Introduction

This book's central theme is Muslims' trajectory, particularly whether they are still regressing. The answer to this question reflects one’s view about Muslims’ present and immediate future. Muslims’ recent past, overshadowed by colonialism, was a period of immense hardship. In the post-colonial world, when they have regained control of their resources and affairs, whether they still regress is crucial.

Addressing this question comprehensively necessitates a thorough examination of Muslims’ recent past and a comparison with their present. Understandably, a superficial analysis would not yield a satisfactory answer. Therefore, this book delves into the historical and contemporary aspects of Muslims' progress and regression.

A comprehensive understanding of the present requires a deep dive into the past. While the recent past is of primary interest, a look at the distant past is necessary to understand Muslims’ recovery from setbacks, such as the recent colonial subjugation. The distant past also holds the key to understanding Muslims’ religious obligation to acquire knowledge directly related to their present life in the Age of Enlightenment. The view of the incompatibility of Islam’s message with science can be assessed by examining Muslims’ practical contributions to this field, which were primarily overlooked until their recent rediscovery.

This book, structured into six parts, provides a roadmap for our exploration. We begin with Part I, which delves into setbacks and recoveries. The first setback, initiated by the Crusaders in 1096, lasted about 200 years until their final elimination in 1291. The last seven decades of the Crusaders’ occupation coincided with the Mongol control of Muslim lands. After Muslims dealt with Mongols,  three significant empires emerged in the Muslim world: Ottomans in Asia, Africa, and Europe (1299-1922), Safavids in Persia (1501-1736), and Mughals in India (1526-1857). The third setback was the colonial control, which has physically faded away, but the process of complete recovery from it is still ongoing.

Concerning Muslims’ life in the present world, a commonly discussed question is the compatibility of Islamic teachings with the Age of Reason. One available measure is to ascertain Muslim attitude toward knowledge. Assessing the Muslim contribution to knowledge will be covered in Part II. With no intention to invoke nostalgic memories of their glorious past, the recorded facts of the highly significant and purely original contributions of Muslims to knowledge will be examined. Muslims’ quest for knowledge was driven by the Quran and the teachings of Mohammad (PBUH). George Sarton (d1956), recognised as the father of the history of science, observes: The Muslim ideal was, it goes without saying, not visual beauty but God in His plentitude; that is God with all his manifestations, the stars and the heavens, the earth, and all nature.²⁰ The core aspects of the Muslim contribution to knowledge will be documented. The intriguing phenomenon of the Muslim contribution put out of sight by the Medieval European mindset and an ongoing effort guided by Western scholars to bring it back into sight will be examined. Muslims’ obligation to seek knowledge directly affects their future in the Age of Reason.

Muslims' transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy is one of the main challenges they face today. It involves a change in Muslim societies’ mindsets, as the West recently experienced a shift from the medieval mindset. Part III will look at West’s journey to Enlightenment along with the challenges it faced and the time it took. The information is relevant to what Muslims presently pass through after awakening from a long slumber under colonial control.  A brief picture of how the Church dominated individual life, as well as the governments and the West’s struggle to free itself from the hold of the Church, kings, and barons, will be examined. Europe’s wars of religion and other violence, with its simultaneous stride towards renaissance, will be touched. Europe’s achievement of curbing tendencies of colonisation within Europe and its greatest effort of colonisation of the rest of the world will be revisited. Finally, the Enlightenment will be briefly covered, which brought the West to where it is today.

For centuries, the West has been exposed to a distorted image of Islam completely absent from the message of  Islam and its scholarly accounts. Historians believe that this misrepresentation originated during the Crusades when two civilisations were pitted against each other. Detailed accounts of this distorted image have been extensively documented in the available literature. Part IV of this discussion will examine the specifics of this misrepresentation, its dissemination, and its rectification during the Age of Enlightenment, mainly due to advancements in scientific historiography. The assessment of how the correction of this image is likely to influence the future of Muslims in today's world will also be explored.

With sufficient details documented in Parts I to IV, we can address this book's basic question: ‘Do They Still Regress?’ This will be done in Part V. The Part VI. will be the epilogue.  

Part I: Setbacks and Recoveries

The history of Muslims includes three major setbacks: the establishment of Crusader states on Muslim lands, the Mongol domination of the Muslim world, and the European colonisation of more recent times. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of the recovery from the Crusaders' invasion and the subsequent resistance by Muslims. Chapter 2 discusses the Mongol domination of the Muslim world and the subsequent recovery by Muslims. Chapter 3 presents an overview of the European colonisation of the Muslim world and the physical independence as part of the ongoing recovery process.

1. Recovery from Crusades

Crusades (1096-1291) were the first major attack on the Muslim world. They present part of a long but zero-sum struggle that went on for centuries between Europe and the Muslim world of the East.  Retaking control of the Holy Land in the eastern Mediterranean is widely considered to be the objective of the Crusades. The expanding Muslim power is said to be another factor that drove the Crusades.³ A significant part of the ancient Christian world carved in the east was conquered by Muslims by the end of the 11th century. It included regions of Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Anatolia.

The Seljuks conquered Syria from the Fatimids in 1070. When the Seljuk cavalry crossed the lines and entered Anatolia, they inflicted a devastating defeat on the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Powerless to stop this Turkish advance, the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus I asked the Pope for aid in 1091, and in response, Pope Urban II summoned the First Crusade.¹

In front of a large audience of priests, knights, and poor people, Urban called for a holy war against Islam. He explained that the Seljuk Turks, a group of people from Central Asia who had recently converted to Islam, had invaded Anatolia in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and taken the lands from the Christian Byzantine Empire.²

The Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081-1118) sought Western military aid to defeat the Muslim Seljuks, who were threatening his empire in Asia Minor. In response, Pope Urban II (1088-1099) saw an opportunity to enhance the power and influence of the Papacy by becoming the undisputed head of the entire Christian church, including the Orthodox East.⁴

The first of eight major Crusades started in 1096. After an initial success, the Crusaders established a Christian state in Palestine and Syria, but the rising resistance from Muslims ultimately reversed those gains. In 1187, Saladin was able to recapture Jerusalem, though the Crusaders hung on in the Near East for another century, but by 1291, the Crusaders were finally expelled from their kingdom in Syria and were eventually uprooted from the region. The reaction process continued, and by the 14th century, the Ottoman Turks had established themselves in the Balkans and would penetrate deeper into Europe despite European resistance. Europe, which, despite its dramatic cultural advance during the crusading period, still lagged behind the Muslim world.¹

An Overview of Crusades

Eight major Crusades took place from 1096 to 1270. In the process, Crusader states, shown in Map 1, were created. By 1291, the Crusader states were completely absorbed into the Mamluk Sultanate.

The First Crusade (1096 - 1099) was the most successful of all crusades. Antioch was captured in June 1098, and Jerusalem on 15 July 1099. The western knights sprung a surprise on Muslims that would not be repeated.⁴

The Second Crusade (1147 - 1149) was sparked by the capture of Upper Mesopotamia and Aleppo (in Syria) by Imad ad-Din Zangi. However, the Crusade did not bring success to the Crusaders. Nur ad-Din Zangi, the successor of Imad ad-Din Zangi, captured Antioch and successfully resisted the Crusaders.

The Third Crusade (1189 - 1192) followed Saladin's (r. 1174-1193) great victories in the Battle of Hattin and his successful takeover of Jerusalem in 1187. The consolation prize of the Third Crusade was a treaty that allowed Christian pilgrims to travel to the Holy Land and a strip of land around Acre.

Map 1: The Crusader States of the 12th Century.

(Source: https://www.britannica.com/event/Crusades/The-results-of-the-Crusades)

The Fourth Crusade (1202 - 1204) centred around Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire Capital and the greatest Christian city in the world, identified by the Crusaders as their prime target. The Papal ambitions were buried under mutual suspicions of Eastern and Western parts of the former Roman Empire, and Constantinople was destroyed. As a consequence, Constantinople never returned to its former glory after being sacked by the Fourth Crusade, and the schism between Eastern and Roman Catholic Christianity was further entrenched.²

The Fifth Crusade (1217 - 1221) centred on the change in strategy to attack the enemy’s soft underbelly in Egypt. After an initial success, a loss at the Battle of Mansoura in August 1221 spelled Crusaders’ doom.

In the Sixth Crusade (1228 - 1229), the negotiations achieved what the warfare could not. The Sultan of Egypt, Al-Kamil (r. 1218-1238), with his problems of controlling a large empire, agreed to hand over control of Jerusalem to Christians on the condition that the Muslim pilgrims could freely enter the city. When the ten-year truce expired, Jerusalem was captured by the Egyptian Muslims in alliance with the Turks in 1244.⁷

The Seventh Crusade (1248 – 1254) was launched after the Christian army was defeated in the battle of La Forbie in October 1244 by Egypt’s Ayyubid Sultan as-Salih Ayyub. The Crusaders repeated the strategy of the Fifth Crusade and achieved only the same results. This Crusade marked the collapse of Christian power in the Holy Land.

The Eighth Crusade (1270) was against the Hafsid dynasty in Tunisia, undertaken by Lous IX of France. He died in 1270, and with him, so did the Eighth Crusade.

By this time, the gifted general Baybars (r. 1260-1270) had taken over Egypt as Mamluk sultan. Some historians call him a nemesis of the Crusaders. His wars on the remaining Crusader states laid the foundation for their complete elimination.  Acre, the capital of the kingdom of Jerusalem, fell in 1291. The remaining territories were quickly lost. The survivors fled to the Kingdom of Cyprus, which was established after the Third Crusade. Thus, the saga of the Crusades under discussion ended with the control of the disputed lands reverting to the Muslims.

Another significant event that immediately followed the Crusades was the appearance of the Ottoman Turks.  The rise of the Ottoman Turks and their successful campaigns to the West drastically changed the stakes in the crusading movement. It was no longer faraway Palestine that was in danger but Western Europe itself. Crusaders had always seen themselves as fighting a defensive war, defending the Christians in the East, Jerusalem, or the faith. Now, they were called on to defend themselves. Henceforth, crusades were no longer wars to expand Christendom but desperate attempts to slow the advance of Islam. Crusading had become a matter of simple survival.⁵

Not related to this discussion, the Crusades continued for centuries after 1291, usually as military campaigns intended to halt or slow the advance of Muslim power or to conquer pagan areas outside the Muslim East.

The Lasting Impacts

The Crusades, the first collective effort of Europe against the outside world, are seen as a significant event in Europe’s development. European society changed during the 12th and 13th centuries due to extended exposure to a more developed outside world. The Crusades were disgraceful but formative events in Western history.¹

"The consequences of the Crusades can still be felt in the world today. The Crusades had an impact on many areas, including trade, finance, architecture, and science.... Islamic armies had successfully defended the Holy Land from the Crusaders, and they went on to have military conquests of their own throughout the Middle Ages. In 1453, Islamic armies of the Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople from the Christian Byzantine Empire and by 1529 had also conquered south-eastern Europe, including Hungary, and were besieging Vienna."⁶

Our Reference 6 describes the following impacts of the Crusades on Europe:

Warfare: The