On Mon, 10 Nov 1997, James Ruhland wrote:
> you forgot the agressions of the Seljuks, without which the Crusades likely
> would not have been called for in the first place (the Christian kingdoms
> had no problem, for the most part, with Arab control of the holy land; by
> the late 11th century no one thought of it much, but it was the rapine of
> the Turks that precipitated the rapine of the crusades.) But their is no
> reason that a Heroic game needs to duplicate the indignities of real
> history.

Yeah. One of the Byzantine emporers appealed to the Pope for help. He
wanted mercenaries to help recapture Anatolian Turkey, instead he got
something quite different...

One interesting snippit is that apparantly the Crusader Knights
slaughtered the Turks quite regularly because the Turks rode mares (easy
to control while doing horse archery), while the crusaders rode
Stallions (big aggressive & stupid - suited the riders). At any one
time a good prportion of the Turkish horses would be on heat. The
stallions smelt this & were really quite enthusiastic.

It's a really interesting period of history.

Also didn't one of the Muslim rulers of Jerusalem ban Christian pilgrims
from the city? I can't remember the deatils. Although generally the
Islamic world had a tradition of tolerance for other 'People of the
Book' ie Christians & Jews.

As for accuracy in a heroic campaign, I agree to an extent, but I think
the more 'real' you can get it, the better - hopefully the players can
live up to the ideals that their compatriots fail.

neil