And now for the serious historical interpretation, with preferable less quoting from Wikipedia:
It's funny that you should mention both the Turks (I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you mean the Seljuq Turks, who were relative newcomers at this stage in history) and the Caliph al-Hakim, who were not only political opponents, but followed completely different lines of ideology. Let's get going, on to a short history of Islam.The Turks and Caliph Hakim before them had horribly mistreated the Christians and Jews in Palestine. Hakim ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Resurrection in 1009 and was only allowed to be rebuilt in 1042 with Byzantine money, no compensation was given.
Islam isn't really that monolithic y'all know, right. The Fatimid Caliphate was of a distinct brand of Shi‘a Islam known as Isma'ilism or Sevener Shi‘ism. The Seljuk Sultans adhered to Sunni Islam, and their qadis were mostly of the Hanafi school of jurisprudence.
Now, the Caliph al-Hakim gets a bad rep in history. It's not exactly clear why, but most of the sources that appear to be so horrible about him are post-Fatimid (who, sadly, wrote very little about him). In any case, while it's true that he showed some erratic behaviour, such as starting this bizarre cult (which eventually led to the Druze, but that's a different story), but non-Muslim sources tend not to describe him as some sort of horrible tyrant. He did come down especially hard on Sunni Muslims, removing them from office and replacing them with others. Particularly Jews and Christians. Yes, the same Jewish and Christians that had "suffered horribly" during his rule. Come on, Skullsie, I'd expected you to use better sources than those written by Sunni Muslims.
Yes, indeed quite horrible. I also think you're totally overplaying the role of religion in the conquest of Syria and Egypt. It should be stressed here that the primary cause for expansion was economical and political rather than religious. It'd be a bit like saying that the Japanese conquest of China, Manchuria and Korea was a religious cause in which they felt they had to spread Zen to this area. Seriously, there were a lot of Buddhist monks that actively supported the conquest of these regions for religious reasons.Anatolia, Christian since 200-300AD and Byzantine core territory since ages, was conquered by the zealous Seljuqs after the civil war following the battle of Manzikert. This was preceded by centuries of raiding of Byzantine lands and two sieges of Constantinople by the arabs and evenRome was sacked by the arabs once and later raided. Syria and Egypt, the centre of Christianity, was subjugated by the Jihad following the death of Muhammed. The crusade was an answer to the call for help from their Byzantine allies.
As for Arab historiography, have you got any sources to back up the claims that treatment of Jews and (Monophysite) Christians was so bad after the coming of Islam? For example, I don't think anybody is willing to contest the fact that the Christians of Egypt were treated much worse under Byzantine rule than under Arab rule. To the Byzantines, they were heretics. To the Arabs, they were all Christians. Who cares, as long as they pay the taxes. Let's get a bit serious here.
Citation required. Also the term is yoke.suffering under arab joke for centuries.
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