ARTICLE TOOLS

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If you've been itching to make that pilgrimage to the Holy Land and see the election of Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas as a reason to go this year, I have a recommendation for you. No tour of Israel is complete without a visit to the Sea of Galilee, and no view of Galilee is more stunning than as seen from the Horns of Hattin. Rising 100 feet west of the sea, the rocky peaks command a wide view, from Capernaum on the north side where Christ spent so much of his ministry, to the Golan Heights in the east (in Christ's time, the site of the Decapolis where he cast out demons from a possessed man), to the flourishing tourist town of Tiberius, situated just below the cliffs.

Mosey up Hattin on a windy day, and you'll be hard pressed to stay on your feet—the weather can really be something fierce in the late afternoon. But on most days, it's simply delightful, and if you go in the spring, the view is something out of the Emerald Isle. No need to rent a room from the top floor in Tiberius's Hilton—Hattin tops the experience. And it's still pristine, at least when I was there last in 1995. No gaudy tourist businesses ready to make a buck off you.

Which makes it all the more difficult to comprehend the carnage that Hattin is most famous for. On July 4, 1187, the Muslim general Saladin cornered the last real army of Christian crusaders on Hattin, then lit a fire that terrorized the Christians laboring under heavy armor. Realizing their precarious position, the crusaders finally charged the Muslims—though Saladin's 30,000 men outnumbered the crusader's 20,000. Saladin anticipated that act of desperation and opened his superior force to the crusaders, then closed around them again in a death grip. Many of the Christian knights died that day (surviving Knights Templars were summarily beheaded in front of all), and Muslim overlords sold the remainder into slavery.

If you plan on watching Sir Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven this May, keep the Horns of Hattin in the back of your mind. Because that's the immediate background to the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin that Scott so splendidly depicts. Were it not for Hattin, which drew many of the best fighting men from the cities (thereby leaving them vulnerable to attack), Saladin would not have met with such success in Jerusalem. And the war might indeed have gone differently.

But then understanding events in the Crusades is always a matter of putting things in context. CHRISTIAN HISTORY has done readers a great service in dedicating two issues to the matter, one entirely to the Crusades, and another to the long, rocky history of Christian-Muslim relations. The Crusades did not have their beginning in 1095 when Urban II made his famous call to holy war; in the mind of Christian Europe, that war began in 638 when Byzantine Jerusalem fell to Muslims the first time. From there, Islam spread through conquest as far as the interior of France and the gates of Constantinople. The conquest of Jerusalem by Christians in 1099 was a re-conquest, or so thought the pope and European Christendom.

It's also a mistake to assume the Crusades ended in 1291, when the last fortress of Acre fell to Muslim forces. Even as the pope resigned the Holy Land to a lost cause, Spanish Christians bore down on Muslim city-states in Al-Andalus, completing the reconquista in 1492. Farther east, the war did not go so well. The Ottoman Empire carried Islam to new shores, taking Constantinople in 1453, and during the reign of Sultan Sulaiman (1520-1566), threatening the heart of Europe—then embroiled in the messiness of the Reformation. Eastern Europe would not regain its freedom again for several centuries. Greece, for example, did not push the Turks out until 1822.

But that's all behind us now, right? September 11 is a reminder that in many quarters of the world, the history of the Crusades is still fresh. Osama bin Laden certainly had them in mind when the Twin Towers fell, and Scott's movie is certain to revive Western interest in the Crusades. Some critics worry the film will provoke a string of hate crimes against Muslims in the West. Of course, the media worried anti-Semitism would spike following The Passion of the Christ. Only time will really tell.

I would guess, though, that most Christians walking out of the theater in May won't be scheming how to burn down their neighborhood mosque. Rather, they'll be asking, How could Christians do this? How could we wage war on people in Christ's name, even if they were warring against us? Historian Bruce Shelley took a good stab at that question, when he pointed out that many Europeans knights went on crusade to defend Christians suffering under Islamic rule (it wasn't so tolerant as it's sometimes made out to be). And many knights wanted to practice their vocation in "honorable combat" (as opposed to squandering it in petty quarrels). Scott captures that sentiment well in his quote from Godfrey of Ibelin: "Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright. Speak the truth. Safeguard the helpless. That is your oath."

Advice that would seem high and lovely, were it not for the legacy the Crusades left us—more hatred between Christians and Muslims, more war, more lives lost. Is there any solution to this long tired story? Certainly the Reconciliation Walk of 1999 is something to praise, though it's little more than a gesture at a time Christians and Muslims continue to fight (consider what's happened in Nigeria since northern states instituted Shari'ah law). Still, 900 years after Jerusalem fell to crusaders, many Christians recognize that war does nothing to win Muslims to Jesus; if anything, the walls just go up higher. And that's something we can't afford to let happen.

If Kingdom of Heaven's trailers pique your interest in Muslim-Christian relations, I have a suggestion for you. Rather than go see the movie, go visit with your Muslim neighbor next door.