Africa And The Crusades

[Bawon Samedi]

Well thanks to your threads, we definitely know West Africans were a part of the Moorish armies in Europe and we also know they pilgrimaged to Egypt and Mecca so not farfetched at all.

What threads do you want me to make next(besides Egypt)? @Grano-Grano wants me to do Somali history.

So far I did Sahelian Empires, Kongo Kingdom, Swahili Coast, Nubia and most recent the Moors.

 

[Poitier]

What threads do you want me to make next(besides Egypt)? @Grano-Grano wants me to do Somali history.

So far I did Sahelian Empires, Kongo Kingdom, Swahili Coast, Nubia and most recent the Moors.

Arjuran Sultanate would be dope

 

[Neuromancer]

all the way in.

Gundam kn

• Neuromancer
• Nov 19, 2016

 

[Poitier]

Guy de Lusignan and Saladin. Saladin en Guy de Lusignan, 1625 painting by Jan Lievens.


An interesting portrayal of Saladin


Also this :

During the reign of the Fatimid ruler al-Mustansir [1035 – 1095] a new situation arose as his mother, who was of African slave origin, worked with slave dealers to build an even larger military force. This time the African forces included African slaves who served as cavalry. The appearance of African cavalry created a major racial and political conflict with the light skinned Central Asian Turkish speaking mamluks who saw the African cavalry as a direct threat to their role as the leading military contingent in the army of Egypt. A civil war followed in which the Turkish mamluks triumphed and the African slave cavalry was destroyed. But the need for African slaves as infantry continued as they still had a military role to play in the Fatimid state and more Africans were imported and trained as infantry.

When Saladin [master of Egypt: 1169–1193], a Sunni with ties to the Abbasids, took control of the Fatimid government, the African infantry found themselves literary fighting for their life. The new military philosophy of Saladin and his contemporaries was to rely only upon mamluks and only use infantry during sieges. The African slave infantry troops could not switch sides as they had done when earlier armies had conquered Egypt because the new army of Saladin had no role for a standing infantry. Saladin and his supporters were successful and with Saladin’s triumph the role of African slaves as military troops ended with a few minor exceptions.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Painting looks kinda sus.

@CashmereEsquire really need to hear your opinion.

 

[satam55]

Gonna definitely read this thread later.

Honestly though, why have I never heard of Saladin? This nikka basically bullied the entire world and played a key role in the Maghreb we have today


@Misreeya I see your people were eager to help out the Christian Crusaders tho but thats none of my business

You've never seen the Ridley Scott-directed 2005 epic historical drama film movie "Kingdom of Heaven"?:




Saladin is the leader of the Muslims that they go to war with in the movie. I've asked folks on this forum before if Saladin & the Muslims in this film are supposed to be Moors (or connected to The Moors), but I've never got a straight answer.

 

[Poitier]

Painting looks kinda sus.

@CashmereEsquire really need to hear your opinion.

Its real but I don't think Northern Europeans had any real clue on Saladin's ancestry. Its still amazing how people from Egypt/Africa were assumed to be Black back then when White folks today do everything to whitewash the Maghreb.

Gonna definitely read this thread later.




You've never seen the Ridley Scott-directed 2005 epic historical drama film movie "Kingdom of Heaven"?:




Saladin is the leader of the Muslims that they go to war with in the movie. I've asked folks on this forum before if Saladin & the Muslims in this film are supposed to be Moors (or connected to The Moors), but I've never got a straight answer.

Nah, never watched it. Did the film show him whooping they ass again and again or no?

The Moors and Saladin were both Islamic but subscribed to different ideological interpretations of the faith and were threats to each other for dominion over the Islamic world. Moors were obviously indigenous Africans from the Mountains in North Africa, while Saladin is a Kurd. Its like the difference between ISIS and Tuareg militants in Mali or something.

 

[Apollo Creed]

Gonna definitely read this thread later.




You've never seen the Ridley Scott-directed 2005 epic historical drama film movie "Kingdom of Heaven"?:




Saladin is the leader of the Muslims that they go to war with in the movie. I've asked folks on this forum before if Saladin & the Muslims in this film are supposed to be Moors (or connected to The Moors), but I've never got a straight answer.

Maybe I need to read more in depth instead of glancing over things but just from what I see it's like there are two "schools of thought" when it comes to who or what "Moors" are.

One that say Moor is synonymous with Muslim, and another that says Moor is synonymous with "Black" and that there are records of Muslim, Christian, AND Jewish Moors.

I`m a casual when it comes to this stuff, but if Moor = Muslim why is it that nobody in the Sahel kingdoms called themselves Moor? History is consistent with them using their tribes/ethnic group at the max when describing who they were, and didn't "Moors" try to invade Sahel Kingdoms? Is it to correct to assume North Africans of the 15th-17th centuries were Moors? Or were the Moors a very specific group of people?

 

[Bawon Samedi]

@Poitier

Agreed.

@CashmereEsquire

The confusion comes that "Moor" meant black(of the Maghreb) early on. But it soon meant every Muslim in Iberia.

 

[Poitier]

Maybe I need to read more in depth instead of glancing over things but just from what I see it's like there are two "schools of thought" when it comes to who or what "Moors" are.

One that say Moor is synonymous with Muslim, and another that says Moor is synonymous with "Black" and that there are records of Muslim, Christian, AND Jewish Moors.

I`m a casual when it comes to this stuff, but if Moor = Muslim why is it that nobody in the Sahel kingdoms called themselves Moor? History is consistent with them using their tribes/ethnic group at the max when describing who they were, and didn't "Moors" try to invade Sahel Kingdoms? Is it to correct to assume North Africans of the 15th-17th centuries were Moors? Or were the Moors a very specific group of people?

The Moors were basically the North African berbers who were pushed to the Mountains once Rome took over the territory. The Tuareg militants we see getting busy in Mali, Libya, Niger, etc are their descendants. They basically sat back and waited for Rome's power to decline. Thats when you see two factions of the berbers pop up, Almoravids and Almohads, adopt Islam as a power play since they were in a prime spot sitting between West Africa, East Africa, Europe and Arabia via the Trans-saharan trade.

There is a broader term for "Muslims" that Europeans used:

Saracen was a term widely used among Christian writers in Europe during the Middle Ages. The term's meaning evolved during its history. In the early centuries AD, Greek and Latin writings used this term to refer to the people who lived in desert areas in and near the Roman province of Arabia, and who were specifically distinguished as a people from others known as Arabs.[1][2] In Europe during the Early Medieval era, the term came to be associated with Arab tribes as well.[3] By the 12th century, "Saracen" had become synonymous with "Muslim" in Medieval Latin literature. Such expansion in the meaning of the term had begun centuries earlier among the Byzantine Greeks, as evidenced in documents from the 8th century.[1][4][5] In the Western languages before the 16th century, "Saracen" was commonly used to refer to Muslim Arabs, and the words "Muslim" and "Islam" were generally not used (with a few isolated exceptions).[6]

 

[Bawon Samedi]

I believe the Almoravids were Saharan Berbers more similar to the Sanhaja and Tuaregs and not those from the mountains.

 

[Poitier]

@Diasporan Royalty maybe you should do a thread on the Kutama Berbers/Fatimid dynasty?

 

[Bawon Samedi]

@Diasporan Royalty maybe you should do a thread on the Kutama Berbers/Fatimid dynasty?

Theres already a Moor thread that basically covers the Kutama Berbers/Fatimid dynasty. You should really read through it.

 

[Apollo Creed]

The Moors were basically the North African berbers who were pushed to the Mountains once Rome took over the territory. The Tuareg militants we see getting busy in Mali, Libya, Niger, etc are their descendants. They basically sat back and waited for Rome's power to decline. Thats when you see two factions of the berbers pop up, Almoravids and Almohads, adopt Islam as a power play since they were in a prime spot sitting between West Africa, East Africa, Europe and Arabia via the Trans-saharan trade.

There is a broader term for "Muslims" that Europeans used:

So is it a "dangerous assumption" when people call any Black Person in Europe (i.e maybe portrayed in paintings and such) during those times "Moor"?

Where I`m going with this is would Europeans or whoever have called Mansa Musa a "Moor"? Because today it seems we use the Moor term very solely.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Mansa Musa would have been called a Moor back then. Yes. Again yall should read through my Moor thread. Posted a lot of good info.