[thunder]
[dramatic theme music]
[narrator] War, in the name of God.
The great world religions preach peace and mercy.
History, especially the history of the middle ages,
proves that religion and violence are not contradictions.
A belief in God
often means believing in fighting on behalf of God
and in being rewarded in Paradise.
Islam means peace.
Christ teaches us to love our enemy
but in their names, the world wages war.
[soft dramatic music]
[narrator] 1258,
the unique and triumphal expansion of Islam
has made it the religion of many peoples from Spain to Indonesia.
But there is no Islamic empire,
just as there is no Christian empire.
Everywhere in the Middle Ages
there are wars among princes and tribes.
For half a century, there have been crusades to the Holy Land.
After Islam,
Christianity too spreads to every corner of the world.
The center of Islamic civilization is Baghdad.
The most magnificent city on Earth.
[Middle Eastern music]
[narrator] Not a holy place, like Mecca and Medina,
but a worldly Arabian capital city.
Like this one, a metropolis.
At the end of the eighth century
Baghdad had become the center of the world.
No other city could compare with this splendid capital.
The centers of learning, the academies,
the hospitals, the baths.
Everything was perfect.
[narrator] The real threat to the worldly empire of Allah
does not come from Europe.
For two centuries, the Crusaders only threaten the coastal areas.
The Christians want Jerusalem.
That is what they are fighting for...
with little success.
For the Islamic empires,
the Crusaders are a problem only on their borders.
It is not a clash of civilizations.
The real threat to Islam
comes from the Steppes of Asia.
Like a natural disaster,
the Mongols fall upon their enemies.
Merciless, annihilating, unbeatable.
They bring no superior culture with them,
only brutality.
In 1258, Baghdad falls into their hands.
The Mongols were much worse than their predecessors in Baghdad.
Basically, they possessed no culture
and simply destroyed everything in their path.
At first, there was some religious tolerance
but the second phase of the Mongol rule was dreadful.
[narrator] The Mongols, mounted nomads.
Their wealth, herds of cattle.
Revenge is their prime mover.
Over the ages,
the Mongols have lived by perfecting their herding skills.
Drive the cattle together,
cut the ones you want out of the herd, slaughter them.
This turns them into perfect soldiers.
In 1260 at Ain Jalut,
they are defeated by the Arabs for the first time in history.
They are forced to withdraw.
The myth is destroyed.
The really interesting thing about the Mongols
is that they come storming over the horizon
and conquer the Islamic territories pretty quickly,
meaning that there's no time to evaluate the threat.
These Mongol rulers adapted relatively quickly
to the local population,
with the result that after only 40 years
the first Mongol empire on Islamic territory,
the empire of the Ilkhanate has already become Islamic.
[narrator] Even today, Ain Jalut is the subject of heroic sagas and legends.
The end of Mongol rule.
But the real triumph is still greater.
In only two generations
the mounted warriors who almost conquered Islam
have themselves become Muslims.
The book of Allah is mightier than the Mongols' perfect military machine.
Up to this point
the history of Islam has been a chain of amazing success.
The story begins in the Arabian desert
in Mecca with an orphan boy.
[dramatic music]
[Middle Eastern music]
In the year 569,
in what is now Saudi Arabia,
Muhammad is born.
After losing both parents
he grows up with his uncle
and becomes a merchant and caravan leader.
Then, signs.
A Christian monk foretells that Muhammad will become a prophet.
And more than that, he will be the last: the ultimate prophet.
He marries, a 40 year old woman.
Unusual for the time.
It's a good marriage.
His tribe, the Quraysh, worship holy trees,
stones and many gods.
When Muhammad is already over 40,
the Angel Gabriel appears to him for the first time.
Muhammad, who is illiterate, receives a revelation
from the angel in the form of the Quran.
According to Islamic belief,
the words of the Quran have always existed
before the beginning of time with God.
The Quran is holy and unchangeable.
Through it, Arabic, the language of a few desert tribes
will spread like the wind.
The words of the Quran are so masterful, so forceful
that to this day, they represent Arabic poetry
in its most perfect form.
It has even been said that the position of the Quran in Islam
can really only be compared to the position of Jesus Christ
in Christianity.
Insofar as in Christianity,
God became man, became flesh, incarnation.
Whereas in Islam, God became a book.
So, we can speak of an inlibration.
[narrator] To Muhammad, are revealed the five Pillars of Islam.
There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet.
Every day, five prayers.
Arms for the poor.
Fasting during Ramadan
and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Muhammad is the last prophet.
A perfect man, but still only a man.
There are 28 prophets in the Quran.
Among them, Adam and Abraham.
For Muslims, Jesus is one of the prophets.
Like Maria, he has a rather special place in the Quran.
He's known as the Word and Breath of Allah
and after his death is lifted up to God.
Muslims do not believe in his crucifixion
saying that another was crucified in place of the prophet, Jesus.
The closely related Christian and Jewish religions
were allowed to be practiced in Islamic empires.
Christianity was similarly tolerant only in the later Crusader states.
There was certainly an indirect awareness of certain common elements.
For instance, from the early Middle Ages onwards there are texts
which repeatedly point out that, of course,
Muslims too, go all the way back to a common progenitor, Abraham.
But that was not always seen as a positive argument
or as representing a positive attitude towards Muslims.
Perhaps it wouldn't be going too far to say that the Muslim religion
was too similar to Christianity.
And out of this similarity developed a degree of rivalry.
If you want a comparison, consider that within Christianity
the non-conformists, the heretics
are often viewed as worse enemies
than the proponents of a totally different religious community.
[narrator] After an initial period of rejection
Islam spreads throughout Arabia with increasing rapidity.
In the year 632,
Muhammad dies. He has no son.
A quarrel breaks out about his successor, the Caliph.
Shortly afterwards, Muslims split up into Sunnis,
who believe that any devout Muslim can become their religious leader,
and Shiites, who only recognize the leadership
of direct descendants of Muhammad's family.
The new faith, and with it, Arabic, the language of the Quran
spreads over the next 300 years
with immense speed to the distant borders of the known world.
Where, for the most part, it still dominates today.
[soft dramatic music]
Islam is not a pacifist religion.
Muhammad was a prophet, a successful merchant and a military leader.
Muslims may answer violence with violence.
Their young unspent religion makes them into good warriors.
But Islam is not a religion of holy war.
Right from the start, even in battles,
there are moderating rules of conduct.
For example, concerning the treatment of women and children.
The term "holy war" is adopted by Muslims in the Middle Ages...
from Christians.
"Jihad" means more than fighting the infidels.
Jihad is a noun from the verb Jahada,
which means simply "to make an effort."
This is firstly an inner effort,
an injunction to come to terms with oneself
together with a platonic world view
that one must strive for self-improvement
for the sake of one's religion.
It's inner but also outer directed
and therefore means "to fight,""
the fight being directed purely outwards.
Of course, that's very early.
Both meanings become current very early on
though the Shiites, who are very important here,
particularly emphasize the inner struggle,
describing as the first, the highest Jihad.
In other words, a Muslim must improve himself.
[narrator] In the early Middle Ages
the different Arab tribes and clans are bitter enemies.
They buy slaves, mostly children of the non-Muslim Turkic peoples
and train them as elite Islamic warriors.
This military enslavement becomes typical for Islam.
These slave soldiers reach the highest ranks
and finally many of them actually come to rule over the dynasties.
It is often stated that the reason for this law is the Quran,
which forbids Muslims from fighting against Muslims.
But this commandment is broken from the very beginning.
The military slaves are introduced for the first time
in the Abbasid Empire.
Then later in the Mamluk Dynasty,
which was in fact maintained by these military slaves
as was the Sultanate of Delhi.
This system of slavery is perhaps a reaction
to the fact that in the early days of Islam
when rulers depended on mounted nomads
who were organized tribally
they, the rulers, had problems with conflicting tribal loyalties.
Whereas, if they depended on slaves
whom they had raised themselves and given them a career,
then they could count on absolute loyalty.
[narrator] The most famous ruler of a military slave dynasty
is the legendary Saladin.
Saladin is a Kurd, and rules in Egypt from 1171.
His Turkish Mamluk guards.
Mamluk means "slave"
will later defeat the Mongols at Ain Jalut.
[dramatic Middle Eastern music]
The system of military slaves continues even after the Middle Ages.
The Turkish Janissary guards
were recruited from 20,000 Russian and African children
purchased every year.
Christians had to surrender every fifth child
to the Ottoman Empire.
[soft dramatic music]
800 AD.
The victorious military expansion of Islam
brings with it not only war and the new faith
but also superior scientific knowledge
and an advanced culture.
The Arabs have become a seafaring nation.
They make new discoveries in the fields of mathematics,
astronomy, cartography and navigation,
optics, chemistry, physics, and medicine.
Muslim Arabs now produce the best scientists
of the Middle Ages.
The instruction in the Quran to pray in the direction of Mecca
at certain hours demands a precise knowledge of time
and orientation.
Sailors navigating towards a fixed destination
are more interested in practical theories
than in theological correctness.
The Arabs learn from every culture they encounter.
Their scholars discover the works of the Greek philosophers.
The result is a unique flowering of knowledge,
culture, and intellectual freedom.
Arabic poetry, viewed with mistrust by the Quran,
is a further driving force in this development.
From this time, we have inherited such words as cipher,
zero, algorithm, zenith...
and our numbers.
Surprisingly, the Arabic word for this process
is linked to the concept of Jihad.
Ijtihad simply means to cultivate.
To make fruitful everything one touches.
In religion, in all disciplines,
when one thinks of the great theologies
that means one must seek to innovate, not just to receive knowledge.
This is shown in science and philosophy.
They didn't merely take from the philosophy
of the ancient Greeks
Plato and, above all, Aristotle,
they contributed to the sum of knowledge.
They innovated and communicated.
[narrator] Avicenna, along with Averroes,
the most important philosopher scientist
writes medical textbooks which continue to be studied in Europe
well into the seventeenth century
because there is nothing comparable in existence.
The decline of this cultural and scientific flowering
goes hand in hand with the growing power of Orthodox theology.
Aristotle's logic, one of the keys to scientific knowledge,
is forbidden by the clergy.
Philosophers become objects of contempt.
The designs of Arab ships are copied
by the Spaniards and Portuguese.
Islamic knowledge is adopted.
Around 1450, Europeans venture out into the Atlantic
using Arab technology.
[Middle Eastern music]
Islamic and Arabic culture,
a mighty structure on the foundations of our holy scripture, the Quran,
creates masterpieces of architecture, technology and art
because it understands how to turn Mediterranean culture
to its own advantage.
The most important centers of ancient science
were not in Greece itself at all.
They were in Alexandria, that is, in Egypt
and partly in Syria.
These were places where one could draw on traditions
that were still cultivated in the land that created them.
In Europe, it was a little different.
Germany or France were certainly not centers of learning in antiquity.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] Islam has overcome the barriers of clan and race.
The Quran is a holy book from West Africa to Indonesia.
A mighty culture.
Its decline begins with the loss of intellectual freedom
in the Middle Ages
with theological fossilization.
[music continues]
[narrator] Europe has much to thank Islam for.
Spain flourished under the Umayyad Dynasty
from 755 to 1031.
And, until the fall of the last Islamic enclave, Granada, in 1492.
Even so, shortly after the occupation
the Reconquista begins.
The attempt at reconquest by Christian forces.
The struggle will last for centuries.
Islam in Europe.
For centuries, Muslim culture
is a dynamic presence in Portugal and Spain.
There are many unknown influences and features held in common.
The Arabs bring Chess to Europe,
knowledge about gardens and agriculture.
Their architecture contributes to the Gothic style
and Sufi mystics will later even influence the rules of the Jesuits.
During the Umayyad period under Islam
Jews, Christians and Muslims live together in peace.
[dramatic Middle Eastern music]
Christians are permitted to practice their faith.
Islam respects both the Christian and Jewish religions.
And, in the far east extends the same tolerance to Buddhism and Hinduism.
Arts and crafts profit from Arabian knowledge.
Damascus steel is just one example
of Arabian skill in the working of metals.
One of the most remarkable cultural sharings is knighthood.
The ideal of chivalry held by Muslims and Christians
of the early Middle Ages is very similar.
Even the notion of romantic devotion
to a distant unreachable lady
is probably an invention of early Arabic poetry.
The culture of the Troubadour, from the poetry to the music,
has its origins in Baghdad, and migrates to France.
There was a common basis.
A good example is the Syrian, Usama Ibn Munqidh,
who was himself a knight
and used this fact as a basis of understanding
in his meetings with the Franks.
He had a lot of respect for the Franks
because they were brave
and because they also represented this ideal of manhood.
They met and in this context felt very close to each other.
He tells of many knights to whom he felt really close, like brothers.
He calls them, "my brothers, my friends."
[narrator] Nevertheless, for centuries, the struggle is for domination.
For the final victory over the enemy.
Muslim culture is fought and defeated.
Only then is it given due appreciation.
After Baghdad, Cordoba was certainly one of the most splendid cities of the time.
For example, in the tenth century,
a visitor from the Christian north, a monk from Lorraine
traveled to Cordoba.
He was probably an envoy of King Otto I
and he's impressed by the city's splendor, its size
and also, it must be said, by the power of the Caliph in Cordoba.
However, the processes of cultural exchange
are not so marked in the tenth century during the time of the Caliphs.
It's not until after the Spanish Reconquista,
the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula,
which is mostly concluded by the middle of the 13th century
that we find a major process of cultural and literary exchange in Toledo
or in Zaragoza.
But in other cities too, works of antiquity
which had previously been translated in Syria
are now translated back into Latin
with the help of Jewish translators.
And so, the whole of Aristotle finds its way into the universities,
which, at the start of the 13th century are just beginning to flourish
in the Latin West.
[narrator] In Spain...
the Muslim inheritance intermingles
with the Christian culture.
Europe can thank Islam
for the return to its ancient roots.
[mystical music]
But there is another inheritance, a terrible one.
Terrorism is invented in the 12th century
by a fanatical Islamic splinter group
called "The Assassins."
Their leader is the legendary Old Man of the Mountains,
Hassan-i Sabbah.
The headquarters of the Assassins
lies in the inaccessible Iranian mountains.
Ibn Sabbah is the commander of this radical Shiite group.
The Assassins have sworn an oath of loyalty
unto death to their Iman,
and are held responsible for several hundred murderous attacks.
Among them, murders paid for by Christian Crusaders.
[dramatic music]
[birds tweeting]
One shouldn't forget that the sect of the Assassins
claims legitimacy on the eldest son of the Caliph
from the end of the 12th century.
Nizar, the Nizarids.
They fought in support of this Caliph
who claimed total power, including religious power.
And before him, there were several Fatimid Caliphs
who declared themselves to be God heads incarnate.
They were literally worshipped.
[narrator] A personality cult for suicide killers
with its headquarters in the fortress of Alamut.
Marco Polo relates how the Assassins
used a trick to recruit young men for their sect.
The youths were given wine to drink
which had been spiked with hashish.
Soon they were in a state of intoxicated rapture.
Then they were taken to the Assassins' garden
at the fortress of Alamut
where they were briefly allowed to enjoy all the temptations
of the Muslim Paradise.
More was promised them, as soon as they had carried out a murder for the sect.
Terrorism can be defined as intimidating one's opponent
until he does or doesn't do certain things.
Accounts we have about Rashid ad-Din Sinan, for example,
how he dealt with Saladin, a contemporary
who was very powerful
indicate that Rashid ad-Din Sinan
used a series of carefully calculated actions of this kind
to dissuade Saladin from conquering the Ishmaelite territories.
[dramatic Middle Eastern music]
[narrator] It is told that Saladin awoke one morning
to find a dagger and a message beside his bed.
A warning not to go to war against the Nizarids.
The terror raged for 200 years.
It was finally the Mongols in 1256
who destroyed the fortress of Alamut
and killed all the Assassins.
War and terror in the name of Allah
are not the inventions of our present age.
Then, as now, terror in the name of Allah
is an abuse of Islam.
[ending theme music]