Reply #251: Yes, the the Mongol taking of Baghdad spend the dome to the Crusades. [View All]

[happyslug]

Historians do not often connect the Mongol sack of Baghdad with the lost of the Crusaders states but the connections are quite Clear. Egypt was willing to tolerate the Crusaders states in Palestine for their presented no threat to Egypt. The Mongols did present a threat. The Mamluks who ruled Egypt in 1258 watched the Mongols in present day Iraq. When the most of the Mongol army left to elected a new leader, the Mamluks entered Palestine and defeated what had been left of the Mongol Army in Syria. The Mamluks were assisted is this move from Cairo to Syria by the Crusader states who provided supplies, places to sleep and even meals to the Mamluks as they marched to Syria. Officially the Mamluks fought the Mongols by themselves but for almost 500 years Christians had fought under Moslems when the Moslems needed troops. When that occurred the Christians called themselves Moslems and no one looked real close, thus it is possible Christians fought with the Mamluks.

The real lesson to the Mamluks was the ease one could move through Palestine IF THE LOCALS LET YOU. Thus the Crusading Kingdoms could be used by the Mongols just like the Mamluks had used the Crusading Kingdoms. Thus the Mamluks decided the Crusaders had to go. Thus began the slow Egyptians removal of the Crusading States and the Destruction of the ports the Crusaders depended on for supplies and reinforcements. Notice the Mamluks did not want only the destruction of the Crusading States, they wanted the destruction of the INFRASTRUCTURE that permitted the States to exist. The Mamluks wanted a wasteland depended on Egypt for any outside supplies.

No one would rebuild these ports till Napoleon would remove the Mamluks from Egypt in the 1790s (Through the Ottomans would technically rule Egypt after about 1500, they kept the Mamluk bureaucracy to rule Egypt with). Trade was destroyed and not resumed till the Suez Canal was finished in the mid - 1800s. You still had farming and pastures in Palestine but not the intensive trade and interaction of people that was characteristic of Palestine from the days of the Roman Republic till 1258. The Ottomans took over the Area in the 1500s but ti was Shadow of its former self and the Ottomans did nothing to revive the Area (Having become even more of a Back Water with the Portuguese finding a way around Africa and coming to dominate the red Sea and Persian Gulf Trade via the Cape of Good hope as opposed to overland via Palestine.

Thus the Crusaders lost the Holy Lands by the Mongol Sacking of Baghdad and the fear that put to the Rulers of Egypt of a Mongol Invasion of Egypt.