Crusaders vs Arabs

>british and French took over the Middle East
You mean the Jews took over the Middle East

They weren't Arabs yet.

The assimilation of the various Semitic peoples took a really long ass time; Lebanon, I believe, wasn't considered "Arab" by Arabs until the 16th century or so. Maybe by the time of Saint Louis would some of these people be considered, and possibly self-identify, as Arabs, but even then it wouldn't be complete.

Only like one crusade was successful against Arabs.

>but the leading warrior class was almost dominated by Turkic soldiers like Ghulams or Mamluks.
and, if they weren't Turks, they were Caucasians; Circassians, Armenians, Georgians, and the like.

The slave soldiers were a pretty diverse group.

Read up on the Third Crusade.

Arabs = Cowards. They literally ran away from a handful a literal handful of Richard I's soldiers in the Battle of Jaffa.

Cowardly rats.

Muslims suck at fighting

They can't even do jumping jacks properly

They're only successful when they unify.

They unified under Saladin and were successful until the English crusaders entered the fray.

The differing factions in Saudi Arabia who were unified under T.E. Lawrence succeeded in driving out the Turks when they worked together.

So it is in everyone's interest to keep the Muslim world divided and killing each other.

;^)

Arab/muslim history seems to repeat like this
>Be divided and hate eachother
>A prodigy and born and unites them for a burst of success
>Prodigy dies and then later they realise they all hate eachother
>Divide
>Repeat

A prodigy is born*

Indeed, even the Ummayad dynasty, it worked well in conquering things, until it suffered an internal uprising because muh snackbar, muh it's too strict.

Muslims are idiots, always have been and always will be.

They thought of the crusaders as brutes, strong northerners with big swords. Called them all Franks, knew they were very brave

They were pretty scared of Calvary charges as well but believed they had better skill.

Source: this one documentary I watched 3 years ago

waffen-ss

The Crusaders were only really hampered by the operational incompetence and logistical problems. The Saracens had advantages in both of these areas, and a careful commander could do very well, as at Hattin. Political concerns often interfered with rational battlefield decisions, as both Saladin and the Christian commanders were under considerable internal pressure to take the fight to the enemy. They both had their strengths and weaknesses, and a leader who played to their strengths generally could expect success. However, the Ayyubids were able to get their shit together more quickly and undertake a rational domino strategy.

Crusaders. But there weren't enough of them and they did some really stupid shit occasionally.

Probably because the reality would be very difficult to put into a game and have it be playable and balanced?

Obviously crusaders. Muslims just had much higher numbers and they didn't have to deal with the logistical nightmare that the crusaders had

So i guess this will be the best place to ask

Were sword like in OP sharp enough to cut limbs, or is that all just hollywood bullshit and they were mostly used to break bones? Seems like bullshit that an iron sword would stay sharp enough to cut through chain armor during hours of battle

A longsword like that could definitely cut through chainmail, but not plate armor. Even arming swords (1 handed swords) could cut through chain mail. There's evidence of men being able to cut through some lighter helmets with arming swords as well

>All these Meme history
1) The Crusaders didn't even know what the fuck an Arab is. They called them under the blanket term "Saracen," or simply pagans
2) Thanks to the Seljuq invasion, and, I dunno- TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF THE ABBASID CALIPHATE HIRING TURKIC SLAVES AND VARIOUS CENTRAL ASIANS TO DO THEIR FIGHTING FOR THEM-, most military classes in the Muslim world fought like the bloody horse nomads like the Turkics.
3) Fuck whoever said this . What manner of people whose central idea of combat revolves around a horse gets scared of cavalry charges?

By your standards, Europe is a fucking failure because it can never unite for shit.

Expecting various peoples to unite just because they have the same religion is weird. Especially in an area as large as the middle east.

No it wasn't.

>They called them under the blanket term "Saracen," or simply pagans
don't forget Agarenes, Ishmaelites and Sarkalanders

SOURCE: THAT DOCUMENTARY I WATCHED 3 YEARS AGO

>and, I dunno- TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF THE ABBASID CALIPHATE HIRING TURKIC SLAVES AND VARIOUS CENTRAL ASIANS TO DO THEIR FIGHTING FOR THEM
t.mehmet açık aslan

>What manner of people whose central idea of combat revolves around a horse gets scared of cavalry charges?
hurr durr what sort of people whose central idea of combat revolves around guns gets scared when people shoot at them?
most of the Byzantine military was cavalry and they got fucked hard by Latin cavalry charges

(Caucasian) Mamluks > Mongols > Arabs > Crusaders > Turks

>Arabs suck at war.
Ftfy

>What manner of people whose central idea of combat revolves around a horse gets scared of cavalry charges?

They used horses in very different ways. The Crusader heavy cavalry as a weapon itself, a shock weapon used to press an attack while the Muslim cavalry would only ever charge broken or disorganized infantry.

Probably Crusaders based on the fact that they were fighting hundreds of miles away from their home with no serious supply line and were generally out numbered. The campaigns of Fredrick Barbossa, Richard I, and Louis IX (even though the crusade was a failure it was pretty damn well executed) were fantastic

>nobody in Europe ever understood who they fought in the Crusades
Total War is American and Video games aren't an accurate depiction of anything

>most of the Byzantine military was cavalry and they got fucked hard by Latin cavalry charges
This. "don't get charged by latins" was pretty commonly held to be good advice.

>Nigger 30% of the levant was still Christian

more than that

>Probably because the reality would be very difficult to put into a game and have it be playable and balanced?
I don't know about that. Seems to me they just focused on a single model, most likely based on the mainstays of Western Europe like England and France, then applied what they made wholesale to everyone else no matter what their political or military realities were, like the HRE, Russia, the Italian states, and of course the Middle Eastern factions.

>By your standards, Europe is a fucking failure because it can never unite for shit.
Europe did unite and was successful during the Crusades.

Also, Europeans don't need to unite to be successful, cheeky bantering and competition between each European empire is what drove them to success.

See the British fighting the Spanish, the British fighting the French, the French fighting everyone.

Etc. Muslims can't accomplish this feat, they have to unify in order to succeed.

>average conscript vs average conscript
pretty even id imagine, numbers in favor of the arabs.

>cavalry
goes entirely to crusaders, heavy lancer cavalry was
dominant.

>fanaticism
eh, it varies, there have been more miracle battles because of christian faith but in many crusades the sincerity of there values can be questioned (ie:infighting, pillaging)

also europe had knights who were the best soldiers on the planet for like 400 years, and the arabs used gunpowder and cannon far more effectively

Europe was barely an identity in the middle ages so you can fuck.off calling the crusades a unified effort.

Heck most of the time it was just nobles as opposed to whole kingdoms.

Muslim cavalry was just as heavy as western cavalry, user. Sometimes heavier.

>conscript
Conscripts were a rarity.

>the arabs used gunpowder and cannon far more effectively
They really didn't.

>Total War is American
It's actually British. Creative Assembly is based in Britain.

>1st crusade - Crusaders
>the rest- Arabs

The crusades were a huge concentration of force on the part of the christians, the muslims made better use of resources due to their experience in the terrain, but a knight trained from infancy with rich relatives, land at home and an income from capturing trade routes for the venetians is going to have an advantage.

yet it was

Crusaders when properly supplied and in decent numbers. Heavy cavalry was incredibly effective.

That's literally the history of the world

Medieval chinks noted it

Certainly not the one wielding an anachronistic longsword in a setting in which historically only one handed arming swords were used ...

Arabs

They were about equal in relative strength and skill. Usually the success of the Muslim armies in comparison to the Christian ones had a lot to do with military structure. See the failure of the first Siege of Damascus or how Jerusalem was constantly changing hands as far as who was in control of it. Plus there was also the Levant as well; someone brought up that it fell under Frankish control after the First Crusade, but Muslim armies successfully lead counter-crusades in the region by the likes of Zangi and Saladin. Military battles ended there after a diplomaric agreement, but then again the entire region was beginning to be torn to shit by the Mongols by this point anyway.

>Arab crusaders

Source that shit

What exactly does the popular narrative get wrong? How is a sultan not a king?

Veeky Forums is full of historical hipsters. Expect every piece of popular knowledge and thought to be cried over.

Not him, but there were Turks who converted to Christianity and fought for the Crusaders and Byzantines. They were called the Turcopoles.

Well, Europeans are the natural gods of war but the Arabs are pretty ferocious as well.
I'd still have to give it to the Crusaders simply because they crossed an entire continent, fought in sweltering heat at day and freezing cold at night, harassed all the time by their enemies and still managed to take back Jerusalem and a few cities, if only for a short period of time

>What manner of people whose central idea of combat revolves around a horse gets scared of cavalry charges
A medieval cavalry charge is incredibly scary m8., don't play coy.
All that heavy armor and weapons coming your way, all on an equally armored horse that's going to stampede you to death

>Arabs

Jesus O.P., do you even into history? There were literally no ''arab'' armies during the Crusaes, most of the standing armies of muslim statelets were composed of turkish cavalry, caucasians archers, and north african marines. ''Arabs'' were badly seen and were used as auxiliary archers if not water carriers. That's because arabs were mostly confined into cities, working as merchants, clerks and other non-military jobs. That's why it was so easy for Malik Shah to reach the mediterranean and put governors in Damascus and other urban centers.

Both forces had their highs and lows. Crusaders had wielded a cavalry charge was absolutely devastating. On the other hand, when turkish cavalry surrounded the rest of the crusader army, they had an advantage because of their mobility. With no cavalry to defend them, the foot soldiers would fall like flies.

The urban militia of these towns were however 'Arab,' though technically they just called themselves Syrians or whatnot while those they thought of as Arab were the Bedouin. These militia troops were also fairly redoubtable, and played a large part in blunting the Latin campaign against Damascus during the Second Crusade. They're also mentioned in an anecdote where a small group stands up to Frankish heavy cavalry without budging, whereas the infantry of an emir, outside of their siege experts, were mostly tribal mercenaries of light archers who would almost always melt away in the event of a charge.

No it wasn't Mehemet.

>t.mehmet açık aslan
T. I have no idea what happened in 900's-1100's Islamdom. This isn't wewuz shit, it actually happened.

Newsflash. Abbasids got lazy. They started hiring slave soldiers from Central Asia to do their fighting for them. In bulk. Said """""""""slave""""""""" soldiers, despite their status, were actually very fucking important in society and acquired much power. By the 900's, Central Asian generals were carving out states, but these were nominally loyal to the Abbasids.

Which is why nowadays in Europe, Sultan is mistaken for a Kingly equivalent. When in reality, it just means "governor." But the Slave Soldier General Sultans were way too fucking independent and ruled over large areas, they might as well be King.

And then the worst thing happened. Someone converted Seljuks, a big Turkic confederacy, to Islam. This tied that big fucking confederacy into the instability of the divided Abbasid Empire. Since Turkics were carving states of their own in that land, the Seljuks reasoned "Why not take fucking everything?"

So the Seljuks fucking did. However the Empire was as legitimate as far as it could claim THE ABBASIDS MADE US DO THIS SHIT. The brief empire collapsed into shitloads of Sultanates, Emirates, Beys, and dynasties with -ids in the end, and the ass sitting on the throne of these states was usually Turkic or Central Asian.

The crusaders lost so I guess the Muslims were better.

>Crusaders ( presume you mean European ) vs Arabs

And yet, no one mentions Kurds, the military leadership pinnacle of whom, An-Nasir Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub led an "Egyptian" army to win over all of these.

so they were just mongols-lite, the preamble before the actual show

Yeah. If anything, the chaos brought about by the Abbasid Decline was the real reason why the Golden Ages meme ended. Not Mongs sacking Baghdad. Baghdad was pretty much the actress past her prime when the Mongs did her in.

kekno

The Seljuks participated more battles than Arab counterparts.

Crusaders. But as expected, those with every other advantage possible for each conflict won.

>Kurds
Yeah, Saladin's army didn't consist of Kurds though.
>An-Nasir Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub
The most overrated military leader in Islamic history, Muslims didn't even care about him until he became a symbol for the Arab anti-Zionist struggle. He was consistently beat by Richard the Lionheart who would have finished him, had his throne been safe.

The most based Crusader-era Islamic military leader was Baybars by far.

>extremely tall, blue-eyed blonde Muslim born somewhere in modern-day Russia or Kazakhstan.
>worked his way up from a slave to a Sultan
>beat both the Crusaders and the Mongols

Saladin's greatest feat will always be ending the Fatimid Caliphate.

Crusade is fucking overrated
It just white nigger doing white niggers thing in the middle of desert

>internal uprising because of snackbard in the umayyad
Pls go educate urself

I saw a documentary about the Crusades that said that it was actually of minor note within the Islamic world and most just went about normal pursuits of trade and scholarly studies.

Basically they said it wasn't a momentous cultural event in Islamic history like it is in European/Christian history.

>Europe
>"We're fighting to free the Holy Land! This is awesome! This is by far the most important event in the history of everything! We're gonna save the world guys!"

>Everyone else
>"Lol who cares"

>Those with the advantag won
No shit Sherlock. Don't post if you're going to be this useless.

Skill based they were about the same. The Arabs had greater knowledge of the land though, so they had a tactical advantage earlier on. This is a generalisation.

yep, read something similar in a book a while back

x vs. Arabs.

Always go with x.

>I saw a documentary about the Crusades that said that it was actually of minor note within the Islamic world and most just went about normal pursuits of trade and scholarly studies.
>Crusades
>Minor.

Well, it was minor in the fact that the Islamic world had more tremendous shit to deal with such as.
>Schism.
>Turkics streaming from the East and being Steppenignogs.
>More schismos.
>Decline of the Abbasids.
>Fatimid revolution.
>Central Asian generals setting up random states all over the place. (Seljuks of Rum, Seljuks in the Levant, Seljuks in Iraq, Seljuks in your mum, etc.)

And then suddenly some bunch of Ferenggi takes a bit of Syria & the Levant.

Ferengi? When do the Fremen come in?

It means frank.

Amin Malouf is a novel writer, not an historian, but that's not the impression he gives at all. If I remember well, the crusades did impact a lot on the islamic self-awareness since they considered it to be humiliating.

Anther things are the fact that some of the muslim princes had other political priorities, or the mongol conquest being way more humiliating.

Why do we know so little about Khwarezm and the Kara Khitai?

Not willing to support to idiot you're talking to, but nice work talking about the 900's and completely ignoring the rise of shia and/or iranic dynasties. Classic turk.

>they're good at holding grudges
You think they have a book full of grudges?

idiot

>x=Persians or Byzantines

Come again?

Everyone in this thread needs to read some Usama ibn Munqidh if they want to get their facts straight. Otherwise this thread reads like a Medieval II Total War discussion

>Otherwise this thread reads like a Medieval II Total War discussion
If it did, we'd be talking about how excellent the Turks roster is.

different for different crusades and battles. generally the europeans won the larger battles. the saracens were good at attrition warfare though.

from the first crusades battle of antioch:
>On Monday, 28 June, the crusaders emerged from the city gate, with Raymond of Aguilers carrying the Holy Lance before them. Kerbogha hesitated against his generals' pleadings, hoping to attack them all at once rather than one division at a time, but he underestimated their size. He pretended to retreat to draw the crusaders to rougher terrain, while his archers continuously pelted the advancing crusaders with arrows. A detachment was dispatched to the crusader left wing, which was not protected by the river, but Bohemond quickly formed a seventh division and beat them back. The Turks were inflicting many casualties, including Adhemar's standard-bearer, and Kerbogha set fire to the grass between his position and the crusaders, but this did not deter them: they had visions of three saints riding along with them: St. George, St. Demetrius, and St. Maurice. The battle was brief and disastrous for the Turks. Duqaq deserted Kerbogha and this desertion reduced the great numerical advantage the Muslim army had over its Christian opponents. Soon the defeated Muslim troops were in panicked retreat.

The idea that all the Muslims the Crusaders fought were Arabs OR Turks and not often a mix of the two is inane. Like saying all the Crusaders were French.

While much of the larger forces had sizeable contingents of Turks, footmen were usually of local Arab and Kurdish stock. You often had Bedouin auxillaries too but they could hardly ever be counted on. There would probably be a significant number of Arab or Kurdish nobelman that would fulfill a knightly role as well though, having been trained in "furusiyya," basically knighthood, and having experience in hunting and fighting brigands from their lands.

>Malays
>Malays
>Malays
>Malays
kek

shit you are correct, i was thinking of the ottomans in the mid 1400's, they werent even a thing then.

in general if we are just talking arabs vs the west they did adopt gunpowder much quicker.

Also i dont know of any real muslim heavy cavalry besides like, cataphracts but you are probably right. After all, lancers have been around forever and its pretty easy to copy.

Turcopoles were Syriac arabs, not Turks. You are confusing them with Turkmen that were employed by Muslim lords.

Mamluk were heavy cavalry, did muslim even used cataphracts?

A European Knight would crush a Muslim in a 1v1 fight, they had better equipment and better training, but the mudshits at this time were light in the battlefield and they definitely had the numbers.

Arab cavalry traditionally tend towards long thrusting spears, straight swords, helmets, and mail coats, user.

Sound familiar?

Turks flat out had cataphracts along with lesser lancers.

The Europeans themselves disagreed with you./ Crusaders and Muslim heavy cavalry alike were well known to praise both the gear and skill of the other.

nice numbers but the crusades happened because the turks were blocking christian movement through anatolia to the holy lands

You are talking about the ottomans.
Every fucking historybook I've ever seen told me, the Muslim from the crusader times had definitely the numbers and were amazed by the heavy Knights the crusaders had.
Where do you think the ottomans had the blacksmithing skills from...?
The mudshits from this time period were pussies in comparison to the Knights.
Pls don't talk to me you leftist, self haiting Muslim loving faggot.

Sorry meant to answer this idiot >>>>