关于十字军东征，人们最不了解的重大事情是什么？

Dimitris Almyrantis
迪米特里奥斯・阿尔米兰蒂斯

The Crusades were a historical nomaly: Wars of exactly this sort were dime a dozen in the middle ages. From England to Sicily to Russia, to Iran and India and Zhili, foreign conquests of this sort were the rule, not the exception. States were built with the assumption these things happened, and the Crusaders did not stand out from the rest.

十字军东征是历史上的正常现象：这类战争在中世纪十分常见,从英格兰到西西里，再到俄罗斯、伊朗、印度以及直隶，这类外族征服是常态，而非特例。国家的建立正是基于这类事件会发生的假设，而十字军并没有异于其他势力。

Compare with the disproportionate attention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict receives; if one watched the news or the UN, one would assume that patch of land was exceptional or important. It isn’t; we just choose to pay attention.
The Crusades traumatized the Islamic world: The total span of time in which the Crusades were in any way effective was about 100 years, i.e. the 12th century. Islamic historiography paid no special attention to them; the “uniqueness” of the Crusades was established by the modern West, which the Islamic world has latched onto as a way to critique colonialism by proxy.

对比一下以色列-巴勒斯坦冲突所受到的过度关注：如果一个人只看新闻或是关注联合国的动态，会认为那片土地是独特且重要的。但事实并非如此；只是我们选择去关注它而已。
十字军东征给伊斯兰世界造成了创伤：十字军东征产生任何实际影响的总时长约为100年，也就是12世纪。伊斯兰史学界并未对其给予特别关注；十字军东征的“独特性”是由现代西方确立的，而伊斯兰世界则将其作为间接批判殖民主义的一种方式。

The Crusades were an invasion of Islamic lands by the West: The Holy Land was mostly Christian at the time, and the Crusaders were no more unpopular or barbaric than their enemies, who were semi-pagan invaders of Islamic lands themselves (the Turks).

十字军东征是西方对伊斯兰土地的入侵：当时的圣地大部分地区都信奉基督教，而且十字军并不比他们的敌人更不受欢迎或更野蛮，而这些敌人本身就是入侵伊斯兰土地的半异教侵略者（土耳其人）。

The Crusaders fought the Arabs: Although the region and period of the Crusades indeed witnessed the last Arab tribal confederation to hold any sort of political power until the Al Sauds (the Al Fadl of the Banu Tayy on the fringes of Syria), they were already bit players. All important Islamic players and armies of the period were either Turkish (Tutush, Zengi, the Seljuqs) or Kurdish (Saladin), or composed of Slavic and African slaves (the Fatimites). They were already more like the Ottomans than the Abbasids; the old generation of Levantine-Arab powers, from the caliphates to the Byzantines, was already dead.

十字军与阿拉伯人作战：尽管十字军东征的地区和时期确实见证了直到沙特家族出现之前，最后一个掌握政治权力的阿拉伯部落联盟（叙利亚边境巴努泰伊部落的阿尔法德勒家族），但他们已经无足轻重。这一时期所有重要的伊斯兰势力和军队要么是土耳其人（图特什、赞吉、塞尔柱人），要么是库尔德人（萨拉丁），要么由斯拉夫和非洲奴隶组成（法蒂玛人）。他们已经更像奥斯曼人，而非阿拔斯人；从哈里发国到拜占庭帝国的黎凡特阿拉伯旧势力早已消亡。

The curved scimitar is the “Arab sword”: No, it was the Turkish sword, made for cutting. Arab swords curved to the front, and hit like a sickle. The medi “Saracens” were no more Arabs than the Spanish “Moors” were North Africans, or the invading “Franks” a Germanic tribe.

弯曲的弯刀是“阿拉伯剑”：不，它是土耳其剑，用于劈砍。阿拉伯剑的弧度朝前，攻击起来像镰刀。中世纪的“撒拉森人”并不比西班牙的“摩尔人”更像阿拉伯人，而入侵的“法兰克人”也并非日耳曼部落。

The Crusades were a war to defend the West from Islamic aggression: This is 400 years off — the Islamic world was crumbling, overrun with nomadic invaders, famine, and drought, and the Crusades were part of the general wave of northern, semi-civilized peoples (from the Seljuks to the Normans to the Varangians) to come and get a piece of the big and increasingly undefended Mediterranean pie.

十字军东征是一场保卫西方免受伊斯兰侵略的战争：这种说法晚了400年——当时的伊斯兰世界正在分崩离析，充斥着游牧入侵者、饥荒和旱灾，而十字军东征是北方半文明民族（从塞尔柱人到诺曼人再到瓦良格人）前来瓜分这片庞大且日益失去防御的地中海“蛋糕”的浪潮的一部分。

The 4th Crusade was a surprise, or somehow shocking: The men who attacked the Holy Land had been trying to take Constantinople a generation earlier, and the 4th Crusade was merely the logical conclusion of the whole affair. Christianity and Islam were labels, not determinants.

第四次十字军东征是一个意外，或是令人震惊的事件：上一代人中，那些进攻圣地的人就已经试图攻占君士坦丁堡，第四次十字军东征不过是整个事件的合理结果。基督教和伊斯兰教只是标签，而非决定性因素。
 
Alex 
亚历克斯 
 
1: They really did not matter
To the Christian world, the Crusades mattered. Firstly because the Crusades were not limited to the Middle East. There were Spanish Crusades, Crusades in France, Crusades into the Baltics, and even Crusades in Bohemia. The idea of a Christian Holy war was created and for 400 years they were fought. But to the Muslims- it mattered none. It went almost entirely unnoticed. Muslims were almost completely unaware it happened at all.

1：它们其实无关紧要
对于基督教世界而言，十字军东征意义重大。首先，十字军东征并不局限于中东地区，还有西班牙十字军东征、法国十字军东征、波罗的海十字军东征，甚至还有波西米亚十字军东征。基督教圣战的理念由此诞生，并延续了400年的战争。但对于穆斯林来说，这根本无关紧要，几乎完全无人在意，穆斯林几乎完全没有意识到这场战争的发生。

The vast majority of the Muslim world was untouched. The crucial economic centers of Persia and Egypt went untouched. Only a narrow strip of land along the coast was ever impacted. The few Muslims that knew of the wars thought they were just further conflicts with the Byzantines. In other words- nobody in the Muslim world cared at all really. Saladin would have faded into obscurity had the Christian West not kept his memory alive as an icon of the era. In the 20th Century as the UK and France began to colonize the Middle East Muslim Scholars began to preach about the crusades and use them to fuel anti-European sentiments.

穆斯林世界的绝大部分地区都未受影响，波斯和埃及这些关键的经济中心也未被波及，只有沿海的一小片土地受到了影响。少数知晓这些战争的穆斯林也只是将其视为与拜占庭人的又一次冲突。换句话说，穆斯林世界里根本没人真正在意这件事。若不是西方基督教世界将萨拉丁奉为那个时代的标志性人物使其被铭记，他早已湮没在历史的尘埃中。20世纪，随着英法开始殖民中东，穆斯林学者开始宣扬十字军东征，并借此激起反欧情绪。

2: Religion was hardly the only factor at play The Crusades only happened because of multiple factors Popes trying to assert control of the Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire trying to retake Anatolia Christian lords trying to establish Kingdoms Muslims wanting to negatively impact local rivals Lusting for wealth or loot Now religion was 100% a significant factor. None of these above-listed causes are alone to blame. Rather you need all of them to explain the motivations behind the Crusades. The Byzantines would have never requested help from Europe had they not lost Anatolia to the Muslims. Pope Urban would not have called for a Crusade had he not been in Rome like normal but instead he was in Paris, fighting with the HRE and an “anti-Pope”.

2：宗教绝非唯一的影响因素
十字军东征的爆发是多种因素共同作用的结果：教皇试图掌控拜占庭帝国；拜占庭帝国试图夺回安纳托利亚；基督教领主试图建立王国；穆斯林想要打击当地对手；对财富或战利品的觊觎。宗教无疑是一个重要因素，但上述原因没有哪一个可以单独成为诱因，只有结合所有这些因素，才能解释十字军东征背后的动机。如果拜占庭人没有将安纳托利亚输给穆斯林，他们绝不会向欧洲寻求援助；如果乌尔班教皇像往常一样待在罗马，而不是身处巴黎与神圣罗马帝国和“对立教皇”争斗，他也不会发起十字军东征。

3: They were not that brutal or violent
Cities were destroyed in the Crusades and populations were slaughtered. But in the context of Middle Ages warfare, the Crusades were not particularly brutal, violent, or large. Nothing really happened out of the ordinary. Both Muslims and Christians slaughtered whole cities of people and killed prisoners. However, this was not out of the ordinary and in fact was extremely common. Given how hard it was to reinforce a Crusader army most “Crusades” were done after a few battles. None of the Crusades were particularly long or violent. Muslims of that era experienced multiple conflicts that were far larger as did the Christian world. 

3：它们并没有那么残酷暴力
十字军东征期间，城市被摧毁，民众被屠杀。但放在中世纪战争的背景下，十字军东征并不算特别残酷、暴力，规模也不算大。没有什么事情是超乎寻常的，穆斯林和基督徒都曾屠戮整座城市的居民、残杀俘虏，但这种行为在当时十分常见，并非特例。由于十字军军队很难得到增援，大多数“十字军东征”都只进行了几场战役便结束了，没有哪一场的持续时间特别长，也没有哪一场格外暴力。那个时代的穆斯林和基督教世界都经历过规模大得多的冲突。

4: The Crusader Kingdoms did not try and convert anyone.
Most Crusader Kingdoms even employed Muslims as legal advisors. Funny enough Muslims were allowed in these Kingdoms and really left alone to live their lives. They enjoyed the same rights as any other peasant (which wasn’t a lot if we are being honest). This idea that Crusaders were bloodthirsty savage zealots is mostly a myth.

4：十字军王国并未试图强迫任何人改宗
大多数十字军王国甚至聘请穆斯林担任法律顾问。有意思的是，穆斯林可以在这些王国中生活，且不会被干扰，他们享有和其他农民一样的权利（说实话，这种权利并不多）。那种认为十字军是嗜血野蛮的狂热分子的看法，大多是荒诞的说法。

5: The Muslim Empires and Kingdoms were not peaceful nor were they unfairly attacked
The Crusades are often frxd as this horrid unjust war of aggression against a peaceful civilization. This could not be further from the truth. First, the Muslim Empires were extremely warlike and aggressive. If the conquest of the Levant was horrible then what about the Muslim conquest of Syria, Egypt, Anatolia, Spain, North Africa, and Sicily? There is no good guy here

5：穆斯林帝国和王国并非爱好和平，也并非遭到不公的攻击
十字军东征常被描述为一场针对和平文明的可怕的非正义侵略战争，但这与事实相去甚远。首先，穆斯林帝国非常好战且极具侵略性。如果说黎凡特的征服是可怕的，那么穆斯林对叙利亚、埃及、安纳托利亚、西班牙、北非和西西里的征服又该如何看待呢？这场战争里没有所谓的好人。
 
6: Crusaders and Muslims actually respected one another
At the end of the 3rd Crusade the two leaders- Saladin and Richard the Lionheart, had grown fond of each other.

十字军与穆斯林实际上互相敬重
第三次十字军东征末期，两位领袖——萨拉丁与狮心王理查，已然对彼此产生了好感

Saladin was respected as the image of generosity, chivalry, and respect. His actions like donating his entire wealth to the poor, providing medicine and food to a sick Richard, or releasing captive Crusaders earned him significant respect.
Richard was seen as a brilliant strategist and great ruler. Even men in the Muslim army respected his martial ability and appreciated how he tried to work closely with Muslim Emirs.

萨拉丁被视为慷慨、勇武且有涵养的典范，他将全部财产捐赠给穷人、为患病的理查提供药物与食物、释放被俘的十字军战士，这些举动为他赢得了极高的敬重
理查被看作是一位杰出的战略家与伟大的统治者，就连穆斯林军队中的士兵也钦佩他的军事才能，并且赞赏他尝试与穆斯林埃米尔紧密合作的做法
 
John Jefferson
约翰・杰斐逊

Probably the single biggest misconception about The Crusades was that they were actually a big deal.

关于十字军东征，最普遍的一大误解，就是认为它是一件影响重大的历史事件

Now crusades were a big deal, but The Crusades, the conflict over the holy land wasn’t. The most important crusades are the virtually unknown Northern Crusades (fought against Pagans in the Baltic region) and the Reconquista, both of which involved far more knights, and had far more permanent effects on the history of their respective regions than the crusades in the holy land ever did.

十字军东征这类战争的确意义重大，但争夺圣地的那场十字军东征却并非如此。最为重要的十字军东征，是鲜为人知的北方十字军东征（在波罗的海地区对抗异教徒）以及收复失地运动，这两场战争参与的骑士数量要多得多，并且对各自地区的历史产生的持久影响，远远超过了圣地的十字军东征。

​The Crusades in the holy land were only able to control a few coastal enclaves, and only because the middle east was in a state of chaos due to the collapse of the caliphate and Turkic, and later Mongolian invasions. The control of major inland cities was never able to be sustained and Jerusalem was lost within 90 years, with the rest of the history of the crusades consisting of failed attempts at retaking the city while steadily losing more ground, and all this despite the fact that the Islamic world was constantly being devastated in this period by eastern nomadic invaders.

圣地的十字军东征仅掌控了几处沿海飞地，还只是因为当时中东因哈里发政权的崩溃、突厥人以及后来蒙古人的入侵而陷入混乱。他们始终无法维持对内陆主要城市的控制，耶路撒冷在90年内就失守了，之后的十字军东征历史，全都是夺回这座城市的失败尝试，同时还在不断丢失领地，而即便如此，当时的伊斯兰世界还一直在遭受东方游牧入侵者的蹂躏

The Crusades mattered more in Western Europe as a set of stories than in terms of the actual events that occurred

对于西欧而言，十字军东征作为一系列传说的意义，要远大于其实际发生的事件本身的意义

The Crusades for the holy land were mainly notable because of how romanticized they were. With numerous poems and epics being written about it, with much of that coming to help define the concept of Chivalry, that all encompassing ideal that all of European nobility strove to achieve.

争夺圣地的十字军东征之所以引人注目，主要是因为它被极度浪漫化了。有大量诗歌与史诗以它为主题创作，其中很大一部分内容还帮助定义了骑士精神的概念——这是欧洲所有贵族都力求实现的崇高理想。

And it’s not difficult to see why, it’s a far more romantic adventure than any of the other crusades: Spain was close by and well known, not exotic at all, the baltics was a dark forested environment not all that different from where many of the crusaders themselves came from, home to uncivilized barbarian pagans, while the Holy Land was home to the holy sites of Christendom to the great and powerful Islamic realms, the most civilized and powerful parts of the known world, bordered by the remains of the Roman Empire, that the Frankish Crusaders still saw themselves living in the shadow of.

个中缘由不难理解：这场战争相比其他十字军东征，是一场浪漫得多的冒险：西班牙近在咫尺且为人熟知，完全不算异域之地；波罗的海是幽暗的森林地带，和许多十字军战士的故乡并无太大不同，是未开化的蛮族异教徒的家园；
而圣地是基督教的圣地所在，地处强大的伊斯兰王国境内，那是当时已知世界中最文明、最强大的区域，毗邻罗马帝国的遗迹，而法兰克十字军仍认为自己活在罗马帝国的阴影之下。

Due to the more civilized nature of Islamic realm, they presented a far more worthy foe, one equal to the crusaders, unlike the savages of the baltics. Due to the more cohesive nature of the Muslim states in the Near East as opposed to Spain, greater singlular opponents, great personas such as Saladin, could arise to focus on, unlike in fractious Muslim Spain whose states are almost too numerous to count, each weaker and less significant than the last. And last of all, the Holy Land was far from their home, both in distance and in terms of environment, making it an interesting and exotic setting for the epic poetry of the time.

由于伊斯兰王国更为文明，他们是远比波罗的海的野蛮人更配得上的对手，与十字军实力相当。近东的穆斯林国家相比西班牙的穆斯林国家更为团结，因此能崛起萨拉丁这样伟大的个体对手，成为众人关注的焦点，而派系林立的西班牙穆斯林国家数量多得几乎数不清，一个比一个弱小、无足轻重。最后一点，圣地无论在距离还是环境上，都与十字军的故乡相去甚远，成为了当时史诗创作的一个有趣而充满异域风情的背景

This image of chivalrous christian knights battling against their equals, muslim knights is far more interesting than this one
of knights pretty much massacring pagans that are little more than peasants.

这种基督教骑士与实力相当的穆斯林骑士展开英勇对决的画面，要比另一种画面有意思得多
也就是骑士们大肆屠戮和普通农民别无二致的异教徒的画面

And the fact of the matter is that after the the middle ages The Crusades were pretty much forgotten. The people of the Renaissance and the enlightenment viewed the middle ages as a terrible time, best forgotten and ignored, and had no respect for the mythology of Chivalry and the accompanying stories of The Crusades. It was only during the Victorian Era when the nations of Europe were developing their national myths and stories and started looking to romanticize the Middle Ages that the Crusades came back into vogue.

而实际情况是，中世纪结束后，十字军东征几乎被人遗忘。文艺复兴和启蒙运动时期的人们将中世纪视为一段糟糕的时期，认为最好将其遗忘、置之不理，并且不推崇骑士精神的神话以及相关的十字军东征故事。直到维多利亚时代，欧洲各国在构建自己的民族神话与故事，开始将中世纪浪漫化时，十字军东征才重新流行起来。

However they were a bit bi-polar about it, inheriting a negative view of the era from the enlightenment which is why popular culture today simultaneously sees the Crusaders as chivalrous knights or savage religious fanatics running around massacring everything in sight in increasingly barbarous ways (while the Crusaders did commit massacres, they were pretty much par for the course for the time by the rules of warfare during that era. The really shocking massacres that were notable for exceeding the standards of the time was the GENOCIDE of the Jews in Western Europe which has been completely forgotten by history except for a few specialist historians).

不过当时的人们对此的态度有些矛盾，他们继承了启蒙运动对那个时代的负面看法，这也是如今流行文化会同时将十字军战士看作勇武的骑士，或是残暴的宗教狂热分子——以愈发野蛮的方式屠戮视野中的一切的原因（虽然十字军确实实施过屠杀，但按照当时的战争规则，这种行为在那个时代实属常态。真正令人震惊、超出当时标准的屠杀，是西欧对犹太人的种族灭绝，这段历史除了少数专业历史学家之外，已经被彻底遗忘了）

It was even less of a big deal in the Middle East

在中东，它的影响就更小了

By the time the Europeans returned to colonize the Middle East in the late 1800’s, the crusades had pretty much been forgotten outside of the levantine coast (the only part of the Middle East the crusaders had been able to establish a prescence) and even there it wasn’t a major part of folk memory. The great medi hero that the Muslims of the Middle East remembered wasn’t Saladin, who had shattered crusader power, it was Baibars, the Mamluk who stopped the inexorable Mongol advance of destruction throughout the Muslim world.

到19世纪末欧洲人回来殖民中东时，除了黎凡特海岸（十字军唯一能在中东建立据点的地区）之外，十字军东征几乎已经被遗忘了，即便在黎凡特海岸，它也并非民间记忆的重要组成部分。中东穆斯林铭记的中世纪伟大英雄，并非击溃了十字军势力的萨拉丁，而是拜巴尔——这位马穆鲁克阻止了蒙古人势不可挡的攻势，避免伊斯兰世界被其摧毁

The myth of The Crusades that the Western Europeans had developed had to actually be introduced into the Middle East, where it was appropriated for the purposes of developing an Arab anti-colonial narrative. The crusades were remade into a conflict between Europeans and Arabs, as a precursor to the modern conflict against the rule of British and French empires over the Middle East. In actual fact in medi times no such conflict had occurred.

西欧构建的十字军东征的神话，其实是被引入中东的，在当地被借用来构建阿拉伯的反殖民叙事。十字军东征被重新塑造成欧洲人与阿拉伯人的冲突，作为对抗英法帝国统治中东这一现代冲突的前身。但事实上，中世纪时期并不存在这样的冲突

The Crusades weren’t a conflict between Christian Europeans and Muslim Arabs. Most European countries had no role in the Crusades, and Europeans and Christians were often times on the receiving end of Crusades (the Crusaders sacked Constantinople, the greatest city in Christendom at the time, the Teutonic Knights, the eponymous holy order of the Northern Crusades, spent most of its history fighting Slavic Christians, and the most devastating crusades were those waged against Christian heretics in Western Europe).

十字军东征并非基督教欧洲人与穆斯林阿拉伯人的冲突。大多数欧洲国家并未参与十字军东征，欧洲人和基督徒还常常是十字军东征的受害者（十字军洗劫了当时基督教世界最伟大的城市君士坦丁堡；北方十字军东征的同名圣条顿骑士团，其历史中的大部分时间都在与斯拉夫基督徒作战；而最具破坏性的十字军东征，是在西欧针对基督教异端发动的那些）。

Arabs played about as much of a role in the Crusades as your average European peasant, which is to say, very little. Warfare at that time was monopolized by the militarized nobility of the time, who owned the land, and monopolized political power. In Western Europe most of the knights that participated were Franks (Richard the Lionheart, the great English Crusader King couldn’t speak a word of English and had barely visited England) with a few Germans on the side.

阿拉伯人在十字军东征中扮演的角色，和普通欧洲农民差不多，也就是几乎没什么作用。当时的战争由军事化的贵族垄断，他们拥有土地，并且掌控着政治权力。
在西欧，参与东征的骑士大多是法兰克人（伟大的英格兰十字军国王狮心王理查，一句英语都不会说，并且几乎没去过英格兰），还有少数德国人。

It is for this reason that the word for Westerner, or European in the region to this day is “frank.” Meanwhile the militarized upper classes of the Middle East at this time weren’t Arabs but Turkic warriors with a smattering of Kurds (Saladin who is today used by Palestinian and Arab nationalists as an icon of Arab resistance against a foreign conqueror whose victories are meant to presage the supposedly coming victory against the Israeli Zionists was a Kurd, a people who are today persecuted by those same Arab nationalists and who consider themselves to be allied with Israel).

正因如此，直到今天，该地区仍用“法兰克”一词来指代西方人或欧洲人。
与此同时，当时中东的军事化上层阶级并非阿拉伯人，而是突厥武士，还有少量库尔德人（如今被巴勒斯坦和阿拉伯民族主义者当作阿拉伯反抗外来征服者象征的萨拉丁，是库尔德人，而如今库尔德人正遭受这些阿拉伯民族主义者的迫害，并且库尔德人认为自己与以色列结盟）

This brings me to my next point which is that the Islamic World at that time had much bigger issues to deal with, mainly the fact that the Abbasid Caliphate, that claimed succession from the Prophet Muhammad himself, was in the process of collapsing and the entire region was being taken over by half pagan (they were nominally Muslims but much of their cultural and religious practices were still the same as before their nominal conversion), Turkic barbarian nomadic warriors. This led to a crisis of faith in much of the Muslim Near East with the crusades being a slight nuisance next to that calamity, and it only got worse from there.

这就引出了我的下一个观点：当时的伊斯兰世界有更重大的问题需要解决，主要是宣称继承了先知穆罕默德衣钵的阿拔斯哈里发国正在崩溃，整个地区正被半异教徒（他们名义上是穆斯林，但大部分文化和宗教习俗仍和皈依之前一样）的突厥蛮族游牧武士掌控。这导致近东的大部分穆斯林陷入信仰危机，相比这场灾难，十字军东征不过是小麻烦而已，而之后的情况还变得更糟了

It seemed like things were calming down for the Muslim Middle East: their new Turkic overlords were beginning to become civilized Muslims, and speak a proper language for Islamic rulers, Persian, and the Western Barbarians on the Levantine coast were suffering defeat after defeat, and would soon be gone. It was at this time that the worst calamity the Muslim world had ever suffered would come, a force of nature the Muslim world would never forget. Even to this day their memory remains strong. They would unleash a devastation that the Muslim World would never truly recover from. They were the Mongols.

中东的穆斯林世界似乎正在恢复平静：他们的新突厥统治者开始成为文明的穆斯林，并且开始使用适合伊斯兰统治者的语言——波斯语；黎凡特海岸的西方蛮族接连战败，很快就会被赶走。但就在这时，伊斯兰世界遭遇了有史以来最严重的灾难，这是一股伊斯兰世界永远不会忘记的强大力量，直到今天，相关的记忆依然清晰。他们带来的破坏，让伊斯兰世界永远无法真正恢复。他们就是蒙古人

Here are but a few of the devastations the Mongols unleashed upon the Islamic world:

以下只是蒙古人给伊斯兰世界带来的部分浩劫：

Killed 90% of Iran’s population, causing it to drop from 2.5 million to 250,000. Iran’s population didn’t recover until the early 20th century, nearly 800 years later.
Utterly destroyed the great Iranian cities of Central Asia, some of which had populations as high as half a million. It was these lands that gave birth to many of the great Islamic philosophers and scientists of the preceding age and many of the greatest Farsi poets, such as Ferdowsi. From this point onwards it would become a turkic dominated backwater.

屠杀了伊朗90%的人口，使其人口从250万锐减至25万，伊朗的人口直到近800年后的20世纪初才恢复。
彻底摧毁了中亚地区宏伟的伊朗城市，其中部分城市的人口曾高达50万。这些土地孕育了此前时代的众多伟大伊斯兰哲学家、科学家，以及菲尔多西等最伟大的波斯诗人。从那时起，这片地区沦为突厥人掌控的落后之地。

Utterly annihilated the city of Baghdad, killing 2 million people according to Arab sources. It went from being the seat of the caliphate, that had dominated the middle east for centuries, the seat of global science, culture, and philosophy, to being a minor arab city. It would never re-attain its former greatness.
Under Tamerlane, the Mongols would come back for Round 2 a century later, and repeat that massive slaughter once more.
By comparison the Crusaders had one successful campaign, where they sacked a couple of minor cities, at a time when the new Turkic rulers were consolidating their gains, and couldn’t be bothered to fight them, and then proceeded to incompetently bungle around with highlights being:

他们彻底摧毁了巴格达，据阿拉伯史料记载，有200万人丧生。这座曾经是统治中东数世纪的哈里发国的都城、全球科学、文化与哲学的中心，沦为一座无足轻重的阿拉伯城市，再也没能恢复往日的辉煌。
一个世纪后，帖木儿率领蒙古人卷土重来，再次制造了大规模的屠杀
相比之下，十字军只有一场成功的战役，他们洗劫了几座小城，当时新的突厥统治者正在巩固自己的战果，没心思和他们交战，之后十字军就开始接连拙劣地把事情搞砸，其中的“高光”事件包括：

They sacked the city of Constantinople, the bulwark that had held back the Muslim forces for generations. At this time the Byzantime Empire was actually quite strong and had recovered most of the land they had lost since Manzikert and showed no signs of slowing down, until the Venetians and Crusaders put a stop to this. This power vacuum allowed various turkic tribes to move into Anatolia and would later be filled by the Ottoman Empire establishing one of the greatest Muslim Empires in history, one that reached all the way to Vienna, one of the major centres of European power, right in the heart of Europe. In short, Crusader actions destroyed the Roman Empire, the greatest Christian Empire in history, and led to the rise of the Ottomans who conquered much of Europe.

他们洗劫了君士坦丁堡——这座数个世纪以来抵御穆斯林势力的堡垒。当时拜占庭帝国其实相当强大，已经收复了自曼齐克特之战后丢失的大部分领土，而且毫无衰落的迹象，直到威尼斯人和十字军终结了这一切。权力真空让各个突厥部落得以迁入安纳托利亚，后来奥斯曼帝国填补了这个真空，建立了历史上最伟大的穆斯林帝国之一，其疆域一直延伸到欧洲的核心地带、欧洲权力的主要中心之一维也纳。简而言之，十字军的行动摧毁了历史上最伟大的基督教帝国——罗马帝国，还促成了征服欧洲大片土地的奥斯曼帝国的崛起

The Great St. Louis, King of France led a Crusade in Egypt where he proceeded to get himself and his entire army captured, bankrupted France ransoming him and all his knights back, then proceeded to further bankrupt France and expel all the Jews so he could steal their money, so he could launch another Crusade in Tunisia, of all places, so him and his army could immediately die of disease upon landing. For these stunning achievements, he was made a saint.
Have the Holy Roman Emperor spend years and loads of cash building up an army of 100,000 men and then have him drown while crossing a river that wasn’t even up to his hips, so the army just turned around and walked back.

伟大的圣路易，也就是法国国王，在埃及领导了一场十字军东征，结果他自己和整个军队都被俘获，为了赎回他和麾下的骑士，法国陷入了破产；之后他又让法国进一步破产，还驱逐了所有犹太人，窃取他们的钱财，只为了在突尼斯发动另一场十字军东征，结果他和他的军队刚登陆就死于疾病。就因为这些“惊人的成就”，他被封圣了
神圣罗马帝国皇帝耗时数年、花费巨资组建了一支10万人的军队，结果在渡过一条水深还没到他臀部的河流时淹死了，这支军队只好折返回家

Completely giving up on Crusading, setting themselves up on a random island in the Mediterranean, and pursuing a new career in piracy, attacking both Muslim and Christian ships, stealing their cargo and selling those on board as slaves all the way up until the time of Napoleon.
In short for your average Muslim living in the region of the time this
was the greatest threat to civilization, the destroyers of the world’s great cities, “ the punishment of God.”
This on the other hand was a minor nuissance of a barbarian, one who was weak, far away from home, less advanced and could easily be dealt with once the greater threat was dealt with.

他彻底放弃十字军东征，在地中海的一座无名小岛上定居，转行当起了海盗，袭击穆斯林和基督徒的船只，劫掠货物，还把船上的人卖为奴隶，一直持续到拿破仑时代。
简而言之，对于当时生活在该地区的普通穆斯林来说，这是文明最大的威胁，是世界伟大城市的摧毁者，是“上帝的惩罚”
而另一方面，这不过是一个微不足道的蛮族麻烦，弱小、远离故土、落后无知，只要解决了更强大的威胁，就能轻易将其处理

For most of the history of The Crusades, the crusaders controlled little more than an enclave around the port city of Acre, and were tolerated there as traders, and because it was inconvenient to take such a well fortified city. They never truly succeeded in expanding beyond it permanently, with most of their gains being quickly lost again. Once the Mongol threat had subsided, being defeated by the Mamluk Baibars, the last Crusader stronghold’s days were numbered. Their last fortress, Acre, was taken in a side campaign conducted by the Mamluks in the Mamluk-Mongol War in revenge for the Crusaders siding with the Mongols.
TLDR;The main crusades that we think about today, those that were fought in the holy land, were not that important at the time for either side, and have been twisted today to fit modern nationalist narratives.

在十字军东征的大部分历史中，十字军掌控的不过是港口城市阿克周边的一块飞地，他们能在那里被容忍，是因为他们充当了商人，而且拿下这座防御坚固的城市很麻烦。他们从未成功实现永久的扩张，夺取的大部分领地很快就再次丢失。一旦蒙古人的威胁被马穆鲁克的拜巴尔击败而消退，十字军最后的据点也就时日无多了。他们最后的堡垒阿克，是马穆鲁克在马穆鲁克-蒙古战争的一场附带战役中攻占的，目的是报复十字军与蒙古人结盟的行为简言之；如今我们所熟知的、在圣地发生的那些主要的十字军东征，在当时对双方而言都算不上重要，而如今却被歪曲，以迎合现代民族主义叙事