Jihad against Byzantine Christians

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Permalink Reply by Charles Martel on October 1, 2009 at 18:55

The Arabs twice besieged Constantinople in 674 and 717, but the city was relived of the Arab Muslim siege by the skillful use of a new weapon called Greek Fire which the Byzantines used in both naval and land warfare. The Arabs lacked a navy and these two factors – their naval strength and the new weapon Greek Fire gave the Byzantines a series of victories over the infidel Saracens for the next four centuries from 640 till 1071.

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After their initial successful attacks in the 7th century against Bethlehem, Nazareth, Damascus up to the Byzantine mercantile capital in the Levant – the metropolis of Caesarea, the Muslim Arabs could advance no further on land against Byzantium as the Byzantines held off the Muslims at the Cilician gates in South Eastern Turkey. So the Muslims took the sea route using which they overwhelmed the island of Rhodes and demolished the colossus of Rhodes (the huge statue that the Greeks had erected there in ancient times. In doing this the Jihadis of the 7th century were laying down a precedent for their modern-day counterparts, the Taliban, who in a similar vandalizing frenzy destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas).

The Muslim Arabs twice besieged Constantinople in 674 and 717, but the city was relived of the Arab siege by the skillful use of a new weapon called Greek Fire which the Byzantines used in both naval and land warfare. The Arabs lacked a strong navy and these two factors – their naval strength and the new weapon Greek Fire gave the Byzantines a series of victories over the infidel Saracens for the next four centuries from 640 till 1071.

Turks the new threat to Christendom

But after holding off the Muslim Arab hordes at the Cilician Gates for four hundred years, the Empire received an unexpected shock when the Seljuk Turks who were then recent converts to Islam, under their chieftain Alp Arslan thrust into Byzantine through its backdoor in Armenia when they defeated the Byzantines at the battle of Manzikert.

These newly converted Turkish Muslims could have overwhelmed Constantinople in 1071 itself, had it not been for the Crusaders who marched through Constantinople into the Middle East at the end of the eleventh century to temporarily roll back the Turkish threat and liberate the Holy Land from the Saracens (infidel Muslims). But the battle of Manzikert held a new fearsome reality. After four centuries of Muslim-Christian warfare, the Arabs had been stemmed, but in the Turks, Christendom faced a new existential threat. A threat that was to work its way through the next nine centuries from 1071 up to 1918 and bedevil Eastern Europe.

We shall treat the Crusades – the valiant counter-attack by the Christians of Europe against the Muslims in a separate chapter. Suffice it to note here that the Crusades that started in 1096 and went on till 1291, gave a last breath of life to the failing Byzantine Empire. Thus while the Zoroastrian Sassanian empire fell within a mere seventeen years from 634 to 651, the Christian Byzantine Empire that had been attacked at the same time, fought back for the next eight centuries till this last Christian Empire in Asia finally succumbed to the Muslims when the Uthman (Ottoman) Turks stormed its capital Constantinople in 1453.

Lessons from the two Arab Sieges of Constantinople (674-678 and 717-718 C.E.)


After their initial victories at the Battle of the Yarmuk river, the Arabs diverted their focus on attacking Sassanid Persia for a brief period from 634 to 651. When the Arabs subjugated Persia

To circumvent this stalemate, the Arabs built a makeshift fleet and attacked Constantinople, the Byzantine capital from the sea and besieged it. The Arabs laid the first siege in 674. This siege lasted for four years till 678. But this siege was unsuccessful and the Arabs had to withdraw with many fatalities. They laid a second siege in 717 which lasted for one year till 718 but this time too they were unsuccessful.




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After the Arabs had failed to break the Cilician Gates, or to take Constantinople by storm, the baton of the Jihadi aggression passed to the Seljuk Turks, who steadily and successfully began to corrode at the north eastern fringes of the Byzantine Empire at Armenia. By the beginning of the 10th century the Seljuk Turks had begun harassing the Christian population of Armenia with their Ghazawat and Razzias (preparatory Muslim raids against non-Muslims to provoke a backlash leading to a pretext to a full-fledged Muslim invasion).

The tyranny of the Turks on the Armenians took many bloody turns in the next millennium, and whenever possible, the Turks indulged in the wholesale slaughter of the Armenian Christian male population while the womenfolk were made captives and marched off to be held as concubines in the Turkish seraglios and harems.

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During the second Muslim Arab siege of Constantinople, too the Arabs could not make any headway. And the Byzantines again defeated the besieging Arabs with the use of a superior weapon named Greek Fire. This was a highly combustible liquid that caused painful burning to those that it struck. This was comparable to modern-day napalm. The Byzantines used this weapon in large quantity on the besieging Arabs in both the sieges of 674-678 and 717-718. The Arabs tried hard to learn the secret of making of the Greek Fire, but they did not succeed and had to succumb in large numbers to this new weapon used skillfully by the Byzantines.

The effect of the Greek Fire can be gauged by the fact that out of the more than three hundred thousand Arabs who attacked Constantinople, only about twenty thousand returned. All the others had been consigned to hell by Greek Fire.

This is a lesson for the Americans today, who have superior fire power over the Jihadis. It is futile to engage the ferocious and madly motivated Jihadis in hand-to-hand combat. We need to wipe out the Jihadis in millions, using neutron and nuclear weapons. Only this can secure the civilized world a victory by decimating the beastly Jihadis, in the same way as the Byzantines decimated the attacking Arab Muslims in their thousands and saved not just Constantinople, but Europe itself from the first attack of Islam in the seventh and eight centuries.





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At the battle of Manzikert, the Muslim Seljuk Turks attacked the Byzantines at noon and then feigned a retreat by retreating to higher ground to catch the Byzantine army in the valley from where the Turkish Archers picked off the Byzantine troops at will. But the Byzantines kept up the attack, and by sunset the Battle was still undecided. Romanus, the Byzantine emperor, decided to retire to his camps, after the Turks sounded the bugle, heralding the end of the day’s hostilities, as was the Turkish custom to do so to announce the beginning and end of a day’s battle. But the Turks had decided on subterfuge to ensnare the Byzantines who trusted the age old Turkish custom. Once the Byzantine army began disengaging and withdrawing to its camp, the Turks attacked from the rear after an encircling cavalry advance. The Byzantine army was caught between two pincers of attack and by midnight, their fate was sealed with the capture of the Byzantine emperor Romanus by Alp Arslan the chieftain of the Seljuk Turks.

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The baton of Jihad passes to the Seljuk Turks

The Arab Jihad had earlier lost its steam when it met another serious defeat a thousand miles away at Poiters in 732 at the hands of the Franks. Arab attacks on Europe ended by the middle of the eight century, when the internecine quarrels between different parts of the Caliphate broke out, some of which were along Shia-Sunni lines. The next impetus for the Jihad was in the eleventh century, when the baton of Jihad passed to the Seljuk Turks.

The misfortune of the victims of Islam, victimizing other non-Muslims after their conversion

The Seljuk Turks who were following a religion based on nature worship, with Zoroastrian overtones, had been subjected to Islamization by the Islamized Persians between 651 and 751. The attacks on them were led by many Persian- Zoroastrian converts to Islam. The notable among these attackers was one who had assumed the name Abu Muslim. He was born to Zoroastrian parents, but had discarded his ancestral faith and embraced Islam. His conversion apparently was not whole-hearted and he nursed a desire for revenge against the Muslim occupiers of Persia.

He plotted his way to overthrow the Muslim rulers by pretending to embrace Islam, attacking the non-Muslim Turks and then when he had become powerful enough he plotted to overthrow the Abbasid Caliphate at Baghdad. He succeeded in his first objective of defeating the pagan Turks and converting them forcibly to Islam, but he was betrayed by his confidants and his hidden motives were found out by the Caliph, who tricked him into captivity and tortured him to death.

The point here is that the converted Zoroastrians, forced Islam on the pagan Turks, who in turn attacked Byzantine after embracing Islam. So the bloodied mentality of Islam kept on the aggressive march of Islam although its leaders changed from the Arabs, who originally had been converted by force, to the Zoroastrian Persians, to the pagan Turks.

Permalink Reply by Charles Martel on October 1, 2009 at 18:57

The Battle of Manzikert between the Byzantines and the Seljuk Turks led to the Islamization of South Armenia and its incorporation into Turkey

These new converts to Islam, merged their natural tribal ferocity, with the fanaticism of Islam. This was a potent and fearsome combination. After the Arabs had failed to break the Cilician Gates, or to take Constantinople by storm, the baton of the Jihadi aggression passed to the Seljuk Turks, who steadily and successfully began to corrode at the north eastern fringes of the Byzantine Empire in Armenia.

The Seljuk Turks began harassing the Christian population of Armenia. The tyranny of the Turks on the Armenians took many bloody turns in the next millennium, and whenever possible, the Turks indulged in the wholesale slaughter of the Armenian Christian male population while the womenfolk were made captives and marched off to be held as concubines in the Turkish seraglios and harems.

This area of the Caucasus (or Kavkaz) has been the frontier of a clash of civilizations since those days till today. Beslan in Russian Ossetia where the school kids were massacred is not far from Manzikert, which was the first major site of the Muslim-Christian clash in 1071.




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After their victory at Manzikert, the Seljuk Turks faced no more resistance from the Byzantines to infiltration into the hitherto Christian Anatolia, and in a few decades they could wrest control of Anatolia from the Byzantines, and approach Constantinople from the Asian side of the Bosporus. They were now also in charge of the routes of the Christian pilgrims through Anatolia to the Holy Land whose pilgrimages they began harassing. As this harassment increased the stories of their depredations began reaching European courts along with the continuous pleas of the Byzantine emperors which became more shrill after Manzikert for succor from Western Europe to battle the Muslim infidels, the seeds for a re-conquest of the Holy Land and the relief of the beleaguered Byzantine empire were sown. The Crusades that began in 1096 (and continued till 1291) were indirectly a fallout of the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.

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At the battle of Manzikert, the Byzantine emperor who presided over the fortunes (rather misfortunes) of the Empire was Romanus IV Diogenes. He ascended the throne in 1068. As usual, there were many power cliques at the Byzantine court. This was accentuated by the fact that over the four hundred years from 640 to 1068, the Byzantines had reinforced their army by inducting mercenaries from the Franks, the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Bulgars, Avars and other Christianized tribal communities in addition to the Greeks and Latins who were always a strong lobby at Constantinople.

These mercenaries served to stave off Arab attacks, but in times of relative peace they also acted as powerful lobbies in the internal politics of Byzantine. To counter balance them, some Byzantine emperors had included contingents from the Seljuk Turks, (who had then recently embraced Islam) to serve as auxiliaries to the Byzantine army. This decision was to prove disastrous at Manzikert.

The betrayal of the Turkish contingents led to the defeat at Manzikert

Romulus split his army into two parts to catch the Seljuks in a pincer move. He led one pincer and the other was led by Joseph Tarchaniotes who was a person of Turkish extraction, and had secretly converted to Islam, the faith embraced by most of his people - the Seljuk Turks. Tarchaniotes commanded the largest contingent of mercenaries, the Turkish Cumans.

While Romanus proceed to subdue one border town after another, that had been occupied by the Seljuk Turks, culminating with the fortress of Manzikert. The Seljuk Turkish chieftain Alp Arslan camped near Manzikert. Romanus awaited his Turkish General to arrive from behind the Turkish camp to overwhelm Alp Arslan. But the traitor Turkish general of the Byzantine army Joseph Tarchaniotes secretly opened parleys with the enemy and defected to the Turkish adversary along with his contingent, and stabbed Romanus in the back.

The battle of Manzikert saw the history of defection of a Muslim contingent and had once again proved that a Muslim soldier can never be loyal to a non-Muslim commander. Something which we Americans and other Westerners should learn from.

The battle of Manzikert saw a repeat of the history of defection of a Muslim contingent, an act that was seen at the Battle of Qadissiyah between the Sassanids and the Arab Muslims, this had once again proved that a Muslim soldier can never be loyal to a non-Muslim commander. Thus the history of defection of a Muslim contingent that was seen at the Battle of Qadissiyah between the Sassanids and the Arab Muslims had once again proved that a Muslim soldier can never be loyal to a non-Muslim master.

We hope that our generals at the Pantagon are reading this when they keep Muslim troops in as Marines and Muslim Clerics (like that traitor James Yee) to fulfill the spiritual (sic) needs of the treasonable Muslim marines. Many such clerics and the marines have betrayed Americans when on duty at Guantanamo and in Kuwait. It is not too late for us to learn and relieve our fighting forces of these treasonable Muslim marines.

Permalink Reply by Charles Martel on October 1, 2009 at 19:03

After innumerable sacrifices, the Crusades rolled back the Muslim aggressors back to its pre-Muslim limit and liberated occupied Antioch, Damascus, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth. Which technically passed again into the hands of the Byzantines (although they had little more than formal suzerainty over these areas which were under the tumultuous rule of the truculent Crusaders). But unfortunately, the tide of the Crusades began to be rolled back in 1184 by Saleh-ud-din (Saladin the Accursed) who was an ally of the Turks. But the Crusaders clung on to the coastal towns till 1291, till the Turks under a new Turkish dynasty named Uthman (or Ottoman) gradually pushed their frontiers back to the walls of Constantinople by the middle of the 14th century.

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In spite of this defection by an important general of his army to the enemy camp, Romanus continued to march to battle against heavy odds and joined battle at the fortress of Manzikert. Turkish double-cross leads to defeat at the battle of Manzikert

At the battle of Manzikert, the Muslim Seljuk Turks attacked the Byzantines at noon and then feigned a retreat and withdrew to higher ground to catch the Byzantine army in the valley by surprise. From higher ground the Turkish Archers picked off the Byzantine troops at will. But the Byzantines kept up the attack, and by sunset the Battle was still undecided. But when this ruse failed, the Turks tried another one.

The Turks had an ancient custom of sounding a bugle, heralding the beginning and end of a day’s hostilities. After the bugle was sounded, there was to be no fighting. On that day too at sunset, the Turks sounded the bugle and the Byzantine presumed that the Turks would cease battle as they in fact did. In response, Romanus decided to retire his army to his camps, after the Turks stopped hostilities and began withdrawing.

But the Turks had decided on subterfuge to ensnare the Byzantines who trusted the age old Turkish custom. Once the Byzantine army began disengaging and withdrawing to its camp, the Turks did a surreptitious encircling cavalry advance and attacked the astonished Byzantines from the rear. The Byzantine army was caught between two attacks and my midnight, their fate was sealed with the capture of their emperor Romanus by the Turkish chieftain Alp Arslan.

After the deception on the battlefield, Turks indulged in deception in diplomacy too

Having the Byzantine emperor himself as a captive, the Turkish chieftain treated him decorously and entertained him as a royal guest. With this deception, Alp Arslan promised to set Romanus free for only a withdrawal by the Byzanines to the pre-war lines. Arslan did not even ask for the surrender of the Fortress of Manzikert. With the surprisingly lax terms, Romanus was lulled into a false sense of security from his friendly captor.

The Seljuk Turks were now in charge of the routes of the Christian pilgrims through Anatolia to the Holy Land whom the Turks began to harass. As this harassment increased the stories of their depredations began reaching European courts along with the pleas of the Byzantine emperors which became more shrill after Manzikert for succor from Western Europe to battle the Muslim infidels. Thus the seeds for a re-conquest of the Holy Land and the relief of the beleaguered Byzantine empire were sown. The Crusades that began in 1096 (and continued till 1291) were indirectly a fallout of the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.

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The terms of the treaty which the Turks imposed on the Byzantines included that Romanus order the Byzantine army to withdraw from the whole of Anatolia up to Constantinople, in return for a promise from Alp Arslan that the Seljuk Turks would not harass the Christian population in Armenia who were under Byzantine rule.

For Romanus who was then a captive, there was no option but to accept these terms, as a condition to regain his freedom. Romanus also needed his forces to tackle the internal rivalries at Constantinople while feeling assured that Alp Arslan would not pose a threat to his eastern frontier.

This treaty sealed the fate of the Byzantine presence in Anatolia, which was till then a part of Southern Armenia but henceforth was to become the domain of the Turks to be known as Turkestan (land of the Turks) or Turkey. The Seljuk Turks faced no more resistance to infiltration into the hitherto Christian Anatolia, and in a few decades they could wrest control of Anatolia from the Byzantines, and approach the Constantinople from the Asian side of the Bosporus.

Permalink Reply by Charles Martel on October 1, 2009 at 19:04

The Crusades were a belated Christian response to Muslim aggression that began in 634 with the battled of Yarmuk

The Seljuk Turks were now in charge of the routes of the Christian pilgrims through Anatolia to the Holy Land. As this harassment increased the stories of their depredations began reaching European courts along with the pleas of the Byzantine emperors which became more shrill after Manzikert for succor from Western Europe to battle the Muslim infidels. The seeds for a re-conquest of the Holy Land and the relief of the beleaguered Byzantine empire were sown. The Crusades that began in 1096 (and continued till 1291) were indirectly a fallout of the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.

Lessons from the battle of Manzikert and the fall of Constantinople (1453)

After innumerable sacrifices, the Crusades rolled back the Muslim frontier back to its pre-Muslim limit with the liberation of Antioch, Damascus, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth from four centuries of Muslim occupation (640 to 1097). Technically the liberated areas passed again into the hands of the Byzantines (although they had little more than formal suzerainty over these areas which were under the tumultuous rule of the truculent Crusaders). The tide of the Crusades began to be rolled back in 1184 by Saleh-ud-din (Saladin the Accursed) who was a Muslim commander allied to the Turks. But the Crusaders clung on to the coastal towns till 1291, till the Turks under a new Turkish dynasty named Uthman (Ottoman) gradually pushed their frontiers back to the walls of Constantinople by the middle of the 14th century.

The final chapter of the Muslim attack on the Byzantine started with the third Muslim siege of Constantinople (which was the first of its two Turkish sieges, the earlier two being those by Arabs in 674 and 717). This first Turkish siege of Constantinople which began in 1350 was repulsed by the besieged but still spirited Byzantines, but the Turks tried again in 1453, when they finally overwhelmed the city by storm and brought about an end to the Byzantine empire.




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The final chapter of the Muslim attack on Christendom started with the third Muslim siege of Constantinople (which was the first of its two Turkish sieges, the earlier two being those by Arabs in 674 and 717). This first Turkish siege of Constantinople which began in 1350 was repulsed by the besieged but still spirited Byzantines, but the Turks tried again in 1453, when they finally overwhelmed the city by storm and brought about an end to the Byzantine empire.

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The point is that from their first attacks on Byzantium in 634 at Yarmuk, the Muslims relentlessly attacked the Byzantine empire for a period of eight hundred years. The Muslims faced many defeats at the hands of the Byzantines in this long period. But they never gave up, they kept attacking till, they finally captured the capital city Constantinople in 1453 and the Byzantine power was no more. This has an important lesson for us Americans today. The Muslims never ever give up, till they are done in for. If we want victory and to secure our way of life, we Americans need to keep attacking the Muslims till the Muslims all cease to exist, if not they will keep attacking the USA. There are no soft options in this death struggle with Islam.


Can the modernization of Muslims make them into liberal citizens of a civilized society?

Many malevolent communist wolves disguised in their sheep’s clothing who pose as liberals, keep parroting that it is the modernization of Muslims that will make them into liberal citizens of a civilized society(sic)! They advocate providing more funds to the Madrassah (the schools where Islam is taught to young Muslims), so that the Madrassash could buy computers, and other electronic gadgets to expose Muslims to modern technology. Seems fair on the face of it. But this leaves the basic grounding in hate (of the non-Muslims) that Muslim children are bombarded with in the madrassahs.

With the brainwashing they receive through the murderous mentality that the Quran inculcates in Muslims, the addition of modern technology can only transform these hate-driven, revenge seeking kids into more dangerous enemies. They would assemble more deadly bombs, use cellular technology to trigger the bomb blasts, or hack in to the web-compliant systems of sensitive defense installations and worse still assemble a dirty bomb or even a proper nuclear devise.

Educating the Muslims, while keeping their murderous Muslim mentality intact is like giving nuclear claws to a man-eater tiger

Technology increases their capacity to destroy while keeping intact the violent and cruel tendencies built to an instinctive level by the Quran that is thrust on Muslim kids five times a day during ibadat/salat (Muslim congregational prayer) in the Mosques and Madrassahs. With access to technology, they become more effective as Jihadis and can commit mass-murder of non-Muslims using advanced WMD technology instead of using sword-play to behead non-Muslims individually. So educating the Muslims, while keeping their murderous Muslim mentality intact is like giving nuclear claws to a man-eater tiger. A.Q.Khan of Pakistan is a classic case of a nuclear powered man-eater tiger. We have to decide if we want more such nuclear man-eaters so that we can easily end up as the dinner for these man-eaters!




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The point is that from their first attacks on Byzantium in 634 at Yarmuk, the Muslims relentlessly attacked the Byzantine empire for a period of eight hundred years. The Muslims faced many defeats at the hands of the Byzantines in this long period. But they never gave up, they kept attacking till, they finally captured the capital city Constantinople in 1453 and Byzantine power was no more. This has an important lesson for us Americans today. The Muslims never ever give up, till they are done in for. So we Americans need to keep attacking the Muslims till the Muslims all cease to exist or give up Islam, if not, they will keep attacking the USA. There are no soft options in this death struggle with Islam.

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This much should be enough for us to realize that providing better technology to Muslims, while keeping the murderous mentality of Islam intact is like educating a cannibal with the use of guns. After we do this, the cannibal will be able to hunt us down far more easily and efficiently. He can now use guns (read electronics, nuclear technology) instead of using his clubs spears or swords to do his ghastly acts. So the point is rather than providing more resources and technology to the madrassahs, or to supply Iran with the technology to build a nuclear plant to generate electricity(sic) we need to change the mentality of the cannibal.(read Muslims). And to do this we need to wield the stick (pre-emptive strikes), and not the carrot (appeasement), so that the ass (read Muslims) can be driven away from the path of murder and destruction and be brought to the path of sanity and peace or be made to rest in peace so that the rest of us can pursue peaceful lives.