They started in 1095 and ended in 1271, but the word we use today only came into existence after 1760. The word? Crusade. In 1570 France, it was croisade. It comes from the Latin cruciare, “to mark with a cross.” In this case, Cross. The Latin base is crux. At the Council of Clermont, Pope…
Category: Middle East
The Year was 588
Khadijah was the daughter of an extremely successful caravan merchant. When she was 32, her father died and she inherited the business. Khadijah, now wealthy, received endless marriage proposals, but she had already buried two husbands. Not wanting to go through that a third time, she swore she would never marry again. A few years…
The year was 1916
Col. Mark Sykes called Gertrude Bell (among other things!) a “conceited, gushing, flat-chested… blethering fool.” Both were British. Sykes joined with France’s Francois Georges-Picot to draw the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, but it was Bell who was the power behind the map that carved up the old Ottoman Empire, willy-nilly creating the countries that are now…