islamic-jihad-legacy-of-forced-conversion-imperialism-slavery

The Arab–Islamic Imperialismstaunchly defended St. Peter, perishing to the last man. Muslims destroyed all the churches of the district ofSuburb. Pope Leo IV briefly fled Rome and appealed for help from neighboring kingdoms. Responding to hisplea, Marquis Guy of Spoleto counterattacked and defeated the Arabs. While fleeing partly towardCivitavecchia and partly toward Fondi, Muslims indulged in ruin and devastation of the country. At Gaeta, theLongobard army clashed with them again. Guy of Spoleto found himself in serious difficulty, but theByzantine troops of Cesarius from Naples arrived in time to rescue him. This attack prompted Pope Leo IV toundertake the construction of the Civitas Leonina in 848 to protect the Vatican Hill.In 848, they sacked Ancona. The next year, a huge Muslim naval fleet set off to attack Rome and metan Italian naval fleet at the mouth of the river Tiber near Ostia. In the battle, the Arabs were routed. In 856,they attacked and destroyed the Cathedral of Canosa in Puglia. In 861, they assaulted Ascoli and, afterslaughtering the children, carried away the inhabitants as slaves. In 872, they attacked and besieged Salernofor six months. In 876, they attacked Latium and Umbria slaughtering the inhabitants, enslaving them andsacking the villages before marching toward Rome; they turned the Roman country into an unhealthy desert.Pope John VIII (872–82) defeated the Arabs at Circeo and freed 600 enslaved Christians from eighteenMuslim vessels. He attempted to expel the Arabs after the depredations, but with little help from Europeankings forthcoming, he failed and was forced to pay tribute.Muslims continued their devastation of Latium both on the coast and inland, consolidating theirconquest of the Roman country: they went on to capture Tivoli (Saracinesco), Sabina (Ciciliano), Narni, Nepi,Orte, Tiburtino countries, Sacco valley, Tuscia and Argentario Mountain. Their depredations continuedthrough the 880s and 890s. In the early tenth century, Muslims were planning to establish an Emirate inSouthern Italy. In 916, Marquis Adalbertus of Tusca, Marquis Albericus of Spoleto, Prince Landulf of Capuaand Benevento, Prince Gaimar of Salerno, the dukes of Gaeta and Naples and Byzantine Emperor Constantineentered into an anti-Arab alliance, with Pope John X personally heading the land troops. The Arabs weretotally defeated and mainland Italy was freed from the Muslim invaders.The Mediterranean island of Sicily, where Muslims had founded a long-lasting Emirate, suffered thefirst Jihad raid, involving pillage and plunder, in 652; it was repeated in 669, 703, 728, 729, 730, 731, 733,734, 740 and 752. The early Muslim incursions (652–752) in Sicily failed to gain a foothold for Islam. Theconquest of Sicily began in real earnest when an Aghlabid Arab army from Tunis landed in Mazara del Valloin 827. This started a long series of battles: Palermo fell in 831, Pantelleria in 835 and Messina in 843. Cefalùand Enna resisted the Muslim conquest for years before being conquered and burned down in 858 and 859,respectively. Syracuse offered strong resistance for long; the Arabs overran it in 878, massacring the entirepopulation. Sicily was lost. Palermo, renamed al-Madinah, became the new Islamic capital; Arabic languagereplaced Greek. A native counterattack against the Muslim occupation of Sicily had started in 827. But aNorman conquest, begun in 1061, eventually expelled Muslims in 1091.On another front, Muslims eventually overran entire Eastern Christendom, centered inConstantinople. In the famous conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman holy warriors slaughtered theinhabitants for three days and the rest were enslaved. The Ottoman Jihadis, bypassing Constantinople, hadalready crossed over to Europe in the 1350s. After a couple of decades of see-saw battles, the Ottomansgained extensive victories capturing Bulgaria and the Balkans in the 1380s and went on to attack Venice in1423. The capture of Constantinople in 1453 further facilitated the Ottoman conquest of Europe. Theycaptured the entire Balkan Peninsula, moved toward Russia capturing Crimea, and laid unsuccessful siegetwice on Vienna, the heart of Western Europe and the Holy Roman Empire, in 1529 and 1683. Muslims atsome point ruled the whole of Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania.They ruled parts of France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the SovietUnion. By the sixteenth century, extensive Ottoman conquest had reduced Europe into a truncated, corneredChristian landmass, desperately resisting an inescapable takeover by the Ottoman Islamic army. Busbecq, theambassador of the Holy Roman Empire to Istanbul (1554–62), resonated this desperate sentiment as he went118