Christians and Jews to attempt to attract people there. Muiawiyah wasn't able to resolve the tensions the Sunni caliphs had with the Shiites, and died in 680 AD. 

The Umayyads commissioned multiple religious and secular buildings on the Temple Mount, including the Dome of the Rock (commissioned by Caliph 'Abd al-Malik and completed construction in 691 AD). The Dome still stands today in Jerusalem. According to Boston University, "Inscriptions indicate the purpose of this first monumental structure in a distinguished history of Muslim architecture. Abd al Malik had understood that, to compete with Byzantine Christendom, one had to speak its language:: the language of the triumphant (though "rightly guided") eschatological ruler who, by the will of God, presided over the last empire that was to end all empires. To be sure, Islam's attitude toward the People of the Book (''ahl al-kitab'') remained one of rebuke rather than displacement."
[[File:Exapansionumayyad.png|thumb|The Umayyad empire at its greatest extent]]
[[File:Umayyadexpand.jpeg|thumb|Map showing the movements taken and major battles fought by the Umayyads to form the empire]]
'Abd al-Malik minted a new currency which replaced the Byzantine and Sassanid coins in circulation. His organization of government served as a model for the later Abbasidian bureaucracy and that of its successors. The Caliphate under 'Abd al-Malik expanded from North Africa to the borders of China. Meanwhile, the death of Muhammad's (PBUH) grandson Husayn began another civil war, which ended in 692 AD. During this civil war, in the province of Palestine and others, the rebel Zubayr (grandson of the first caliph Abu Bakr) proclaimed himself caliph and took over. With the collapse of the Sufyanid house of the Umayyad dynasty, the Marwanid house, founded by caliph Marwan I, reigned until the collapse of the Umayyad dynasty in 750 AD.

Al-Walid I was the son of 'Abd al-Malik and his successor. Al-Walid continued his father's policies of expansion and centralization, taking modern-day Iran and land in the Caucasus, as well as the Iberian Peninsula. This was the greatest extent of the Caliphate. Al-Walid is well known for using the wealth plundered during expansion to finance the construction of grand public spaces such as the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Following the death of al-Walid, his brother Sulayman became caliph for four years until his death in 718 AD. Sulayman began his career as the governor of Palestine, where he studied until he rose to power. There he later founded the city of Ramla, which overtook Lydda (Lod) as the district capital of Palestine, and built the White Mosque. Today, Ramla is in the Central District of Israel, of northeast of the Gaza Strip and southeast of Tel Aviv.

Under Sulayman, the Caliphate ceased expansion; he fired his late brother's generals and officials on account of their appointment by the governor of Iraq, who had significant hegemony over and under al-Walid. Eastern resistance and breakdown of military organization blocked expansion to the east into deep Indo-China, while the campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula were plenty successful and halted. Sulayman's forces attempted to take Constantinople, capital of the previous Western Roman and current Byzantine (Eastern Roman) empires, between 717 and 718 AD, but were defeated. Following his death in 718 AD, Sulayman's successor Umar II pulled these soldiers back to the Caliphate. Umar II also disassembled the military and political bureaucracies of the Caliphate, streamlining the Islamic Army and administration; he furthered the campaigns in Iberia and witnessed the conversion of many Egyptians and Persians to Islam, and practiced diplomacy with Chinese and Tibetan rulers, inviting them to embrace Islam. Umar II died in 720 and was succeeded by Marwan II.

Marwan II, grandson of the fourth caliph Marwan I, was the fourteen and final caliph of the Umayyads. He governed Armenia and elsewhere for twelve years before rising to caliph. Marwan II focused especially on the revitalization of the Islamic Army, creating professionally-organized paid military units in place of loose, disorganized tribal units. He reconquered Syria in 746 and reinstated the Caliphate's rule in other regions, including Palestine. His reign began in 744 AD, ending with the third and final civil war against the Marwanid house, 747-750 AD. This rebellion was decisive; "[A] combined force of ʿAbbāsids, Persians, Iraqis, and Shīʿites decisively defeated the Umayyad army at the Battle of the Great Zab River in 750." 

From the Jewish Virtual Library: "For the most part, the Islamic impetus to the Abbasid revolution lay in the secularism of the Umayyad caliphs. The Umayyads had always been outsiders—as a wealthy clan in Mecca, they had opposed Muhammad—and the secularism and sometime degeneracy that accompanied their caliphate delegitimized their rule for many devout Muslims."

With Marwan II's death in 750 AD, the Umayyad caliphate was dead and the Abbasid caliphate was founded. The Abbasids were the family and descendants of the Prophet's uncle, al-Abbas (RA). The Abbasids gained the support of the Shiites and Persians against the Umayyad caliphate beginning in the 710s AD. Meanwhile, after the ascent of the Abbasids, one of the last remaining Umayyads, Abd al-Rahman I, ruled the Iberian peninsula 756-788 and founded the Umayyad Emirate there, which was not Islamic. It wasn't until the 10th century AD that the Umayyads formed a rival caliphate.

The Abbasidian dynasty moved the capital from Damascus to Baghdad in 762. Samarra, another city, was founded north of Baghdad and briefly became the caliphate's capital. According to Suzan Yalman of the Met Museum, "The first three centuries of Abbasid rule were a golden age in which Baghdad and Samarra functioned as the cultural and commercial capitals of the Islamic world." They were not focused on the reconquest of Spain and the newly-formed Umayyad Emirate due to its distance, but the Berber Kharjites in North Africa began their own Islamic states in 801. 

The Abbasids rose with the help of Shiites, but the breadth of Shiism was not kind after they abandoned the Shiites following their ascent. Negotiations regarding Sunni-Shia relations broke down between the caliphate and moderate Shia Muslims. After an uprising in Mecca in 786 saw the massacre of the Shiite 'Alids, the survivors fled west to the Maghreb (Northern Africa) and founded the Idrisid kingdom. These were to be the circumstances into which al-Ma'mun was born.

Here we quote extensively from the Jewish Virtual Library:

"Abd Allah, or al-Ma'mun, had not been named as a successor to the caliphate—this instead fell to his brother, Muhammad, called al-Amin. The brothers soon fell out, however, and al-Mamun seized the caliphate in 813. As with his predecessors, he tried to incorporate Shi'ites into the Islamic government, but his entire reign was spent in quelling disturbances among Shi'ites and anit-Shi'ites. He seems to have just held the line in the disintegration of the 'Abbasid caliphate. There are, however, two great innovations that irrevocably changed the course of Islamic history.

"The first was a military revolution begun by his brother, al-Mu'tasim. The constant revolutions and the deep division in Islamic society convinced al-Ma'mun that he needed a military force whose only loyalty was to him. So his brother, who would later become caliph (833-842 / 218-27), assembled a military force of slaves, called '''Mamluks'''. Many of the Mamluks were Turkish, who were famous for the horsemanship. But the Mamluk military also consisted of Slavs and some Berbers. By the middle of al-Wathiq's reign, the Mamluk army had completely displaced the Arabian and Persian army under the caliph. This army, and al-Mu'tasim's abandonment of Baghdad for Samarra, caused bitter resentment among Muslims and would irreperably sever the protective bond between the Islamic sovereign and the Islamic people. It also introduced a new ethnic group in the Islamic world, the Mamluks, who would eventually play a powerful role in the drama of power and decline in medieval Islam.

"More importantly, al-Ma'mun energetically patronized Greek, Sanskrit and Arabic learning and so altered the cultural and intellectual face of Islam. He adopted a radical theological position, called Mu'tazilism, which was regarded as somewhat heretical by more orthodox Muslims. Nevertheless, Mu'tazilism had as one of its fundamental beliefs the idea that Muslims should obey a single ruler. In order to facilitate the spread of Mu'tazilite teaching, al-Ma'mun established a university, the House of Wisdom (''Bayt'' al-Hikma).

"It was here that Hellenistic and Indian works made their way into Islamic culture through a series of translations. Islam incorporated into its culture and belief the philosophical method of inquiry of the Hellenist world—it is for this reason that philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were passed on to succeeding generations. This incorporation led to a new Islamic intellectual practice, '''faylasafa''', or philosophy, based on principles of rational inquiry and to some extent empiricism."

Thus, this was an era of massive philosophical, artistic, and scientific growth for the Arab world and the Abbasid caliphate specifically. However, as it developed into the 10th and 11th centuries, the caliphate stagnated. Around the middle of the 10th century, Abbasidian territory near Iraq was taken by the Buyid dynasty, and by the early 11th century the caliphate's centralized dynastic power was crippled to the point of appearances. The Abbasidians adopted Iranian culture and tried to distance themselves from their Semitic ancestry, especially with the major integration of Mamluks into the military. With this decentralization of power and culture across the nascent Arab world came the Islamic medieval period, in which polities formed along culturally and ethnically-based regional lines.

With the caliphate stretched thin, Syria and Palestine were under the control of Egypt, which emerged powerful and independent after 868. After two dynasties in Egypt fell, a third rose: the Fatimids. The Fatimid dynasty, a branch of Shiites, lasted 969-1161 AD, controlling Egypt and the Levant during the First Crusade in 1099. Egypt became a center of learning and agricultural wealth once more, reopening trade routes with Europe and India. 

According to Boston University, "Jerusalem [attracted] Sufi mystics, Islamic law scholars, and Karaite and rabbanite Jews, while retaining its character as Christianity's holiest city. Nevertheless, monumental buildings [fell] into disrepair and the city, as described by Muqqdasi, himself a Jerusalemite, seems sidelined and neglected."

In the lead-up to the First Crusade, the Great Schism occurred between Western European and Eastern European Christianity. Between the former Roman Empire and the standing Byzantine empire, there were religious tensions which built to a crescendo when the Pope excommunicated the bishop of Constantinople, who retorted by excommunicating the Pope. This disunification of Christianity spawned the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. No longer did the two empires support each other without calculating the benefits of doing so, and hostilities grew under the skin. 
[[File:Great schism.jpeg|thumb]]
The Rum Seljuks, a tribal branch of the Iranian Great Seljuks, were growing in might, quickly rising. In the late 11th century, they contested both Fatimid rule over Bilad al-Sham (the Bedouin Muslim name for Syria and the southern Levantine region) and struck fear into the Byzantines by coming very close to Constantinople. They took Jerusalem from the Egyptians in 1071, and soon the Pope declared this empire an issue for both Europe and Christians as a whole.

The Council of Clermont was held on November 8th, 1095. Pope Urban II called for a Holy War to reclaim control of Jerusalem and the holy lands from the 'infidel' Muslims. The shabby, disorganized "People's Crusade" was a disaster. Made up of mostly laymen and peasants, these initial "Crusaders" were slaughtered in August 1096. In the Battle of Civelot in October 1096, a Turkish force of 5,000 destroyed a peasant army of 20,000. 17,000 Crusaders were killed compared to 50 Turks. The remaining 3,000-- elderly, women, and children-- returned to Constantinople. 

On their ways to Jerusalem from Europe, both the Peasant Crusade and the First ("Princes'") Crusade, both campaigns looted and pillaged the villages they passed through. This was mostly out of necessity for crops and animals, as well as some money and belongings. In the Rhineland, in the city of Nicaea, Jews were slaughtered according to Albert of Aix, a church canon and historian of the First Crusade. Later, when men and horses were dying and food and water supply was low, the Crusaders pillaged and looted what they needed, sometimes receiving donations of money from sympathetic Christians.

In response, Byzantine Emperor Alexius I gathered the top European generals in Constantinople and initiated the first "armed pilgrimage". According to researcher Noah Hutto, "This pilgrimage was not only successful, but provided the undertone of romanticism for further exploits." Around the start of the year 1097 AD this well-armed assault began, triumphing in Nicaea in June 1097 and Antioch in June 1098. After a month of fighting between Antioch and Jerusalem, on July 7th, 1099 the Crusaders took Jerusalem by massacre. The Seljuks, divided internally, were overrun. When Muslims attempted to recapture the city at the Battle of Ascalon in 1099, they were again defeated. They mercilessly slaughtered both Muslim and Jew: as Ibn al-Qalanisi wrote, "A number of the townsfolk [of Jerusalem] fled to the sanctuary and a great host were killed. The Jews assembled in the synagogue, and the Franks burned it over their heads... they destroyed the shrines and the tomb of Abraham."

Islamic historiography contradicts said rosy image projected by the Christian world in Europe, claiming that the Crusade was simply another minor imperial pursuit or skirmish attempting to curb the "inevitable" spread of Islam. The subsequent Crusades, unceasing until 1291, went much the same. By the final major Crusade, many Europeans saw the Pope as a king rather than a "guardian of souls who stand before heaven's gate." They continuously came and killed the pagans and non-Catholics of Jerusalem. The Crusaders, finally, restored the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (destroyed by al-Hakim, sixth caliph of the Fatimids, in 1009) with the help of the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX Monomachos. 

The Fatimids were driven out of Egypt by the Ayyubids of Saladin, to whom the Franks (''franj'') surrendered in Jerusalem. Saladin combined Egypt and Syria, dramatically changing the power dynamic in the region in favor of Muslims. The Ayyubids then ruled Jerusalem from Cairo from 1187 to 1250.

The second-to-last Ayyubid Sultan, As-Salih Ayyub, brought a slave woman to Cairo from the same areas his sultanate procured mamluks from. She was to become his wife, Shajar Al-Durr. When he died in 1249, during the seventh crusade, there was an army of Crusaders approaching Egypt with the intent of gaining Syria through Cairo's downfall. Shajar Al-Durr was left to assume power and she lead servants to believe the sultan was still alive until she announced his death. As-Salih Ayyub's son, Turanshah, came to power, but Shajar Al-Durr had an alliance with the mamluks, whom she had more in common with ethnically and culturally. The mamluks assassinated Turanshah in 1250 and made Shajar Al-Durr their monarch; she received letters from the Ayyubids in Syria doubting her ability to reign. Shajar Al-Durr married a mamluk who served her late husband named Aybak, who becomes the first sultan of the Mamluk Sultanate. Aybak and Shajar ruled side by side for seven years, but were distrustful of each other. When Aybak found out that his wife ordered her loyal servants to kill him in the bath, he promptly had her arrested (after which she was publicly humiliated and killed).

Further east, in Asia, Ghengis Khan was leading his Mongol warriors into north China. It took four years from the inception of the campaign against the Chin dynasty, but the capital was destroyed in 1215. Ogodei Khan continued on, conquering all of northern China by 1234, and ruling it from 1229 to 1241. Ghengis' grandson Kublai Khan later defeated the Song dynasty of the south in 1279, leading China to be ruled from the outside for the first time in history. The Islamic caliphate no longer controlled world trade via the Silk Road; rather, the Mongols controlled nearly the whole of Eurasia and founded the modern universal state, welcoming Russians, Jews, Arabs, and others into the empire. The Mongol empire moved west, taking Kiev and other major cities along the way. Planning to sweep through the Levant and take as much as possible on the way to Egypt, the horde conquered and slaughtered thousands in Baghdad and Aleppo in 1258, arriving to battle the Mamluks in Palestine at Ayn Jalut in July 1260. When they sent terms of surrender to the Mamluks the year prior, Aybak's successor Qutuz ordered the messenger to be executed, inviting the war instead. The Mamluks, first appearing as slaves of the Abbasid caliphate, defeated the Mongols in the Battle of Ayn Jalut. 

As an important side-note, the Mongols were the founders of what Infrared has dubbed "Mongol Modernity". This simply means that they were the first modern universal state: all religions and peoples were equal under the law, the nomadic-sedentary contradiction was abolished, the Mongols laid claim to the entirety of the world, and developed a modern political metaphysics.

The slave soldiers revolted against their masters, the Ayyubids, and overthrew the sultanate, gaining control of Egypt and the holy land in 1250. The Mamluks were not the only slave soldiers-- this was a larger phenomenon across the Islamic world, including the Abassids, Fatimids, and Ayyubids, as well as others.

The Mamluks were not a free people, nor a monocultural one; they were at first a population of slave soldiers during the Abbasid empire, but their sons were not allowed to join the army, meaning only outsiders could join the ranks. Often Turkic boys with proficiencies in horseback riding and/or bowmanship were taken from their homelands, traded by the Mongols in some cases or the Geneoese in others to the Mamluks, and trained to be horseback archers in Mamluk barracks in Egypt and the southern Levant. By the 13th century, the Mamluks were largely southern Russian (Bahri) and Circassian Caucasian (Burgi). The former produced the dynasty of Sultans 1250-1381, and the latter dynasty was dominant 1382-1517. As the historian Abu Shama put it, referencing the Battle of Ayn Jalut, "the people of the steppe had been destroyed by the people of the steppe."

The Mamluks also repelled attacks by the Crusaders around the same time. Baybars I seized power after assassinating Qutuz, and it was he who properly founded the Mamluks and ravaged the Crusader states. The Crusaders had created the Catholic feudal Crusader states following the first Crusade: the County of Edessa in the north; the Principality of Antioch along the Mediterranean south of that; the County of Tripoli, also along the coast; and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Antioch and Tripoli covered the coastline in modern-day southeastern Turkey, northwestern Syria, and northern Lebanon, while the Kingdom of Jerusalem covered what is today the State of Israel, Palestine, southern Lebanon and western Jordan. Edessa was taken by the Zengid Turks (sparking the Second Crusade) in 1144, and the Mamluks took Antioch in 1268 and Tripoli in 1289, leaving the Kingdom of Jerusalem alone and weak following the Ayyubid-backed siege of Jerusalem in 1244. When the Mamluks captured Acre in 1291, the Crusader states fell as well. The surviving Crusaders fled to the French Kingdom of Cyprus, established after the Third Crusade. 
[[File:Crusaderstates.png|thumb|The Roman (Byzantine) "crusader states" which fell to various Turkish-Arab empires in the latter half of the 13th century]]
Baybars I ruled until 1277, and was succeeded by al-Malik al-Nasir, who concluded a truce with the Mongols in 1323 after major battles caused famine, Bedouin uprisings, and religious strife. Between the Timur victory in 1400 in Syria, the Portuguese wresting control of Indian trade, and the sultan's inability to quell the Mamluk military corps, Egypt's domination by the Mamluks was gradually growing weaker and weaker. By the time their Syrian provinces were attacked by Turkic Anatolian and Azerbaijani states, there was little hope of victory against the Ottoman empire.

The Mamluks fell in 1517, when the Ottomans hung the last Mamluk sultan. Their contribution to Islamic art and literature as well as architecture stands out as a landmark of Egyptian and Levantine history, and their military-driven lifestyle of the early years ceded somewhat to intellectual, spiritual, and artistic endeavors of the middle-to-late period. Egypt became a political, economic, and artistic leader in the Muslim world under their rule. Though always a precarious state with rampant factionalism and competing interests, it was mighty and powerful, which justified the reign of the slave soldier Sultanate. 

=====Khazarian Ashkenazi Theory=====
Ashkenazi Jews have been the subject of a theory which, if true, would completely delegitimize the modern State of Israel in concept and in practice. We must address this claim briefly here.

In waves, the Jews were exiled or captured: first during the Jewish-Roman wars and later during the Crusades. Due to this, European Jews formed new communities, and were split into two groups: the first are known as "Sephardim" or Spanish rite Jews who settled in the Iberian peninsula and Northern Africa; the second are called "Ashkenazim" or German rite Jews (the latter of which make up more than 80% of Jews worldwide today). There are two theories as to the origins of Ashkenazim: either they were originally from the land of Canaan like Sephardic Jews, but settled in the Rhineland and France; or they settled in the region after large numbers of Jewish converts in the multi-ethnic, semi-nomadic Khazarian Khaganate (Khazar empire) migrated there following the fall of the Khazars. Witnesses from the 9th and 10th centuries say the Khazars adopted Judaism in the 8th century.

The Khazarian theory, while plausible, shows little evidence, especially considering the deep-rooted cultural and traditional connections between Ashkenazim and the Rhineland such as their staunchly Germanic language of Yiddish. However, the theory goes as follows: A small number of Khazars converted to Rabbinic Judiasm in the 8th-9th centuries (according to the Khazar Correspondence). When the empire fell, they fled to Europe and settled there. The main weakness of the Israeli origin story is that there is no determinative counterargument to refute the Khazar theory. It's also perfectly likely, however, that Ashkenazim are the descendants of early-medieval Levantines rather than Turkic-Caucasians. 

There is no conclusive evidence to support either theory, yet both are wielded politically today, most notably by Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas respectively. The theory first gained prominence in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries, and later was supported and criticized by both receptionists and rejectionists-- both Zionists and non-Zionists. 

With most of the world's Jews today being Ashkenazim, Israeli claim to the land they currently occupy is thrust into jeopardy, and such a lack of evidence for either claim means a necessary rejection of confirmation for or against the Khazarian Ashkenazi theory.

=====Ottoman Empire=====
The Ottoman Empire was founded by Osman I in 1299. He was the son of Ertugrul Gazi, who assisted the Rum Seljuks in their fight against the Byzantine empire. Some of the Turks who fled Mongol invasion settled in Anatolia and embraced Islam. Osman united the Turkic Anatolians into the Ottoman confederation, which had conquered much of modern-day Greece and Turkey and encroached upon Constantinople by the latter half of the 14th century. Between 1326 and 1453, the Ottomans besieged Constantinople once, fought against Timur and the Mongols, attempted (and failed) to destroy Constantinople a second time, and finally, via mobilization through Greece and Albania, cut off Constantinople from its allies. On May 29th, 1453, "The Conqueror" Mehmed II's forces breached the walls of Byzantium, destroying the Byzantine empire. The city would eventually become Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman empire.

During the 16th century (until the mid-17th century), the Ottomans and Safavids warred over both religion and land in Mesopotamia. The Ottomans were staunchly Sunni and the Safavids staunchly Shia. After a handful of wars spanning 1514 to 1639, the Treaty of Zuhab was signed. This treaty was notable for its agreement on the modern borders of Turkey and Iran, on the one hand, and Iran and Iraq on the other. Later treaties between the Ottoman and Persian empires make extensive reference to the Treaty of Zuhab.

Between 1633 and 1634, the Ottomans were at war with the Poles (supported by Lithuania) as well in modern Ukraine. Ultimately the war ended in stalemate in 1634. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth controlled the territory for three centuries, and their battles utilizing the Cossacks against the Ottoman Turks and Tatars eventually led to the overthrow of Polish rule in the region. 

What later turned into a bureaucratic disaster was at first a model empire, combining strong leadership with efficient administration. One could argue the Ottoman empire, like the Mongols', was a civilization state-- under it were 30 million Turkic, Persian, Levantine, Caucasian, Egyptian, and southeastern European peoples previously under the yoke of Byzantines and other imperialist nations. Also similar to the Mongols, the state was adaptive to the needs and wants of its multiethnic, multicultural population, treating all as equals under its religious and administrative systems throughout its vast territory. It could also thus be described as a modern universal state of sorts.

[[File:Ottoman map.png|thumb]]

=====Emergence of Zionism=====

The political extremist and nationalist movement of Zionism, which calls itself Jewish yet betrays the teachings of the Torah inherently, was founded in the 19th century. The return to Zion of the Achaemenid era was the namesake of the ideology. Its founding was a response to the Jewish Question: the question of what the answer was regarding Jewish "emancipation", which led to massive debate about how to end religious persecution for Jews and subsequently other religious minorities. Across Europe, many intellectuals, rabbis, Jews and non-Jews were engaged in this question. Karl Marx wrote about the Jewish Question in the mid-19th century, arriving at the conclusion that, in order for Jews to assimilate successfully, the state must become secular and Jews must not act in the fashion of their stereotypes (which by this point were widespread and more accurately described the Christian states of Europe than the Jewish laborer), but return to the spiritual and pious ways of Orthodoxy from the decadency of Revisionist Judaism. 

Moses Mendelssohn founded Revisionist Judaism in Germany during the 18th century, when the Jewish Question was first gaining significance in European intellectual circles. This subversion of Judaism completely rejected core tenants of the Torah, such as keeping of the Sabbath, keeping kosher, and the spiritualization of the Jewish nation. The lattermost pillar of Judaism refers to the exile of Jews after the destruction of Solomon's temple; God thereafter forbade Jews from returning without their Messiah; he forbade their also from asserting political or military sovereignty in the form of a state, especially in the holy land. Orthodox Judaism rejects violent aggression, and this was the reason the Persian and other Arab nations took the Jews in-- they didn't see Jews as a threat, having read and studied the Torah as Muhammad did-- and gave them protections on such bases.

According to Orthodox and other anti-Zionist Jews, the Jewish State's later foundation was a rejection of their covenant to God, viz. a rejection of the spiritualization of the Jewish nation (read: people) by those who became Revisionist Jews like Mendelssohn. These Revisionist Jews reject the notion that their people can assimilate with others, that they must wait as their God commanded them to wait for the Messiah before they can (peacefully) return to the holy lands. Such rejection of traditional Jewish thought and the fundamentals of the religion cause Orthodox Jews to both protest Israel (both its actions and its existence as a state), as well as to uphold values of peace and piety in their support of Palestinian resistance since the British occupation.