Muhammad West – The Revival #15
AI: Summary ©
The attack on Jerusalem during the 11th century saw thousands of people killed and some were murdered, leading to a label of culture of war and the belief that everyone was killed without consequence. The attack on Jerusalem is a classic example of warfare and references the history of the previous century. The history of the town of Edessa, once ruled by the Crusaders, was eventually destroyed by the first setback of the war, and the first Empire was destroyed by the second setback of the first round of the war. The Empire was eventually united under one banner and eventually taken on by the second armies.
AI: Summary ©
Night number 15,
half the month gone. May Allah help us
to make the most of what remains and
grant us the ability to get the full
benefit and grant us.
Ameen. Ameen.
So for the last few few nights from
the fall of Toledo, the fall of Sicily,
Imam Ghazali, all of this occurs within the
span of about 20 years, subhanallah. This was
the 11th century.
And as we can see, the 11th century
saw the,
a number of caliphs being
assassinated,
scholars
leaving,
cities falling. But I guess the most harrowing
chapter would be the last year of 11th
century, 10 99. And we said the crusades
were called a few years before, and the
crusaders marched from Paris, from France,
all the way through Europe,
through Anatolia,
through the Middle East to arrive in Jerusalem.
And this group,
ragtag group, there wasn't there were a few
knights, but by and large, it was just,
ordinary people that joined up, believing in the
words of the pope. And they gave something
called indulgence that if you go, that the
church will issue you your forgiveness.
And they, marched through an incredible incredible march
beating Muslim army after army. And there was
no united or concerted effort to stop them.
It was just each territory that they went
through. The the warlord of that region tried
to stop them, but it was of no
use. Eventually, as we spoke a few nights
ago, they captured the city of Antioch, which
was a well fortified city against all odds.
And by, you know, bribing a soldier, they
managed to capture,
the grand city of Antioch. And after that,
what lay ahead was just the city of
Jerusalem. Antioch is very close to Jerusalem.
And so by the summer of of 10/99,
the Crusaders
moved
from Antioch towards Jerusalem and they besieged the
city. And they and, subhanallah, they're besieging the
city now. They've been in the Middle East
or,
ravaging from Syria all the way down. No
single major army is being sent to stop
them.
Not from the Saljuks, not from the Fatimids,
not from, you know, all these rulers. Every
city has its own ruler, Khalifa. No one
is sending a a major army to stop
them. And what happens now really is a,
you know, the blame falls collectively on the
entire Ummah, what is going to happen. Because
finally, the Crusaders managed after besieging the city
of Jerusalem. They are able to break into
the city. And
even though this was the dark ages, there
was no Geneva Convention, things were done very
differently.
The massacre that occurred in Jerusalem
in 10/99
is still regarded by those standards as something
completely horrendous.
The
chroniclers of that time, not the Muslims' chroniclers,
the Christian ones,
mentioned in, you know, what happened there was
something that they had never seen before. So
these this army enters Jerusalem
and believing full well that they have God
on their side, that this was ordained, that
it was an impossible journey and they have
made it, and they had carte blanche to
do as they wanted. And so it's mentioned
here that every Muslim and Jewish woman,
man, woman, and child, was murdered, was slain.
William of Tyre, he's a a historian, a
Christian historian, he says
this is now his own account. He says,
regardless of age or condition,
they laid they basically killed we killed without
any discrimination
every person we encountered.
Everywhere was a frightful carnage. Everywhere lay heaps
of severed heads so that soon it was
impossible to walk around without basically coming across
a dead person.
A crowd of knights and foot soldiers
massacred all those who had taken refuge in
the Masjid, Maji Laksa. So, obviously, a lot
of people
crammed in see thinking perhaps in the Masjid,
there will be safety. They said nobody was
spared within the mosque. No mercy was shown
to anyone, and the whole place was flooded
with blood of the victims. In other account,
it says it was up until the knees.
You were walking. You were basically walking through
rivers of blood in in, Jerusalem.
It was indeed. When he says it was
indeed the righteous judgment of God upon these
people, subhanAllah.
This and their blood was the means to
purify the land of their sins.
It was impossible to look upon the vast
numbers of slain without horror. Everywhere lay fragments
of human bodies and the very ground was
covered with the blood of the slain. It
is reported that at least 10,000 were killed
within the Masjid. 10,000 people were killed in
the Masjid in 1 in one day. The
Jews ran to their synagogue,
and they burned the synagogue down with people
inside it. This is what the,
crusaders had done.
Then after that, after they had killed and
then they went out searching every house they
would enter. And whatever they found, they took
for themselves and any person in there, they
would do what they wanted, obviously, as you
can imagine, with the ladies and the girls.
And then they would slaughter them and either
dash their heads, whether it was a baby
or child, throw their heads on the ground
until everybody basically was in,
was was was was killed in,
Jerusalem. And then he says afterwards,
we went to the church and we prayed
and we cried for the deliverance,
that this is what God wanted. As I
said, this this massacre
remains as one of the worst acts
of of of of, you know, conquering a
city. You won't see things like this. Well,
when we get to the Mongolians, they would
outdo the Crusaders. But it's a point to
note here. People talk about, you know, Muslims,
you've conquered lands, you conquered Spain for 800
years, Sicily.
Why are so worried when we conquer your
your lands? This is Allah says,
This is these are the days we alternate
between you. SubhanAllah, when we conquered Spain, what
did we do? We took a country that
was so backwards and transformed it into a
golden civilization.
You conquer our lands. Look what you do
to our people. Look at Africa.
We are the Aborigines of Australia. We are
the natives of North America, South America. It's
a very different different way. Yes. There is
conquest. And there is we rule your lands,
you rule our lands. But we leave your
lands. And what kind of state do we
leave your lands? Universities,
libraries, hospitals.
You come to our lands, and you commit
genocide.
SubhanAllah. So this is in the name of
the cross. And if we never ever feel,
we live in a time where not only
are we subjugated and downtrodden, but we've even
forgotten our own Izzah. That when we compare
our history, it's something that we should be
proud of. And when they compare their history,
it should be something that they're ashamed of.
And we see what they're doing in Gaza
is an extension of the history. What's happening
in Gaza is an extension of the history.
And, subhanAllah, Allah shows you this. When we
conquer Jerusalem, Sayyidna Umar, not a single person
was harmed.
When they took it back, they killed
everybody indiscriminately,
even Christians who are not of the same
denomination.
You're going to see when we recapture Jerusalem
what happens.
So
this is the culmination of the 1st crusade,
and it was,
for for for Europe, a major turning point
and a major turning point in history, and
it showed the weakness of the ummah. It
showed where we were,
as as a as a nation. And,
this is the end of 11th century. Now
We can move on a little bit. So
at the end of the crusade, the crusaders
managed to carve out what we call the
crusader,
a crusader a crusader state. And they are
basically 4 cities. Now these are important in
in the nights to come. They had 4,
countries or states within the crusader
nation. They had the the city of Edessa,
which is in the north. Then they had
Antioch.
They had a city called Tripoli, and then
they had the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which was
basically all the way down to Egypt. So
they ruled all of Lebanon,
half of Jordan,
all of what is modern day Palestine and
the apartheid state of Israel, and a big
chunk out of Syria. And so they rule
this area, the Crusaders. And for about 50
years, the Muslims are unable to make any
inroads,
unable to mount any kind of of of,
reprisal
or or response, and the Crusaders
occupy this land.
And so,
however, they would be they would the the
tide will turn. And just for our information,
that there'll be 12 crusades in total or
13 crusades in total. They won the first
one, and they're gonna lose the next 12.
They will lose every single crusade after the
first one. And the first,
major
setback that they get or the beginning of
the end for them, the first time they
they lose, basically, they go they lose all
the way,
it happens at at the hands of someone
that really is not expected. So we move
quickly 50 years after the Basak of Jerusalem.
The Crusaders are well established. The Muslims are
meanwhile still fighting each city, Aleppo, Damascus,
Baghdad. Each one is ruled by its own
warlord, and they are fighting with one another.
And nobody can put up a proper resistance
against the Crusaders.
And then the the first person to really
make in inroads is a man how do
we call him? He's a warlord. He's a
bit of a thug. He's basically a tyrant.
By his own words, he says, my philosophy
is
it doesn't usually happen that you have 2
tyrants at the same time, so I'll rather
be the 1. And so he attacks everybody.
He is the sort of the ruler of
Aleppo. Aleppo is the biggest city of of
of Syria. It's bigger than Damascus. At that
time, it's bigger than Damascus. So he is
like the what we call the the Atibig
or, like, the the amir of Damascus or
the amir of Aleppo. And he attacks Damascus.
He attacks Baghdad. He attacks everybody.
And he attacks Odessa as well, and he
manages to conquer Odessa. The
crusader state of Odessa is the 1st person
to actually reclaim a land. This was not
from Izzaw anything. Allah had Allah had given
it to him. Anyway, he conquers Odessa in
1144,
and
had a very, ignorable death. A man used
to drink and party, and, he was drunk
one night and he woke up and he
saw his slave drinking from his cup and
he said, you, how do you drink from
my cup? When I wake up tomorrow, when
I sober up, I'm gonna kill you. So
the slave said, I'm not gonna wake until
you sober up. So the slave kills him,
subhanallah. And this is Imad Mulla grant him
mercy. He did some for the grant him
mercy, Amin. So he dies. And as when
he dies, the Crusaders,
the Europe, the pope says, well, it's time
for us to have a crusade part 2.
We've lost Odessa. We must go and recapture
it or expand our,
our conquest.
And so this is the the call for
the 2nd crusade. Now the one one good
thing about Imad, when he died, he left
behind 2 sons, and these sons were very
different to him.
These sons were righteous sons. In particular, his
youngest son called Nurudeen, and you must know
this man. Our discussion is gonna be about
Nurudeen. Nurudeen Zingi. Nurudeen, the son of Imad,
he is he inherits Aleppo.
He inherits Aleppo, and his brother inherits Iraq,
basically. And the brother said, we're not gonna
fight each other. You have your kingdom. I
have my kingdom. We're not gonna fight. I
have your back. You have my back. And,
it's amazing. On that time,
this time you read, a mother kills her
son to have another son rule Damascus. This
is the kind of Muslims. We're not talking
about the Crusaders. Muslims. So you can imagine
the kind of carnage that is going on.
This is like par for the course. And
so, having 2 brothers rule side by side,
not fighting, was unique. And so
Nur ad Din inherits his father's kingdom of
Aleppo. At the same time, the second crusade
is called. And the second crusade
is really a big one because in the
last one you had really, it was almost
a
mash of people coming. In this one, the
emperor of Germany and the emperor of France
both joined this crusade. So these are kings
that are coming themselves
Europe.
Imad has died. Nur ad Din has taken
over, and he needs to basically,
fight back what his dad had caused. So
the ulama mentioned so we talk a little
bit about Nur ad Din and his his
his background. There's perhaps
no greater comment about him. Ibn Athir, a
a a historian of time, he says that
he's this is a historian. He said, up
until my time, like, up until,
that time, I've studied every amir and Khalifa.
And apart from the 4 rightly guided caliphs
and Umar bin Abdulaziz,
Nurudeen is next in line in terms of
piety,
justice,
kindness, morality. And so, look at his dad,
and look what he was. And
another side, little interesting note, Nurudeen most likely
would have studied in a Nizamiyah set up
by Nizam al Mulk
taught by a syllabus that was designed by
Imam Ghazali. So it's you see, the fruit
was the seeds were laid, but now you
get the, the fruits coming to be.
Ibn Athir also mentions that I've heard many
people say that they had never seen, besides
him being a pious man, he's also a
warrior, and a very good polo player. And
he said, I don't play polo for the
sake of playing polo, but it is how
I train myself and my horse in warfare.
So now the Crusaders are on their way,
and they are
they arrive in in in, they travel through
Europe. Now this, army was not as successful
as the first one.
Their journey was a lot worse. Many of
them died along the way. And by the
time they get to Jerusalem,
they were actually badly they had quite a
number of setbacks along the way. And so
when they get to Jerusalem,
they must decide, what do we do now?
The city of Edessa is completely destroyed. When
Emad conquered it, he destroyed the city. There's
nothing to conquer. So they decide, let us
conquer Damascus. Let us go and fight. If
we conquer Damascus, then at least we exert
our our, terrain further. Now Damascus
was an enemy to Aleppo. Nur Udine is
the ruler of Aleppo. Damascus was an enemy.
Damascus sided with the Crusaders against Aleppo.
Now the Crusaders say, let us go. It's
it's even though they are allies, nonetheless, we'll
go and conquer Damascus. And from there, we
can,
push further in.
And Nur ad Din, out of his piety,
when he saw this crusader army coming to
invade Damascus, he offered help to his enemy,
and by that,
saved the city of Damascus. And this would
engrain, you know, in in in the psyche
of the people that this man was not
a man for conquest. Take
over,
take over take over,
take over Damascus.
And Nur ad Din made it very clear.
He wants to build a coalition
to finally push the Crusaders out. He's a
regi. He's sending out letters. He says, guys,
let us unite together. Let us not fight
one another, and we put a united front,
and we push out the crusaders. Of course,
it's not going to be,
that easy.
Even his enemies would say about Nur ad
Din
that he did not win he did not
win battles because of his huge numbers or
because of his soldiers or his warriors, but
because of his piety and his supplication at
night, Allah is gonna give him cities without
fighting like Damascus. It came to him without
fighting. Without fighting, the people overthrew its Amir
and called him in. And so he,
takes control of of Damascus,
and now he's building this coalition. His brother
then dies and he gets Iraq as well
without fighting. These people of Iraq joins him.
So now he's the 1st amir to unite
Syria and Iraq under one banner. And the
Khalifa in Baghdad, the nominal Khalifa, recognizes him
as the ruler, basically, of of the region,
and now he is poised to take on
the Crusaders head on.
And interesting window for the story that, really
before he he he begins, he performs a,
a a pilgrimage to Makkah. He goes on
Hajj.
And it's a very famous story, and Allah
the authenticity of it, but it seems like
it's reoccurring, that on this on this journey,
he had a dream
of the prophet saying to him, save me.
Nurudeen, save me. And so, you must have
all heard this story before. And so this
is Nurudeen. This is he's the man that
goes to Madinah.
And, you know, because he reoccur he sees
this dream reoccurring,
then is telling him, you need to save
me. He goes to Madinah, and he,
calls the people of Madinah together, and he
gives them a feast and he gives them
gifts, and he asks, is there anybody here
that is like a foreigner? And the people
of Marina said, yes. There are 2 guys.
They live in a tent out there. They
all by themselves. They don't really engage, but
they're just very pious. They always, you know,
worshiping, and they don't engage with us. So
Nur Udeshi, call call them call them. And
he found out that these people were Christian,
actually. They were spies.
And they, subhanallah, what they wanted to do
was they had dug a tunnel underneath the
Masjid to extract the body of the Nabi
Salam.
Yeah. You read the books of history. There
are 3 times in history someone tried to
do this. This was the first time. And,
obviously, he had them executed. But,
the fact that
the Nabi Salam would come to him and
for that protection shows this man was very
special. In fact, he is we all talk
about Salahuddin,
but in many, many ways, this is the
man that revives
the concept of jihad. And when he gives
the crusaders a a defeat, it gives an
that was, like, you know, really desperate, that
was feeling down for, like, 50 years that
we still have this. And we're gonna see
now the ummah sort of rallying around him,
and
we'll talk about the,
the defeat of the Crusaders tomorrow and
Just
tonight's question.
What was the date on which Imam Ghazali
passed away? Age 53,
19th December.
19th December. It's actually my daughter's birthday. I
realized that. Right.
You see Williams? Okay.
Tasnim Sali.
Tasnim? Not yet tonight.
Sara Sali?
Sarah. Okay. Sarah is the Okay. And then
tonight's, question, who was the father of Nurudeen?
The father of Nurudeen, he conquered the city,
inshallah. And a reminder for those who contribute
inshallah to the Maharajan
to Zakkulah.