A House Divided Cannot Stand: The Struggle Between Islam and Christianity

Islam has been on the march against Christianity since the death of Mohamed in 632 AD.  Two of the main goals of Mohammed's followers were to convert all infidels (non-Muslims), and conquer the world, not only to gain land but to win everybody else to Islam.  The Middle East and North Africa were the first areas to fall to the forces of Islam.  Once North Africa was taken, the Muslims set their sights on Europe.  They started with the conquest of Spain in 711 AD when the governor of Tangiers, Tariq ibn Ziyad landed in Gibraltar with 10,000 troops.  Within months the Muslims had taken most of the Iberian Peninsula.  It was not until the 11th century that the Spaniards started to drive the Muslims back, starting in Northern Spain and pushing south.  The final battle was won in 1492 when the Muslims were completely driven out of Spain by the forces of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

In 740 AD Sicily fell to the forces of Islam after a long struggle with the Byzantine Empire.  The Normans, led by a brilliant military commander, Roger de Houteville, drove out the Muslims from Sicily for good in 1071. De Houteville became Roger I, the first king of Sicily. If you go to the seacoast resort of Cefalù you will find a Cathedral there built by Roger II, the son of Roger I.

The Muslims became dominant, not only in the Middle East, but in Southern Europe. The Ottoman Turks created one of the greatest empires since Rome.  By the 15th century the Ottomans had conquered the eastern Roman Empire in 1453, known then, as the Byzantine Empire (modern day Turkey), with its capital in Constantinople.   Constantinople was then considered the center of Christianity.  The Byzantines made many pleas to fellow Christian nations around them but no one responded to help them. The Republic of Venice promised ships but none ever appeared. One exception was a private army of 7,000 troops led by the brilliant commander, Giovanni Giustiniani who was from Genoa. Giustiniani and his men fought bravely but were overwhelmed by the superior Turkish forces.   Click here for a map of Ottoman Empire at this time.  The Ottoman Empire reached from the Middle East, North Africa, the former Yugoslavia, Greece and the Balkan states.  A fine book on the history of the Byzantine Empire is Lost to the West by Lars Brownworth.

The Ottomans never stopped trying to conquer Europe by military force.  After the defeat of the Byzantine Empire, they set their eyes on the rest of Europe.  Soon, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and the Balkan countries fell to the Ottoman onslaught.  The Ottomans had the best trained, the most efficient, army in the world.  Brutality was their calling card.  The Ottoman Army had two sets of special forces which specialized in brutal tactics and sow fear in their enemies, the Tartars and the Janissaries. They spread fear everywhere they went. These troops fought to the death because they knew that if they failed they would suffer a brutal death themselves at the hands of their leaders.  On approaching a location, they would ask the people to surrender.  If they failed to surrender they would kill every man, woman, child and animal and then burn any city or village to the ground.  After slaughtering the locals, they would cut off the heads of the men and stick them up on poles along the road to sow fear among the rest of the territory who failed to surrender.  This is described in great detail in a book about the Ottoman siege of Vienna of 1683, titled, Enemy at the Gates by Andrew Wheatcroft, Most of what I describe here related to the Ottoman military is from this book.

Enemy at the Gates, chronicles the final siege of Vienna in 1683.  The Ottomans first attempted to conquer Vienna in 1521.  They were driven back and Europe was spared.  Between 1521 and 1683, the Ottomans constantly attacked Europe.  They had many successes and many defeats.  The Ottomans reached as far north as Poland and Russia before being driven back.  By 1683, the Ottomans had Vienna in their eye again.  They figured that if Vienna fell then the rest of Europe would be theirs.  They put all their resources to accomplishing this goal.  At the time Vienna was part of the Habsburg Empire, later called Austria-Hungary Empire. World War I started here, in the Austria-Hungary Empire.

The Ottomans were feared all over Europe.  Their wars were a combination of religious fervor and desire to dominate the world for Islam.  The Christians also saw this as a religious war on them.  Although most Europeans were Christian, they rarely ever cooperated or supported other European Christians under attack by the Muslim Ottomans.  When they did cooperate, as when they created a coalition with the Holy League, Venice, Sicily, Sardinia, Spain and the Papal States for the purpose of stopping the Turks from attacking them.  On October 7, 1571 this coalition defeated an Ottoman fleet at Lepanto, in southern Greece.


The fact that the Christians failed to help each other had disastrous consequences.  The list is endless:  Byzantine Empire defeated in 1453; Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Armenia, to name a few all fell to the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks while their fellow Christians sat on their hands.  The Turks were so confident of success that in 1683 they attempted to conquer Vienna for the second time.  The Habsburg Empire was on their own. After months of a fierce siege, the Ottomans were close to victory when their neighbors, led by the king of Poland, John Sobieski  organized a relief army.  After gathering his forces Sobieski arrived just in time to save the exhausted and nearly beaten Viennese.  Without this help, most of Europe would have been Muslim then, and perhaps today.

The Ottoman army, led by a brilliant military commander, Kara Mustafa, performed incredibly well and the Habsburg troops fought brilliantly with heavy losses, however, they also inflicted very heavy casualties on the Turks.  After the Habsburgs were relieved by the coalition led by the King of Poland the Ottomans were finally defeated.  When the defeated Ottomans returned home, their commander was called in and told he had been condemned to death.  Wheatcroft, describes what happened:  "Kara Mustafa met his death with stoic Ottoman calm, as befitting a Koprulu.  First he removed his rich-trimmed robe, then his turban, then, with practiced ease, his executions flipped the soft cord over his head and tightened it around his neck, pulling steadily with all their strength." After his death they cut off his head. They continued to brutalize his body in detail that I'd rather leave off, because of its gruesomeness.  A man who had dedicated his life and talent to his country and was defeated through no fault of his own was rewarded by being executed like a common criminal.