Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 April 13

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April 13

A couple of questions about the Crusades

Hello. I'm working on a small poster project about the Crusades and we want it to be accurate historically. Could you answer the following questions:

1) How organized were the Crusader knights of Europe? I've been under the impression that each feudal lord gathered some of his retainers as well as peasant men-at-arms and then proceeded to fight according to their own plans. Or were the Crusaders commanded as a single large army with all strategic orders coming from above?

2) Were the Crusaders regulated in any way? Could they just loot everything they wanted and add any territory they could occupy to their fiefs as they pleased, or did they need permissions from their superiors to do so?

3) What about clergy in the Crusades? Am I correct to assume that the crusaders were accompanied by travelling priests to provide spiritual relief to the soldiers?

4) What were the common languages used in the negotiations and other communication between the Crusaders and the Muslims? I'd imagine Latin would be a fairly plausible choice, but this is just a guess.

Thank you. 128.214.137.203 (talk) 12:04, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I will attempt to answer some of the above, but you might like to look at our article on the Crusades too.

• 1) They were not really unified. They all had more or less the same idea - pillaging and plundering - and in some cases they even fought a few skirmishes with each other. The muslims were also fighting each other, and in some cases different groups were switching sides. Even Byzantium, which had several problems with the crusaders at one point allied themselves with Saladdin.It was more complicated than we tend to think.
• They were supposed to be, but see above. Also, their superiors generally went with them (e.g. Richard the Lionheart).
• Sometimes they did, and were often present on the battlefield.
• This would depend on who you mean. Peasant soldiers would not have spoken Latin. The language used by the leaders would have been whatever common language they could find, and may in extreme cases have ended up with multiple interpreters (e.g. English>Latin, Latin>French, French>German, German>Hungarian, Hungarian>Turkish, Turkish>Arabic = six interpreters).

Sorry for the short answers, but our article has more information. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:59, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

• Sorry, but I wouldn't count on those answers. The problem is that there were several crusades over a period of centuries, and a lot of variation between them. The infamous Children's Crusade was utter chaos. The infamous Fourth Crusade never even tried to reach the Holy Land -- it turned aside to attack and loot Constantinople, and never got any farther. However, there were also rigorously organized crusading armies and organizations of crusading knights such as the Knights Templar. Looie496 (talk) 17:07, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I was generalizing - hence the link to our article for more information, Looie. I did not mention the Children's Crusade as it was only a 'crusade' by name, and there is even some doubt as to whether it actually happened or not. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 09:45, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Expanding on Looie's comments, the First Crusade was preached in 1095. There are plenty of arguments about what you could reasonably call the end of the last "Crusade", but an extremely conservative answer, and one implied in the lead of our article on Crusades would be 1291 and the Siege of Acre (1291) ,

It's quite reasonable to argue that the term applies well to all manner of various conflicts that took place over the succeeding several hundred years, certainly to the 1450s and perhaps even down to c.1600. You can even make an argument for 1798 (when the Knights of St John ceased ruling Malta), but that's really pushing it IMHO. But let's take the really conservative answer, which gives a time span of just under 200 years. That's like a war going on today having started in the early 1800s, albeit that society has clearly changed much more in that time than it did in the late 11th-13th centuries.

So, over such a period, I think you'll gather that the answers to your questions will vary wildly. As well as the surprising and perhaps outrageous example of the Fourth Crusade, you'll find Crusades against "heretics" (eg the Albigensian Crusade) pagans (see the Northern Crusades) and other examples (apart from the Fourth Crusade) of minor Crusades against mainstream Catholics.

It would therefore help us answer your interesting questions therefore if you picked a Crusade you're interested in. --Dweller (talk) 20:50, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Latin may well be what the Crusaders tried to use, but it has never been much used in the Levant: even during the Roman Empire, the administrative language of that region was Greek, not Latin. --ColinFine (talk) 00:42, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Whenever people talk about the crusades they almost always mean the First and the Third, so to make things easier we can limit ourselves to those two. On the First Crusade, the knights were fairly well organized by nationality/language - there were northern French, southern French, Normans (from Normandy and from Italy), Flemish, and various other groups (although of course there were no "nations" in the modern sense, at the time). There were several expeditions though: the first mass of people who left Europe was the Peasants' Crusade (they were mostly not peasants at all, but they were certainly less organized). But basically you are right, a feudal lord who decided to go on crusade, and his vassals tended to go with him. For example, Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse was one of the major leaders of the First Crusade, and any of the other major and minor nobles who lived in his territory followed him, if they decided to go too. They did try to organize under a single leader, but that never really worked out. There were separate armies who all met in Constantinople, but then they marched separately again until they got to Antioch. At one point supposedly Stephen, Count of Blois was elected leader, but he went home at Antioch. There were different factions led by Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond of Taranto, Godfrey of Bouillon, etc, and they didn't always get along. After they got to Jerusalem, the big rivarly was between Raymond and Godfrey, and Godfrey proved to be the better leader - even though in Europe, he would have been a relatively minor lord compared to Raymond. Godfrey ended up being elected ruler of Jerusalem.

The Third Crusade was different, because the idea of crusading and the political structure of Europe had changed since the time of the First Crusade. There were no kings on the First Crusade, but kings and emperors led the Second and the Third (on the Third, Richard I of England, Philip II of France, and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, who died along the way). They were definitely more organized, and organized along "national" lines. And it remained that way in the Levant - Richard led his troops, Philip led his, and they didn't really work together as much as they could have.

And as mentioned, military orders were established during the crusades. The Templars, among others, were separate organizations which provided their own knights. They didn't always get along with the other crusaders, and they definitely didn't always get along with the other military orders (the Templars and the Hospitallers, especially).

Clergy always accompanied the crusaders. In the First Crusade there were random travelling priests, like Peter the Hermit, who was the leader of the Peasants' Crusade. But there was always a papal legate, who attempted to make sure they did what the Pope wanted them to do, although that rarely worked very well. Most of the historical accounts of the First Crusade were written by clergy - one of them, Fulcher of Chartres, actually participated in the whole crusade. The Third Crusade also had plenty of clergy and papal legates.

The languages used by crusaders is an extremely fascinating topic (well, I think so anyway). They could all communicate with each other pretty well in French, and since the majority of them were from the territory of modern France, they tended to refer to themselves as "Franks" when they talked about themselves as a group. The differences between the dialects of French, and probably between the French and Italian dialects, were probably not too strong at the time that they couldn't understand each other. There were lots of other languages too - German, English, Gaelic, there were even Scandinavian, Polish, and Russian crusaders. Anyone who had been educated (especially the clergy) could speak Latin. When they communicated with the Byzantine officials, they used Latin and French (which we can tell from the way that Byzantine writers recorded the names of crusaders). When they communicated with Muslims, they needed interpreters who spoke Arabic and Turkish, and we can also see, from the way that Arabic writers recorded European words and names, that the crusaders were speaking to them in French or in Latin. By the time of the Third Crusade, a lot of the crusaders who had been born and raised in the crusader states could speak Arabic - and they were sometimes considered suspicious by Europeans, traitors even (an interesting example of an Arabic-speaking crusader lord is Reginald of Sidon). Not everyone who ended up living under crusader rule was an Arab or a Turk, or even a Muslim. At the time (and to a lesser extent, now too), there were still lots of Christians living there, but not the same kind of Christians as the Catholic crusaders. Some of them still spoke Greek, and some Arabic (and some spoke Armenian).

I hope that is helpful, and not too longwinded... Adam Bishop (talk) 20:50, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Tu'i Malila

It is said that James Cook gave this tortoise to the Tongan royal family in 1777' but Tonga had no united monarchy only multiple ruling chiefly families. The question is which family was the tortoise given to: Tuʻi Tonga, Tuʻi Haʻatakalaua, Tu'i Kanokupolu or another line. And how then did it get inherited by the Queen Salote Tupou IV? Also does any the account of the voyage of James Cook mention meeting Tongan chiefs or exchanging gifts on July, 1777?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 13:52, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

There's a lot of stuff on the internet, but the most authoritative account I could find is New York Zoological Society / Bulletin - New York Zoological Society (January/February, 1935) - Slevin, Joseph R. An account of the reptiles inhabiting the Galápagos Islands. (pp. 2-24). It reports an account written in 1921: "One story has it that Captain Cook presented it to the ruler of Tonga; another 'that King George I obtained it from a vessel which called in Haapai, probably in the first half of the last century (ie the 19th century). As Cook does not mention the presentation of a tortoise, I think the latter story is the more likely."

The account goes on to quote Carruthers, Joseph (Sir), Captain James Cook, R.N.; 150 Years After. New York, 1930: "Although there is no mention of the matter in Cook's journals, there is, from Tongan sources, handed down from generation to generation, the tradition that Captain Cook left two tortoises at Haapai, one of the islands in the Tongan group, during one of his two visits there between 1771 and 1777. One of these still survives and is an honored guest in the grounds of the Royal Palace at Nukualofa, in the island of Tongatabu. There is no doubt about the tradition, which was committed to writing as soon as the natives were able to do so. I received a copy of this from the Rev. R. Page, chairman of the Tonuan Wesleyan Mission, in 1927, when I first visited the Tongan islands. I then also met the Prince Consort, Tungi, the grandson of the Chief to whom Cook gave the two tortoises...". Alansplodge (talk) 17:02, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Hebrew slang Mizrahi Jew

What are the slang terms against Mizrahi Jews in Israel?--Donmust90 (talk) 18:42, 13 April 2013 (UTC)Donmust90

See Ars (slang). Compare the term to Arse or Ass. 65.24.105.132 (talk) 20:06, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

There is only a remote connection between the Hebrew slang term Ars (slang) and Arse or Ass: mainly as words sound and are spelled similarly and are perjorative terms applied to almost exclusively to men. An ars is Mizrachi the same way that a tsfonbon (look it up) is Ashkenazi - both words hold socioeconomic association and perpetuate derogatory stereotypes (i.e. that the latter tend to be well-off white people and the former, lower-class colored people). They also depend on who's saying it: like the difference between whites and African Americans using the N-word in English. Understanding, let alone using, Hebrew slang without a beyond-basic knowledge of Israeli society and the language matrix in which the slang is embedded, is asking for (and probably causing) trouble. -- Deborahjay (talk) 20:28, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

As the Ars article makes clear, this is an archaism, reflecting a time in Israeli history. It dates from a time of serious tension between the largely Ashkenazi established Israeli society and the perceived threat to their society from the large wave of immigrants from the Levant.

Since then, the term has moved on. Using Deborahjay's example, it'd like if the N-word was used today to describe a people regardless of ethnicity who dressed in a certain way and appeared to come from a low socioeconomic class. Yes, the ethnic origins remain in the history of the word, but usage has moved on.

In my experience, Israeli society today really doesn't care that much about this fairly meaningless basket pigeonhole for people. Unlike our Ref Desks, which seem to have frequent questions about them. --Dweller (talk) 20:54, 13 April 2013 (UTC)