“to portray the Templars as poor and humble and few in numbers in their early
years gave William of Tyre a handy stick with which to beat them in his
critical history. By the 1170s, according to William of Tyre, the Templars
‘are said to have immense possessions both here and overseas, so that there is
now not a province in the Christian world which has not bestowed upon the
aforesaid brothers a portion of its goods. It is said today that their wealth
is equal to the treasures of kings.’ William contrasts this state of affairs
with the Templars’ earlier simplicity, suggesting they have somehow betrayed
themselves. But it seems that his real complaint is that their support in the
West made them independent of any power in Outremer, particularly that of the
Church as represented by William, the archbishop of Tyre, and would-be
Patriarch of Jerusalem. […] This was the beginning of the criticism the
Templars would receive from sources whose interests they crossed. Some would
call them saviours of the East and defenders of all Christendom, others would
find them ‘troublesome’ and accuse them of arrogance, greed, secrecy and
deceit. Their destruction lay in their beginning; when there was no more East
to save, the Templars would be doomed.” (Haag, 2010, p. 46)


“William of Tyre did not even begin writing his history until the mid-1170s,
that is fifty-five years after the founding of the Templars, and there is no
earlier source.” (Haag, 2010, p. 45)


“The Templars were exempted from all tithes, but they were free to collect
tithes on their own properties; all spoils of battle against the infidel were
theirs by right; and donations made to the Templars were put under the
protection of the Holy See. […] In Spain King Alfonso I of Aragon had
reconquered large territories from the Muslims and was attracted to the
concept of military orders as a means to safeguard them. When he died
childless in 1134 he willed his entire kingdom to the Templars, the
Hospitallers and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in equal measures. But
though the will was contested and adjusted, a settlement was reached with the
Templars in 1143 which gave them six major castles in Aragon, a tenth of royal
revenues and a fifth of any lands in future conquered from the Muslims,
turning the Templars into a major force in the Reconquista against the forces
of Islam. The Templars were the first; the Hospitallers followed them into the
Iberian peninsula around 1150. Christian rulers of the Iberian peninsula could
call on greater numbers of local Christian troops than their counterparts in
Outremer where so much of the population had been converted to Islam or driven
out by Muslims. And so the Templars played a less significant role in battle
than in the Middle East. Instead the principal task of the Templars was to
build castles along the frontiers to prevent Muslim incursions. The
responsibility for defending Aragon and Catalonia rested largely on the
Templars and the Hospitallers, but in the centre of the peninsula the kings of
Castille and Leon relied on home-grown military orders established for the
most part during the third quarter of the twelfth century. Nevertheless the
Templars exercised considerable influence on these Spanish orders which had
been founded in direct imitation of their own order. The kings of Castile and
Leon also entrusted the Templars with the overlordship of great tracts of
underpopulated territory that fell to the Reconquista.” (Haag, 2010, p. 44)


“For all their reputation as warriors, the Knights Templar were very much
monks and lived the monastic life in accordance with the canonical hours as
indicated by this outline of their day. 4am Rise for Matins and attend to
horses, then return to bed. 6am to noon Attend services, Prime (around 6am),
Tierce (around 9am) and Sext (towards noon). Meanwhile train and groom horses.
Noon Dinner of cooked meats. Complete silence throughout the meal while the
chaplain reads from the Bible. 3pm Attend Nones, the afternoon service. 6pm
Attend Vespers, followed by supper. 9pm Attend Compline, after which the
knights receive a glass of wine and water. Then instructions for the following
day. Attend to horses. Midnight To bed in complete silence until 4am.” (Haag,
2010, p. 43)


“when it came to guidance in military matters Bernard offered few practical
injunctions, though he did understand that in creating ‘a new type of Order in
the holy places’, one that combined knighthood with religion, the Templars
needed to possess land, buildings, serfs and tithes, and was entitled to legal
protection against what the Latin Rule called ‘the innumerable persecutors of
the holy Church’.” (Haag, 2010, p. 43)


“Grants of land as well as silver, horses and armour were made to the Templars
almost as soon as Hugh of Payns landed in France in the autumn of 1127. The
following summer the Grand Master was in England where he was received with
great honour by King Henry I, who donated gold and silver to the order. Hugh
established the first Templar house in London, at the north end of Chancery
Lane, and he was given several other sites around the country. More donations
followed when Hugh travelled north to Scotland. In September Hugh of Payns had
returned across the Channel where he was met by Godfrey of Saint-Omer and
together they received further grants and treasures, all these given for the
defence of the Holy Land and for the salvation of their donor’s souls. The
climax of Hugh of Payns’ tour came in January 1129 at Troyes, the capital of
the counts of Champagne, where Theobold, Hugh of Champagne’s successor, hosted
a convocation of Church leaders dominated by the presence of Bernard of
Clairvaux. […] their Rule, adapted from the precepts followed by the canons of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This stipulated attendance at services
together with the canons, communal meals, plain clothing, simple appearance
and no contact with women. Because their duties carried them away from the
church, they could replace attendance with the recitation of paternosters, and
they were also allowed a horse and a small number of servants, and while the
order was under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Jerusalem they owed their
individual obedience to the Grand Master. These regulations formed the raw
material from which, after considerable discussion and scrutiny by the
gathered churchmen, Bernard drew up the Latin Rule of seventy-two clauses.
Bernard’s Latin Rule enjoined the Templars to renounce their wills, to hold
worldly matters cheap, and not be afraid to fight but always to be prepared
for death and for the crown of salvation and eternal life. The knights were to
dress in white, symbolising that they had put the dark life behind them and
had entered a state of perpetual chastity. The hair on their heads was to be
cut short, but all Templar knights wore beards as they were not permitted to
shave. Foul language and displays of anger were forbidden, as were
reminiscences about past sexual conquests. Property, casual discussion with
outsiders, and letters and gifts given or received were subject to the
approval of the master. Discipline was enforced by a system of penances with
expulsion the punishment in extreme cases.” (Haag, 2010, p. 42)


“Clairvaux was built on land given to Bernard by Hugh, the count of Champagne,
whose vassal was Hugh of Payns, the future founding Grand Master of the
Templars. […] his mother’s brother was Andre of Montbard, one of the original
nine Templars, and Bernard’s early patron the count of Champagne had three
times gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and on the last occasion, in 1125,
he too renounced his worldly possessions and joined the Templars.” (Haag,
2010, p. 42)


“Baldwin also sent Hugh of Payns, the Grand Master of the Templars, sailing
westwards at the same time, his mission to solicit donations and to raise
recruits. The King had prepared the ground for Hugh by writing to Bernard, the
abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux, explaining that the Templars
were seeking approval of their order from the Pope […]. Bernard had already
written to the Pope objecting to a proposal put forward by a fellow abbot to
lead a mission of Cistercians to the East, saying that what the Holy Land
really needed was ‘fighting knights not singing and wailing monks’.” (Haag,
2010, p. 42)


“Baldwin had four daughters but no sons, and to secure the succession he and
his barons had decided to offer the hand of Melisende, his oldest daughter, to
Fulk V, count of Anjou. In the event the mission to Fulk was a complete
success; the count agreed to return to Outremer and marry Melisende, securing
the succession and strengthening the kingdom’s ties with the West.” (Haag,
2010, p. 41)


“after the First Crusade the hospital was released from Benedictine control
and raised an order of its own, the Hospitallers of Saint John, which was
recognised by the Pope in 1113 and came under his sole jurisdiction. […] Fulk
V, count of Anjou, who on his return home granted them an annual revenue, an
example that was soon followed by other French nobles, which added to the
allowance they were already receiving from the canons of the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre. […] gave what had been the mosque to the Poor Fellow-Soldiers.
They made it their headquarters, residing there and using it to store arms,
clothing and food, while stabling their horses in a great underground vault at
the southeast corner of the Temple Mount. As the vaults were thought to have
been Solomon’s stables, and the al-Aqsa mosque was known as the mosque of the
Templum Solomonis because it was believed to have been built on the site of
Solomon’s Temple, it was not long before the knights had encompassed the
association in their name. They became known as the Pauperes commilitones
Christi Templique Solomonici–the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the
Temple of Solomon; or, in a word, the Templars.” (Haag, 2010, p. 41)


“The formation of the Templars arose out of these conditions of insecurity on
the roads and the murder, rape, enslavement and robbery of unarmed pilgrims.
[…] on Christmas Day 1119 Hugh and his companions took their vows before the
Patriarch in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, calling themselves in Latin the
Pauperes commilitones Christi, the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ. The King
and Patriarch probably saw the creation of a permanent guard for travellers as
complementary to the work of the Hospitallers who were providing care for
pilgrims arriving at Jerusalem. Already in 600 Pope Gregory the Great had
commissioned the building of a hospital at Jerusalem to treat and care for
pilgrims, and two hundred years later Charlemagne, Emperor of the Holy Roman
Empire, enlarged it to include a hostel and a library, but in 1005 it was
destroyed as part of the Fatimid caliph Hakim’s violent anti-Christian
persecutions. In 1170 merchants from Amalfi obtained permission from the
Fatimids to rebuild the hospital, which was run by Benedictine monks […].”
(Haag, 2010, p. 40)


“Owing to insufficient Frankish immigration, the Crusader states would always
be short of fighting men. The King of Jerusalem, the prince of Antioch and the
counts of Edessa and Tripoli could between them raise no more than two
thousand knights. The towns were made secure, but travellers along the roads
were vulnerable to brigands and sudden enemy raids.” (Haag, 2010, p. 40)


“Antioch, which had been taken from the Byzantines by the Seljuks as recently
as 1085, was claimed by Bohemond instead. Bohemond was a Norman, and the
Normans had long had designs on Constantinople, wanting to add it to their
string of conquests in England, southern Italy and Sicily.” (Haag, 2010, p.
39)


“the Middle East was fragmented into numerous Muslim emirates. The Crusader
states fitted into this mosaic and, from the Muslim point of view, were no
more disturbing than any other emirates. The Franks fought against Muslims,
but also made alliances with them; the fighting, which was on a minor scale,
was no more than had been taking place in recent centuries among Muslims
themselves.” (Haag, 2010, p. 39)


“The Crusader states, or Outremer as they were collectively called, French for
‘overseas’, formed a series of contiguous territories that were linked to
Europe by Byzantine Asia Minor and reached as far south as Egypt and the Red
Sea. The Kingdom of Jerusalem closely corresponded in extent to the kingdom of
David and Solomon, that is all of what is today the state of Israel, plus the
east bank of the Jordan river, western Jordan, southern Lebanon and
southwestern Syria including the Golan Heights. Dependent on Jerusalem were
the feudal Crusader states of Antioch, Edessa and Tripoli. Bohemond had
established the Principality of Antioch in 1098 as the Crusaders were still
advancing towards Jerusalem, while Baldwin of Boulogne (the future Baldwin I
of Jerusalem) had carved out the inland County of Edessa in that same year.
Raymond of Toulouse began the conquest of northern Lebanon and coastal Syria
in 1102, which when completed under his successors in 1109 would form the
County of Tripoli. The soldiers and rulers of Outremer were European, largely
French in origin, and the commercial class was mainly Italian. During the
first decades many of these Franks, as the Westerners were known, conquerors,
traders, settlers and pilgrims, mingled with the indigenous inhabitants,
adopted their dress and customs, were tolerant towards Muslims and
intermarried with local Christians.” (Haag, 2010, p. 39)


“On 17 July 1099, two days after the reconquest of Jerusalem, the Crusader
barons met to choose a leader. This was against the wishes of the Tafurs, who
hourly awaited the Second Coming and wanted no government at all.” (Haag,
2010, p. 38)


“instead of chasing the impossible ideal of the total abolition of violence,
the Papacy had spent much of the eleventh century trying to control and
channel violence, for example trying to limit feudal warfare by promoting a
set of rules called the Truce of God. Part of Pope Urban’s thinking in
launching the First Crusade was to usefully externalise this aggression by
redirecting it against the Muslim threat. The use of force against a deadly
enemy and in the service of Christ had already been justified in the fifth
century by no less a figure than Saint Augustine of Hippo, who in The City of
God described the necessity of repelling the pagan barbarian invasion of
Italy.” (Haag, 2010, p. 38)


“contemporary letters written by Jews living in the Eastern Mediterranean make
it clear that not all Jews and Muslims in the city were killed; and indeed the
contemporary Arab writer Ibn al-Arabi estimated the number of Muslim dead at
Jerusalem at only three thousand.” (Haag, 2010, p. 38)


“The Fatimids had lost Jerusalem to the Seljuks in 1076 but in 1098 they had
recovered it once more. Now to deny the Crusaders any aid from within the city
the Fatimid governor sent away all the Christians, Orthodox and heretic, of
whom there were thousands despite the persecutions of al-Hakim and the uneasy
times following the Seljuk conquest. Jerusalem was one of the great fortresses
of the medieval world, and the governor commanded a sizeable garrison of Arab
and Sudanese troops which had recently been reinforced by four hundred
cavalrymen from Egypt. He also poisoned all the wells outside the city, secure
that within Jerusalem’s formidable walls he could rely on its numerous
underground cisterns of good water. […] then they had a stroke of luck: the
Muslims had left Jaffa unprotected and six ships had sailed into the port, two
from Genoa, four from England, carrying arms and food supplies and all the
equipment necessary for building siege machines. […] the Fatimid governor paid
Raymond of Toulouse an immense treasure in return for sparing his life and
that of his bodyguard; they were escorted out of the walls and rode off to
safety with the Muslim garrison at Ascalon. They were the last Muslims in
Jerusalem to be spared their lives. Those on the Temple Mount surrendered to
Tancred, who accepted and gave them his banner for protection, but the next
morning the Tafurs killed all of them, ten thousand people according to one
version, which outraged Tancred when he found out, and they set alight the
synagogue where the Jews had taken refuge, burning them all within for having
been allies of the Muslims.” (Haag, 2010, p. 37)


“The knights and the nobility may have thought that they were leading the
crusade, but the poor who marched in their wake regarded themselves as the
elite, a people chosen by God. Most of the common people who had joined the
first wave of the crusade perished on the long journey across Europe or were
cut to ribbons by the Seljuks no sooner than they had crossed the Bosphorus.
Many of those who survived and now joined the second wave of the crusade, the
one led by Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy, and the great French, Norman and
Provençal lords, were known as Tafurs. Stories describe them as barefoot,
wearing sackcloth, being covered in sores and filth, and living on roots and
grass and sometimes the roasted corpses of their enemies. Wherever they went
they left a trail of devastation. Too poor to afford swords, they fought with
clubs, knives, shovels, hatchets, catapults and pointed sticks. Their ferocity
was legendary; the leaders of the crusade were unable to control them and
never went among them without being armed, while the Muslims were terrified of
the Tafurs. Though the Tafurs made a virtue of their poverty, in fact they
were full of greed. The Tafurs looted every city captured by the Crusaders;
they also raped the Muslim women and committed indiscriminate massacres. Urban
and the princes had intended a campaign with limited objectives, but in
reality the crusade tended constantly to become what the common people wanted
it to be, a war to exterminate ‘the sons of whores’, as the Tafurs called the
Muslims.” (Haag, 2010, p. 36)


“the parting of the ways between the Crusaders and the Byzantines, for instead
of turning Antioch over to Alexius in keeping with his oath, Bohemond made it
a principality of his own.” (Haag, 2010, p. 36)


“of the 40,000 Crusaders who approached the city, no more than 4500 were
nobles or knights. Travelling in their wake was yet another mass of poor […].
This untrained and undisciplined horde, which included women and other non-
combatants, and a great number of religious fanatics, filled the leaders of
the crusade with anxiety, as they did Alexius, the Byzantine emperor, because
they were unpredictable and needed to be fed. But as the crusade was also a
pilgrimage, there was little that could be done to prevent them joining in the
march.” (Haag, 2010, p. 36)


“the most effective preaching was done by humble evangelicals who inflamed the
poor of France and Germany with their version of the Pope’s message.
Outstanding among these was Peter the Hermit […]. While Adhemar and the
princely armies of knights were still preparing for their expedition, Peter’s
preachings had roused fifteen thousand French men and women who left their
homes to follow him into Germany where the numbers continued to swell. Already
in northern France this rabble element of the crusade had begun attacking
Jewish communities, giving them the choice between conversion and death–for
according to the apocalyptic prophecy of the Last Days there could be no
Second Coming until all those who had denied Christ repented and were saved or
were destroyed. The worst violence came when Peter’s crusade appeared along
the Rhine, one of Europe’s major trade routes, where Jews had lived for
centuries in large numbers, their economic usefulness recognised by the
encouragement and protection they had always received from the bishops in the
cathedral towns. During May and June 1096 Jewish quarters were attacked,
synagogues were sacked, houses were looted and entire communities were
massacred. The bishops and the burghers did what they could to protect the
Jews but were often overwhelmed. At Worms, for example, the bishop sheltered
Jews in his castle, but he could not resist the combined force of the
Crusaders and his own poorer townsfolk who demanded their death or conversion;
and when the bishop offered to baptise the Jews to save their lives, the
entire Jewish community chose suicide instead. During that May and June as
many as eight thousand Jews were massacred or took their own lives as the
crusading rabble marched through Germany. […] only the chaotic stream led by
Peter the Hermit and known in history as the People’s Crusade got as far as
Asia Minor where in October 1096 it was annihilated by the Seljuks […]. The
official crusading army, led by Adhemar and the great secular lords, had no
part in these massacres.” (Haag, 2010, p. 35)


“Pope Urban named Adhemar, the bishop of Le Puy, as his representative on the
expedition and its spiritual leader. He had been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem
nine years before. Following Adhemar’s example, everyone joining the
expedition had a cross of red material sewn onto the corner of his coat,
symbolising that like Jesus they too carried a cross. […] The first great
secular lord to join the expedition was Count Raymond of Toulouse, who led the
knights of Provence, and soon others joined. Robert, the duke of Normandy, who
was the son of William the Conqueror, led the knights of northern France;
Bohemond, prince of Taranto, led the Norman knights of southern Italy, among
them his nephew Tancred; and Godfrey of Bouillon led the knights of Lorraine.
[…] But Urban had launched a movement greater than he knew, and in the belief
that the apocalypse was at hand thousands of peasants, artisans and other
ordinary people, often very poor, took the cross for the eastward march to
liberate the Holy Land. Yet of all those who set out–the rich, the poor, the
humble and the noble–only one in twenty would live to see Jerusalem.” (Haag,
2010, p. 34)


“Knights and peasants, rich and poor, pressed forward to follow the bishop’s
example. Many burst into tears and many were seized with convulsive trembling.
Everyone who listened was swept with emotions of overwhelming power.” (Haag,
2010, p. 33)


“Urban’s aim was to provide the Byzantine Empire with the reinforcements it
needed in order to drive the Seljuk Turks from Asia Minor, for he hoped that
in return the Orthodox Church would acknowledge the supremacy of Rome and that
the unity of Christendom would be restored. He was also concerned to give the
aggressive nobility, especially that of his native France, an alternative
outlet for their martial energies. The Papacy had gained strength through the
Investiture Controversy, and not only had it established its authority over
Church appointments, but in marshalling public opinion it had also intensified
popular piety, so it seemed a propitious moment to inaugurate a new era of
religious energy in the West and also to win the prize of Jerusalem. Urban let
it be known that in response to the appeal from Eastern Christendom for help,
he would make a speech on the penultimate day of the council, Tuesday 27
November. He expected that in addition to churchmen his audience would
comprise members of the French nobility, for he envisioned the expedition to
the East as an armed pilgrimage of knights. […] Then he made his great appeal.
Let the West go to the rescue of the East. The nobility should stop fighting
one another and instead fight a righteous war. For those who died in battle
there would be remission of sins. Let this armed pilgrimage (the word
‘crusade’ did not come into use until the thirteenth century when the Crusades
were over) set out in the summer, at the Feast of the Assumption, 15 August,
after the harvest had been gathered; and the armies should assemble at
Constantinople. Cries of Deus le volt!–God wills it!–interrupted Pope Urban’s
speech and filled the air again when it was over.” (Haag, 2010, p. 32)


“The Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus began the fightback against the
Seljuks, reclaiming territory along the Black Sea and round the shores of the
Sea of Marmara during the 1080s. But in order to press harder against the
Turks he sought mercenaries from the West, and in March 1095 he sent an appeal
to Pope Urban II.” (Haag, 2010, p. 32)


“Migrating tribes of Turks known as Seljuks began arriving from the East in
the territories of the Abbasid caliphate in about 970. They were soon
converted to Sunni Islam and became invaluable to the Arabs for their martial
qualities, especially for their mounted bowmen and the nomadic speed of their
cavalry. […] In 1071 the Seljuks defeated the Byzantine army at Manzikert in
eastern Anatolia, opening the whole of Asia Minor to conquest by the Turks and
threatening Constantinople itself. In that same year the Seljuks also turned
south, taking northern Syria from the Byzantines and Jerusalem from the
Fatimids. […] in 1074 the Byzantine emperor Michael VII appealed to Pope
Gregory VII for help, his desperation all the more evident in his willingness
to overlook the Great Schism of 1054 […]. In 1076 they took Damascus from the
Fatimids, and when the Fatimids briefly regained Jerusalem that year, the
Seljuks recaptured the city after a siege of several months and massacred the
entire Muslim population, about three thousand, as well as a large number of
Jews who had supported the Fatimids, though the Christians were spared.”
(Haag, 2010, p. 31)


“For a while during 1056 the Muslims forbade pilgrims entry to Jerusalem and
expelled three hundred from the city. In 1064 a large German pilgrimage led by
Gunther, bishop of Bamberg, came under Muslim attack; the party was plundered
and hundreds were massacred within sight of Jerusalem. Muslim pirates operated
against pilgrims at sea, either attacking them outright or exacting charges,
bargains and gifts. Pilgrims were obliged to pay protection money, known as
khafara, along the roads. Also the sensibilities and prejudices of the Muslims
had to be borne in mind: pilgrims could not enter mosques, they could not
enter towns or cities except on foot, they could not dress in certain ways,
they should not look at Muslim women, and they should not make merry or laugh
lest the Muslims thought the Christians’ behaviour was directed at them.”
(Haag, 2010, p. 31)


“by the tenth century the Muslims had become more aggressive, and in 938 they
attacked Jerusalem’s Christians during the Palm Sunday procession, set fire to
the Martyrium and badly damaged the Anastasis church. In 966 a Muslim mob
again attacked the Anastasis and set alight the roof of the Martyrium. The
Patriarch who had hidden in a vat of oil was set alight and burnt alive. The
Muslims set their seal on these acts by seizing part of the east entrance to
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where they constructed a new mosque. […]
Starting in 1004 the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, who ruled over Egypt, North
Africa, Palestine and southern Syria, launched a campaign of anti-Christian
fanaticism. Christians suffered persecution and had ordinances passed against
them; church property was confiscated, crosses were seized and burnt, little
mosques were built on church roofs, and finally the churches themselves were
set ablaze. By 1014 over thirty thousand churches had been destroyed, and many
Christians had been forced to convert to Islam, at least outwardly, to save
their lives, while others fled into Byzantine territory. But the critical
turning point in Western attitudes towards the Muslim East came in 1009, for
in that year al-Hakim ordered the complete destruction of the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre, which was carried out with such violence that even the tomb of
Jesus, though cut deep into the bedrock, was demolished with pickaxes and all
but obliterated. After the death of al-Hakim in 1021 his successor permitted
the Byzantine emperor, under stringent conditions and at his own expense, to
rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” (Haag, 2010, p. 30)


“In Egypt, where the population had been three million at the time of the Arab
conquest, the mismanagement of the country’s resources was so appalling that
there were not many more than one and a half million Egyptians by AD 1000.
Muslim discrimination and oppressive taxation stoked up resentment among the
Copts […]. Many Copts converted to Islam after the ferocious repression of
832; being unable to meet taxation demands, partly because the irrigation
system was falling into further disrepair, they migrated into the towns,
leaving large areas of land uncultivated. Even so, not until the eleventh
century, four hundred years after the Arab occupation, did the majority of
Egyptians finally adopt Islam.” (Haag, 2010, p. 29)


“The empire had become a rapacious tax-gathering machine run by provincial
governors who paid kickbacks to Baghdad but otherwise offered the caliph no
more than the barest homage and granted their subjects even less than that.
With the triumph of an authoritarian and incurious religious dogma, with the
failure to develop resources or technological advances, and with civil
administrations replaced by local military autocrats, the empire of the Arabs
fell into intellectual, political and economic decline.” (Haag, 2010, p. 28)


“In the East the Byzantines were scoring victories in the Eastern
Mediterranean already in the tenth century, recapturing Crete from the Muslims
in 961 and Cyprus four years later. The Byzantines also recovered great
swathes of territory in the Middle East. In 969 they captured Antioch, and
shortly afterwards they took Aleppo and Latakia along with a coastal strip
extending clear down through Syria nearly to Tripoli in northern Lebanon. The
Muslim inhabitants were left undisturbed and the local Muslim leaders were
made vassals of the Byzantine Empire, but now they were made to pay taxes from
which the Christians were exempted, while destroyed churches were rebuilt and
the freedom to convert from Islam to Christianity or vice versa was
guaranteed. In 975, under the Emperor John Tzimiskes, the Byzantines launched
a crusade with the intention of recovering Jerusalem, which was still an
overwhelmingly Christian city. Marching out with his army from Antioch,
Tzimiskes took Damascus, then advanced into Palestine where Nazareth and
Caesarea opened their gates to him and the Muslim authorities at Jerusalem
pleaded for terms. But first the Emperor turned towards the Mediterranean to
clear the enemy from coastal castles–only to die suddenly in 976 before he
could return his attention to Jerusalem. For the next century the Byzantines
remained in control of northern Syria but got no closer to the Holy Land.”
(Haag, 2010, p. 28)


“even in the late Middle Ages Dante (1265–1321) in his Inferno (XXVIII, 31–36)
should have considered Mohammed as a heretic and placed him in the ninth
circle of hell for being ‘a sower of schism and discord’.” (Haag, 2010, p. 27)


“Even someone who saw things from up close, such as John of Damascus
(c676–749), a Syrian Christian theologian who lived entirely under Muslim rule
and served as counsellor in the court of the Umayyad caliphs, did not regard
Islam as a new religion but considered it a deviation from orthodox
Christianity similar to other early heresies.” (Haag, 2010, p. 26)


“Christian heresy flourished in the Middle East under Muslim rule […]. all
Christian sects were treated alike, so that heterodox and heretic Christians
were now freed from persecution by rival Christians or the state. For example,
at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 a majority decided that Jesus had two
natures, the human and the divine, adding that these were unmixed and
unchangeable but at the same time indistinguishable and inseparable. This is
the view of almost all Christian churches to this day, but members of the
Syrian Church, known as the Jacobites, and of the Egyptian Church, known as
the Copts, while not denying the two natures, put emphasis on their unity at
the Incarnation. For this the Syrians and Egyptians were called monophysites
(monophysis, Greek for single nature), and were charged with the heretical
belief that Jesus’ human nature had been entirely absorbed in the divine. What
exactly the parties to these disputes meant when they talked of the nature of
Jesus Christ was affected by shades of language and culture, but certainly
they had a divisive effect within the Byzantine Empire and helped prepare the
way for the coming of Islam.” (Haag, 2010, p. 26)


“The building of new churches and synagogues was prohibited, the ringing of
church bells was forbidden, and festivals and public expressions of faith were
curtailed. Further, Christians and Jews stood outside the community; they were
not allowed to carry weapons, nor bear witness against Muslims in courts of
law, nor marry Muslim women. Also Jews and Christians had to distinguish
themselves by their clothing from Muslims, they could not ride horses, only
asses, and any who attempted to convert Muslims to their own religion paid
with the death penalty, as did any Muslim who apostasised.” (Haag, 2010, p.
26)


“Because the jizyah could be imposed only on non-Muslims, there was little
interest in making converts to Islam, and for centuries longer Syria,
Palestine and Egypt would remain overwhelmingly Christian. Indeed during its
first century under Muslim rule Syria gave the world five Popes. Nor did
Arabisation come quickly. Only towards the end of the seventh century was
Greek replaced by Arabic as the official language of administration in
Aramaic-speaking Syria and Coptic-speaking Egypt.” (Haag, 2010, p. 26)


“Proud and independent in attitude and nomadic by background, the occupying
Arabs were disinclined to become farmers; instead the Muslim Arab warrior
caste lived off the poll tax (jizyah) and the land tax (kharaj) […].” (Haag,
2010, p. 25)


“Islam had already appropriated the prophets of Judaism and Christianity, but
by means of reinterpreting the Koran it could be made to appropriate their
sacred places as well. The Dome of the Rock illustrates that appropriation.
Built on the site of Solomon’s Temple, decorated inside and out with
inscriptions composed of all the Koranic references to Jesus, and marking the
spot where Mohammed was given a glimpse of Paradise awaiting all true
believers, the triple associations of the Dome of the Rock confirm the
ascendancy of Islam.” (Haag, 2010, p. 25)


“new archaeological evidence shows that in mosques built as late as the eighth
century the prayer niches point towards Jerusalem and not towards Mecca.”
(Haag, 2010, p. 25)


“In fact the earliest date for a written Islamic source is 692: it is the
founder’s inscription which appears in gold mosaic along the arcade inside the
Dome of the Rock. It corresponds to Sura 4:171 in the Koran and is an emphatic
warning to the Christians: ‘People of the Book, do not transgress the bounds
of your religion. Speak nothing but the truth about God. The Messiah, Jesus
the son of Mary, was no more than God’s apostle and His Word which he cast to
Mary: a spirit from Him. So believe in God and his apostles and do not say:
“Three”. Forebear, and it shall be better for you. God is but one God. God
forbid that he should have a son! His is all that the heavens and the earth
contain. God is the all-sufficient protector.’ […] a discovery made in 1972 of
a cache of ancient Korans in the Great Mosque at Sanaa in Yemen seems to show
that even as the Dome of the Rock was being built, Islam was still in flux.
[…] there are two versions of the text, one written over the other, suggesting
that the Koran, and therefore Islam itself, was evolving for at least a
century following the death of Mohammed.” (Haag, 2010, p. 24)


“there are no contemporary Muslim sources for Umar’s conquest of Jerusalem.
The account of Umar being shocked at the rubbish on the Temple Mount and
making a start at clearing it away comes from Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali towards
the end of the fifteenth century, more than 800 years after the events he
describes. In fact the earliest Muslim histories appeared only 150 years or so
after the death of Mohammed, and according to the oldest history relating the
conquest of Jerusalem, the caliph Umar was not there at the surrender at all.”
(Haag, 2010, p. 24)


“slowly Mohammed began making some converts among pilgrims from Yathrib, an
agricultural community about 250 miles to the north which had a mixed
population of Arabs, Jews and Judaised Arabs and was therefore already
familiar with monotheism and other features of his teaching. […] Mohammed’s
understanding of Jewish and Christian concepts led him to believe that they
were basically identical to the revelations, known as the Koran, that he had
received, and therefore he expected that Jews and Christians would agree with
his teaching and recognise him as a prophet standing in the line of Abraham,
Moses, David, Solomon, Jesus and others. But whereas remnants of the heresy
known as Arianism may have allowed Mohammed to believe that Christianity could
dispense with the divinity of Jesus, the Jews were uncompromising: they told
him that his revelations were a distortion and a misunderstanding of their
tradition, and they drew attention to the numerous contradictions in his
revelations on Old Testament themes. Mohammed’s answer was to turn against the
Jews, saying they had deliberately falsified their traditions, while he
presented himself as the restorer of the religion of Abraham, whom he said was
the founder of the Kaaba and its cult.” (Haag, 2010, p. 23)


“The Meccans ensured that their rock-shrine, the Kaaba, contained not one but
several venerated tribal stones, each symbolising a local god, so that
tribesmen visiting the market fairs could worship their favourite deity during
their stay in the city. The Meccans also worshipped Manat, Uzza and Allat,
goddesses of fertility and fate, who in turn were subordinate to a yet higher
god called Allah.” (Haag, 2010, p. 23)


“Arabia, despite being largely barren and uninhabited, occupied an important
position between Egypt, Abyssinia, Persia, Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia,
whose trade with one another relied to some considerable extent on the Arab
caravans that carried their goods across the perilous wastes. Mecca stood at
an important crossroads of this desert trade, and the authority of the Arab
nomadic tribal sheikhs was in some measure supplanted at Mecca by a kind of
oligarchy of ruling commercial families whose religious beliefs and practises
transcended narrow tribal allegiances.” (Haag, 2010, p. 22)


“The Persian state religion was Zoroastrianism and wherever it spread,
Christianity was persecuted. Antioch fell to the Persians in 611, Damascus in
613, Jerusalem in 614 and Alexandria in 619. Moreover, after slaughtering
Jerusalem’s 67,000 Christian inhabitants the Persians made off with the True
Cross, Christendom’s holiest relic–and it was this which turned Heraclius’ 622
campaign against the Persians into something new, as it included a crusading
zeal. In 627 as Heraclius advanced deep into Persia, its king was overthrown
by revolution and his successor sued for peace. Byzantium’s eastern provinces
were restored to the empire and the True Cross was returned to Jerusalem. But
the Byzantines in their victory and the Persians in defeat both lay exhausted
when the sounds of war were heard again. This time it was the army of
Umar–Arab followers of the new religion of Islam–who in 633 declared a jihad,
a holy Islamic war, against the Byzantine Empire. Mohammed had died the
previous year, and the Byzantines, to the extent that they knew anything about
Islam at all, mistook it for a revival of Arianism, a familiar Christian
heresy which depreciated the divinity of Jesus, and did not feel greatly
threatened, failing to recognise the approaching Bedouins as a significant
military force.” (Haag, 2010, p. 22)


“Arius argued that as Jesus was the Son of God, then surely he was younger
than God: an appealing notion that brought Jesus closer to mankind and
emphasised his human nature. But another Alexandrian, a bishop called
Athanasius, saw a danger. If Jesus was younger than God, so there must have
been a time when Jesus was not. This challenged the unity of the godhead–the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit–and opened the way to regarding the nature
of Jesus as being not of the same substance as God’s. Indeed in time Jesus
might be seen merely as a good man, as Unitarians and Muslims see him today,
while God would become less accessible and more remote. The counter-argument
of Athanasius was that no distinction could be made between Christ and God,
for they were of the same substance. Seeing the Christians within his empire
divided between the arguments of Arius and Athanasius, in 325 Constantine
summoned the First General Council of the Church at Nicaea, not far from his
future capital of Nova Roma. Two hundred and twenty bishops were in
attendance, from Egypt and Syria in the East to Italy and Spain in the West.
The divine nature of Jesus Christ was argued from both the Arian and
Athanasian points of view, and when the bishops balloted on the issue, it was
decided in favour of Athanasius by 218 votes to two. This Nicene Creed became
the official position of the universal Church and remains the creed of both
the Roman and Orthodox Churches to this day.” (Haag, 2010, p. 21)


“a peculiarity of Christians was their interest in graves and corpses, unclean
to Jews but to Christians the focus of hope […].” (Haag, 2010, p. 19)


“When Titus, the Roman emperor, finally put down the insurrection in AD 70,
the Temple was accidentally destroyed by fire […]. During the Second Jewish
Revolt the rebels occupied Jerusalem in AD 132 and intended to rebuild the
Temple, even striking coins bearing its image. But the Romans returned in
force and crushed the revolt completely. Jerusalem became a pagan city,
Colonia Aelia Capitolina. All traces of the Temple were obliterated in AD 135
and statues of Hadrian the conqueror and of Jupiter were erected on the site.
This was the final end of Yahweh’s Temple. Thereafter Jews were forbidden by
official Roman decree to enter Jerusalem […].” (Haag, 2010, p. 18)


“Though King David had been prevented from building the Temple himself, he had
amassed a great amount of treasure to pay for its construction, he had
collected materials, and he had given Solomon detailed plans to follow […].
the Pyramids of Giza were built with the aid of cedar beams from Lebanon, and
the pharaoh Cheops’ magnificent solar boats buried at the base of his Great
Pyramid were also made of Lebanese timber. Now Hiram provided Solomon with the
cedar for his Temple […].” (Haag, 2010, p. 16)


“Solomon’s own palace, at 100 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high,
was four times the size of the Temple and took a good deal longer to build.
But then what was most impressive about the Temple, apart from its sanctity,
were its costly and finely worked materials and decorations, and for these
Solomon relied on his friend and ally King Hiram of Tyre.” (Haag, 2010, p. 16)


“Though nothing survives of Herod’s Temple, the exposed western retaining wall
of the Temple Mount platform, famously known as the Wailing Wall, has come to
symbolise not only the lost Temple of Herod but the first temple built on this
same spot three thousand years ago, the Temple of Solomon. Solomon, the son of
David and Bathsheba, became King of Israel in about 962 BC and died in about
922 BC. During the forty years of his reign, he expanded trade and political
contacts, centralised the authority of the crown against tribal fragmentation,
and engaged in an elaborate building programme.” (Haag, 2010, p. 9)


“In 1291 when the Mamelukes drove the last Frankish settlers out of the Holy
Land, the Templars lost the main purpose of their existence, and soon they
fell victim to the rapacious greed and tyrannical ambitions of the King of
France. […] The Pope was meant to be their protector and to the Pope alone the
Templars owed obedience, yet to judge from the apparently supine acquiescence
of the Papacy to the demands of the King of France, the Pope either betrayed
the Templars or believed them guilty of terrible crimes. These conjectures
took a dramatic turn in 2007, when the Vatican published a facsimile edition
of a parchment recording the Templar leaders’ testimony to Papal investigators
at Chinon in 1308. This document had been discovered in the Vatican Secret
Archives and revealed–seven hundred years too late to save the lives of James
of Molay and countless other knights–that the Pope believed the Templars
innocent of heresy.” (Haag, 2010, p. 8)


“Some historians have conjectured that the Templars’ sojourn in the East
brought them into contact with Gnosticism, the ancient heresy embraced by the
Cathars of France, while the Freemasons have drawn a line of occult knowledge
transmitted from the Temple of Solomon via the Templars to themselves.” (Haag,
2010, p. 8)


“The Templars were founded in Jerusalem on Christmas Day 1119 at the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre, on the spot which marks the crucifixion, burial and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. A religious order of fighting knights, their
headquarters was on the Temple Mount […]. Vast donations of properties were
made in Europe to maintain this elite taskforce overseas, and special rights
and privileges were granted by popes and kings. Dressed in their white tunics
emblazoned with a red cross, they became the West’s first uniformed standing
army and also pioneered an extensive financial network that reached from
London and Paris to the Euphrates and the Nile. As an order they became
powerful and wealthy, but as individuals their existence was simple and
austere. Their bravery was legendary, their dedication was absolute and their
attrition rate was high; at least twenty thousand Templars were killed, either
on the battlefield or after being taken captive and refusing to renounce their
faith to save their lives. Yet in the end the Templars were destroyed not by
the Muslims in the East but by their fellow Christians in the West. On Friday
13 October 1307 the Templars were arrested throughout France and soon
elsewhere throughout Europe. They were charged with heinous heresies,
obscenities, homosexual practises and idol worship; many were tortured and
confessed. The end came in 1314 when the Templars’ last Grand Master was burnt
alive at the stake.” (Haag, 2010, p. 7)


Michael Haag, Templars: History and Myth: From Solomon’s Temple to the Freemasons (Profile Books, 2010), http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Xpj7Whuaq14C&oi=fnd&pg=PA5&dq=%22Turkish+Invasion:+Byzantium+Appeals+to+the%22+%22Mission+to+the%22+%22Templar+Banking%22+%22Rise+of+the%22+%22IV,+the+Most+Christian%22+%22Order+of%22+%22Rise+(1099+to%22+%22Templars%E2%80%99+Role+in+the%22+&ots=XbJWuaUf9L&sig=VIc6Je6TtTbSx3ayFbHTIlx0wrg.


new test workspace


The primary concern with Ark thus far has centered on the problem of liquidity lockup. As transaction volume increases on the network, the service provider must lock up more liquidity, resulting in Ark being characterized as a network with high capacity but low velocity.
Running Ark on a server already addresses liquidity concerns effectively. On a server, Ark can operate in 24-hour rounds, allowing ASPs to recycle their funds daily. This alone represents a substantial improvement over Lightning, as setting up a server allows for effortless payment acceptance without the need to open channels.
While running Ark on a server is already quite efficient in terms of liquidity, the founding idea behind Ark was to eliminate technical barriers and scale bitcoin payments for all in a user-friendly manner. This is where Ark v2 comes in.
Ark v2 enables Ark Service Providers (ASPs) to reclaim their liquidity without having to wait for the expiration period (4 weeks) to elapse. It almost sounds too good to be true, ha?


element of idas on-hover edit test.


fourth relation type that is so long, so very very long


test


idas on-hover edit test note


tt


hej


Idas new workspace


test from ida