The Islam-West Conflict: A Historical Study
The
current conflict between Islam and the West — from human rights issues
in Muslim countries, to anti-Western violence by radical Muslims, to
their campaigns against liberal lifestyle and ethos and for instituting
Sharia law in Western countries — should be seen not as separate from
the historical Islam-West conflicts. Theologically, Islam was born to
create a global Islamic state governed by laws of the Quran and Sunnah,
i.e. Sharia. But most Muslims understand that the age-old campaign for
the imposition of Sharia law through violent means in the West is
unrealistic under current circumstances. However, current demographic
trends suggest that Muslims would become — resulting from high
birthrates and their increasing influx from overpopulated Muslim
countries amidst decline in the native population — the dominant
religious group in many Western countries by the middle of this century.[64] The current ratio of Muslim to non-Muslim birthrate is 3:1 in Europe;[65] Muslims constitute only 10% of the population in France, but 30% of the youths under the age of 20 are Muslims.[66] Lewis predicted in 2004 that ‘Current trends show Europe will have a Moslem majority by the end of the 21st century at the latest… Europe will be part of the Arabic West, of the Maghreb.’[67]
With the Muslim population growing in
leaps and bounds, the campaign for instituting Sharia laws, and,
therefore, Islamic governance in Western countries will, in all
likelihood, intensify over the coming decades. Whether or not would this
campaign succeed remains to be seen. If it does, Islam will overcome
its long-standing hurdle to Islamize the globe resolutely held back by
the West for so many centuries.
Introduction
With Marxist-Communist regimes’ collapse ending the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama argued in 1989 that liberal democracy may signal the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the final form of governance, which would eventually be adopted globally.[1] Fukuyama’s thesis had two seminal assumptions:
(a) Triumph of civilized liberal democracy globally
(b) Emergence of a nonconflictual world civilization
Samuel Huntington’s Civilizational Clash
thesis, proposed in 1993, challenged both assumptions of Fukuyama.
Regarding the triumph of civilized liberal democracy globally,
Huntington emphasized that ‘Law and order’, ‘the first prerequisite of Civilization,’ were evaporating or under threat everywhere — China, Japan and the United States included. Globally, ‘Civilization seems in many respects to be yielding to barbarism… a global Dark Age possibly descending on humanity,’ he wrote.[2]
Opposed to Fukuyama’s proposed emergence of a nonconflictual world
civilization, Huntington emphasized that conflicts in the world were not
over. However, future conflicts would likely be fought along
civilizational fault-lines over cultural or religious differences, not
along national lines over ideological (political) or economic reasons. ‘The
clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines
between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future,’ he predicted.[3]
Identifying seven to eight major
civilizations, namely Indian, Chinese, Asian, Islamic, Western etc.,
Huntington emphasized that, instead of converging towards universal
liberalism globally, human consciousness within these civilizations is
increasingly parochializing: people are becoming increasingly conscious
of their cultural, religious or civilizational values. Huntington’s
thesis gets a significant space for Islamic resurgence, simply because
religious resurgence amongst Muslims in recent decades much outweighs
the rejuvenation of civilizational consciousness amongst other peoples.
Islam has Bloody Borders, Muslims are involved in majority of the world’s conflicts, says Huntington, which is rather evident. ‘The
overwhelming majority of fault line conflicts, however, have taken
place along the boundary lopping across Eurasia and Africa that
separates Muslims from non-Muslims,’ he writes, adding, ‘wherever one looks along the perimeter of Islam, Muslims have problems living peaceably with their neighbors.’[4]
Although Huntington analyzes how
different civilizations would likely interplay in reshaping the
world-order in the emerging era, his analysis regarding Islam has become
a bone of contention. Critics have attacked his whole thesis as a
forced construction of an inevitable Islam–West conflict, nonexistent in
reality. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, argues Robinson, is based on ‘the old Western polemic against Islam, Western fears of Islam, and a strong dose of Orientalism’. Robinson emphasizes that ‘there
is a long history of the Muslim and the Christian civilizations drawing
on each other, and being enriched by each other, and this is a process
which, whatever the rhetoric, still continues.’[5]
With Communism brought down, many critics have argued that the
inherently hegemonic and militaristic West needed a new enemy:
Huntington’s thesis was an effort to invent one. It set out ‘to identify “new sources” of international conflicts in the post-Cold War world.’[6] Said mockingly called Huntington’s thesis The Clash of Ignorance, concluding: ‘‘The
Clash of Civilizations’ thesis is a gimmick like ‘The War of the
Worlds,’ better for reinforcing defensive self-pride than for critical
understanding of the bewildering interdependence of our time.’[7]
After the September 11 (2001) attacks in
the U.S., the international media was abuzz with Huntington’s thesis:
his supporters saw his prophesy being fulfilled, while his opponents
intensified their attacks on him for deliberately creating a paradigm
that may fuel a fateful conflict between Islam and the West. His more
avowed conspiratorial critics suggested that, prompted by Huntington’s
thesis, the U.S. administration itself committed the 9/11 attacks for
advancing its hegemonic interests: the occupation of Afghanistan and
Iraq, for example. On Huntington’s dilemma, Ayaan Hirsi Ali concludes: ‘Foretelling
the future can be fun for astrologists, prophets and crystal-ball
gazers. For academics, it is not. If you get it right, you will be
damned like Samuel Huntington. If you get it wrong, you will be called a
certified idiot.’[8]
To former U.S. President Clinton’s assertion that the West has no problems with Islam, Huntington retorted:
The relations
between Islam and Christianity, both orthodox and Western, have often
have been stormy. Each has been the other’s Other. The twentieth century
conflict between Liberal Democracy and Marxist-Leninism is only a
fleeting and superficial historical phenomenon compared to the
continuing and deeply conflictual relations between Islam and
Christianity.[9]
A historical investigation, however,
proves Huntington right. Islam, just two decades after its birth, came
in conflict with the Christian West, and it has remained so except for
rare brief respites. Who can deny the existence of the Crusades or the
European colonial occupation of Islamic countries? Still, numerous
scholars and critics have trashed the idea of Civilization Clash,
especially one between Islam and the West. Christian Europe, not Islam,
they argue, has been historically intolerant to non-Christians: Jews in
Europe and Muslims in Spain. On the contrary, Christians, Jews and even
Heathens found tolerance, peace and prosperity in the Muslim land. It is
the Christian West that captured much of the Muslim and non-Muslim
lands in the abhorrent colonial era. Islam could, therefore, pose no
threat to the West.
In this study, the historical conflict
between Islam and the West will be investigated aiming to understand
what factors fueled it, and how its legacy affects the present
Islam-West relations.
Islamic doctrine and the birth of Islam-West conflict
Islam was founded by the Prophet
Muhammad in the Arabian Peninsula during the last 23 years of his life
(610–632 CE). While founding Islam, he had directed 70–100 raids and
wars. These wars were inspired, even directed, by verses of the Quran,
the Islamic holy book, which Muslims believe, contains God’s words in
immutable forms for guiding humankind. Having captured the Arabian
Peninsula, Muhammad organized two campaigns against the Christians of
Muta and Tabuk in Syria, a part of Byzantium—the world’s most powerful
empire. The commands of Islamic God (Allah) contained in Quranic verses
are binding on Muslims for all time, whilst the Prophet Muhammad’s
actions and deeds constitute ideal templates for them to do likewise.
Therefore, after Muhammad’s death, his successors continued the tempo of
his conquests. Within two decades, Muslims overran the world’s
second-mightiest empire, Persia, and captured the prized territory from
Byzantium. Islamic depredations of Western Europe began in 652, exactly
two decades after Muhammad’s death when Muslims occupied Spain in 711,
establishing Islamic rule lasting some 780 years. Europe sustained
numerous Muslim attacks until the last decade of the seventeenth
century.
In this context, it is critical to
understand the Prophet Muhammad’s doctrine of war that had inspired and
enabled Muslims to easily overrun often much stronger oppositions over
great parts of the world, and enabled them to own half of the know
world.
The Islamic doctrine of war:
The Prophet Muhammad, born in Mecca in Arabia c. 570, grew up as an
idol-worshipping Pagan like his compatriots. At the age of 25, after
marrying a wealthy Christianity-influenced woman, Khadija, and
associating with her devout Christian cousin, Muhammad stopped
worshipping idols. He allegedly obtained prophethood from God for
preaching Islam in 610. Allah, his God, was the same Christian or Jewish
God, who had allegedly sent 124,000 prophets, Muhammad being the last.
Islam, claims Allah, is His final perfected religion chosen as His favor
to all humankind [Quran 5:3][10]
and it must be proclaimed over all other creeds [Quran 48:28]. It was
chosen as the sole religion—abrogating the rest—for all mankind.
The Prophet Muhammad tried to preach his
religion persuasively in his hometown, Mecca, for 13 years with very
little success. His messages were hostile and insulting to existing
religion and customs: he called himself and his followers the righteous,
and those, who ignored his messages, were wicked, liars, wrong-doers
and inventors of falsehood; he consigned them to eternal hellfire [Quran
56:41–46, 17:20, 16:104–5]. The Meccans generally ignored his message;
he never faced violence from them. Having failed in Mecca he relocated
in 622 to Medina—about 250 miles North of Mecca—where his creed becoming
popular. Medina was inhabited by two religious communities: Pagans and
Jews, the latter wealthier and more influential.[11]
The Pagans joined his creed in large numbers, while the Jews mostly
rejected it. Allah revealed many verses exhorting the Jews (also
Christians) to accept Muhammad’s new creed [Quran 2:30–38, 240–261], but
failed to impress them.
Muhammad’s community now strengthened
and secured, Allah changed his strategy for making Islam to prevail over
all religions. He then revealed the doctrine of ‘Jihad’ or ‘holy war’
against non-Muslims, who reject his faith. ‘Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you’ [Quran 2:190]. Allah now commands Muslims: ‘…slay
them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have
turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter’[12] [Quran 2:191] and ‘…fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah’ [Quran 2:193]. Allah repeats: ‘…fight
them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail
justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere…’ [Quran 8:39].
Muhammad’s followers were unwilling to
engage in this God-sanctioned violence against otherwise innocent people
to which Allah revealed another verse to make fighting binding on
Muslims even if they disliked it [Quran 2:216]. Still some peace-loving
converts had hesitated about fighting, fearing bloodbaths; Allah
admonished them as diseased and faint-hearted [Quran 47:20].
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This way Allah gave Muslims the divine right to attack non-Muslims. He sanctioned: ‘…some ye slew and ye made captive some. And He [Allah] caused you to inherit their land and their houses and their wealth…’
[Quran 33:26–27]. In other words, Allah commands Muslims to kill some
(normally the adults) and enslave the rest (the women and children) of
non-Muslim communities, and makes their lands and properties divinely
sanctioned booty for Muslims. Alternatively, Allah sanctioned the
banishment of non-Muslims enabling Muslims to acquire their homes,
properties and lands: ‘Allah had decreed banishment for them… because they resisted Allah and His Messenger…’ [Quran 59:3–4]. Allah sanctioned that Muslims can keep the women, captured in such holy wars, as sex-slaves (concubines): ‘O Prophet! Surely We [Allah] have made lawful to you your wives… [and] those whom Allah has given to you as prisoners of war’ [Quran 33:50].
The Islamic doctrine of global imperialism:
Islam is a complete package of divine guidance for governing the
spiritual, social and political aspects of human life and society. ‘[Islam]
is an all-embracing system, a complete code of life, bearing on and
including every phase of human activity and every aspect of human
conduct.’[13]
Through violent holy wars, Allah wants to establish Islamic rule,
governed by the Islamic holy laws (Sharia), over all peoples. Allah owns
the heaven and earth [Quran 24:42, 34:1] and holds absolute authority
over them [Quran 57:5, 67:1]. He would make Muslims the inheritors of
the earth [Quran 6:165], and help them triumph over it [Quran 24:55]. In
order to realize His dream, as Muslims wage holy war, Allah will assist
them in the fighting—thereby, helping them capture the lands of
non-Muslims bit by bit [Quran 21:44, 13:41].
In summary, Allah outlines in the Quran a
blueprint for establishing a religio-political imperial state over the
entire globe through Jihad. To inherit the earth, Allah commands,
Muslims must kill the Polytheists wherever they are found, and enslave
their women and children for converting to Islam, thereby capturing
their lands for establishing Islamic rule [Quran 9:5]. For acquiring the
lands controlled by monotheistic Jews and Christians, Muslims must
fight them, Allah commands, until they feel subdued and subjugated to
Muslim rule and pay special taxes [Quran 9:29]. Allah’s desired global
triumph of Islam will, thus, be completed.
With these unrestrained Godly sanctions
of aggressive violence for establishing a global Islamic state, the
Prophet Muhammad started attacking and plundering the non-Muslim
communities of Medina and Arabia. In 624, he attacked and exiled the
Jewish tribe of Banu Qainuqa from Medina, taking possession of their
homes, lands and properties.[14] Next year, the same fate was visited the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir.[15]
Banu Quraiza, the last Jewish tribe of Medina, was attacked in 627.
Their adult males—600 to 900 of them—were slaughtered, and their women
and children were enslaved.[16] Medina, which had given Muhammad refuge a few years earlier, was thus denuded of non-Muslims.
Medina became the first seat of Muslim
power. From here, the Islamic imperial state was to expand in all
directions. Khaybar—a Jewish stronghold, some 115 kilometers North of
Medina—was overrun in 629. Mecca, the heart of Islam and Muhammad’s
birthplace, was overrun in 630. Muhammad’s biographies by pious Muslim
historians list 70–100 raids and wars directed by him, personally
commanding 27 of them. In his attacks, he exiled entire tribes or
slaughtered the men, and enslaved the women and children—the enslaved
generally had to embrace Islam. Muhammad brought entire Arabia under the
feet of Islam during his nine-year campaign of conquests.
In 628, Muhammad, still quite weak
militarily, dared sending emissaries to the world’s most powerful
rulers—the King of Persia and Emperor Heraclius of Byzantium—demanding
that they submit to Islam, and accept Muhammad as their master, or face
consequences.[17]
Those rulers—to their own peril—ignored his threatening letters as the
exuberance of a madman. Prophet Muhammad himself dared leading a
30,000-strong army in October 630 to the Byzantine border in Syria, but
returned without going on the offensive.[18]
His successors carried forward his Jihad campaigns for realizing God’s
dream of establishing a global Islamic kingdom. Within two decades,
Muslims overran the mighty Persian Empire, and captured the Levant and
Egypt—the crown territories of Byzantium. Central Asia was annexed
within the seventh century; North Africa was conquered in 698; Northwest
India in 712–15; Central and North India by the early thirteenth
century; and South India in the late sixteenth century. Similar
conquests were undertaken in other fronts. Islamic campaigns against
Western Europe and the ensuing conflicts are discussed in following
sections.
The clash between Islam and the West
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Conflicts in the Mediterranean Islands and Sicily (652–1091):
Muslims brought Prophet Muhammad’s campaign of holy war to the far-off
shores of Western Europe exactly two decades after his death. The
Mediterranean island of Sicily suffered the first Jihad raid involving
pillage and plunder in 652, which was repeated in 669, 703, 728, 729,
730, 731, 733, 734, 740 and 752. Muslims also attacked other
Mediterranean islands — Sardinia, Ischia, Corsica and Lampedusa, then
under the Byzantine control. They devastated Ischia and Lampedusa in
813, attacked Sardinia and Corsica in the same year and Crete in 824.
The early Muslim incursions (652–752) on
Sicily failed to gain a foothold for Islam. The Islamic conquest of
Sicily started in real earnest when an Aghlabid Muslim army from Tunis
landed in Mazara del Vallo in 827. This started a long series of
battles: Palermo fell in 831, Pantelleria in 835, and Messina in 843.
Cefalù and Enna resisted Muslim assaults for many years before being
overrun, and razed to the ground in 858 and 859, respectively. Syracuse
succumbed to Muslim assaults in 878, and its whole population—including
those taken refuge in churches—were massacred.[19]
Catania fell in 900 and Taormina in 902. Sicily came under Muslim
control completely in about 915. Palermo, renamed al-Madinah, became the
new Islamic capital of the Emirate of Sicily, and Arabic replaced Greek
as the national language. A Norman conquest of Muslim Sicily, started
in 1061, led to eventual expulsion of Muslims in 1091.
Spain and France:
In 711, Musa ibn Nusair, the Muslim governor of North Africa and his
General, Tariq, crossed the Mediterranean Sea to attack Spain. The
reigning Visigoth King Rodrigo was defeated followed by mass slaughter
and enslavement, plunder and pillage; the churches and synagogues were
destroyed, and often replaced by mosques. The whirlwind march of Muslim
conquest moved northward: Toledo, Barcelona, and Girona were easily
captured. By 716, most of Iberia, except a few northern tracts, was
under the Muslim control.[20]
Meanwhile, Caliph al-Walid called Musa
back to Damascus. He marched back in a Romanesque procession with the
Caliph’s one-fifth share of the spoils: caravans of un-dreamt of wealth
and slaves, including 30,000 virgins captured from the Visigothic
families alone.[21]
The Muslim army crossed the mountainous
borderline of the Pyrenees into the Frankish territory. The Visigothic
Kingdom of Septimania [Languedoc] in Southern France quickly succumbed
(720). Muslims marched on, and attacked Toulouse in 721, suffering
severe reverses by an Aquitanian-Frank confederate force led by Duke
Eudo of Aquitaine. An allegedly 375,000-strong Islamic army was
thoroughly destroyed.[22] Although the figure is undoubtedly hyperbolic, it was, nonetheless, one of the worst military defeats in Muslim history.
The Muslim army, dedicated to holy wars
in the cause of their God, could hardly be restrained. In 725, their
raids reached Autun in the Frankish territory. A 60,000-strong Muslim
army marched on penetrating deep into France, and defeated Duke Eudo at
Aquitaine. Muslims sacked Aquitaine, and burned down Bordeaux. They
defeated Duke Eudo again near Agen with Eudo fleeing northward. As they
engaged in plundering, pillaging and burning the towns and churches,
Charles Martel joined Eudo, and took up position between Poitiers and
Tours. As the Frankish army stood immobile like a wall of ice,
the Muslim army made repeated small-scale charges only to be beaten back
every time. They tried all trickery to dislodge the Frankish line,
which, despite suffering heavily, stood its ground for one whole autumn.
Muslims launched the final charge on the first day of the Islamic holy
month of Ramadan (732 CE). In order to rally the sagging morale of his
increasingly disheartened fighters, Muslim commander Abd al-Rahman, the
governor of Al-Andalus [Iberia], led the charge himself, and perished,
which led to retreat of Muslims overnight. Balat ech shuada — the road of the martyr of the faith — had ended on this front.
From Spain, Muslims continued, albeit unsuccessfully, their incursions on the French borders for another two centuries.[23] Had they succeeded in this battle, there was no one to stop them in Europe; Europe would be Islamic today.[24] Edward Gibbon remarked tellingly: ‘…perhaps
the interpretation of the Quran would now be taught in the schools of
Oxford and her pulpit might demonstrate to a circumcised people the
sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.’[25]
An indigenous Spanish revolt against Muslim occupiers, called Reconquista, began in 718 lasting nearly eight centuries, and the Muslim colonists were completely dislodged from power in 1492.
Southern Italy:[26]
The Muslim warriors, checked at the border of France on the Iberian
front, also made strenuous efforts to penetrate into Europe through the
Mediterranean Italian Coast. The invaders devastated the coastal town
of Centumcellae [Civitavecchia] in 813 and again in 829. Hereafter,
Islamic incursions into mainland Italy came from Sicily, where Muslims
had established a colony.[27]
In 840, the Arabs made an incursion deep into Italy and devastated the
monastery of Subiaco. In 840, they conquered the coastal towns off
Benevento; Carolingian Emperor Ludovico II succeeded in ousting them in
871.
In 845, the Arabs penetrated deep inland
capturing Capo Miseno (Naples) and Ponza near Rome, making it their
base for attacking Rome. In 846, they ransacked Brindisi, and conquered
Taranto near the Southwest tip of Italy; Byzantine Emperor Basil I
succeeded in freeing Taranto in 880.
On 28 August 846, a Muslim fleet
arrived at the mouth of river Tiber, and sailed to attack Rome.
Meanwhile, a Muslim army from Civitavecchia and another from Portus and
Ostia marched on-land to join the expedition. They failed to penetrate
the enclosing walls around Rome, solidly defended by the Romans. The
Arabs vandalized and plundered the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul.
The Saxons, Longobards, Frisians and Franks staunchly defended St.
Peter, perishing to the last man. The invaders destroyed all the
churches of the district of Suburb. Pope Leo IV, forced to flee Rome
briefly, appealed for help from the neighboring kingdoms. Responding to
his plea, Marquis Guy of Spoleto counterattacked and defeated the Arabs.
While fleeing partly towards Civitavecchia and partly towards Fondi,
the Arabs indulged in ruin and devastation of the country. At Gaeta, the
Longobard army clashed with them again. Guy of Spoleto found himself in
serious difficulties, but the Byzantine troops of Cesarius from Naples
arrived in time to rescue him. This attack prompted the Pope to
undertake the construction of the Civitas Leonina in 848 to protect the
Vatican Hill.
In 848, Muslim invaders attacked and
sacked Ancona on the western coast of Italy. The next year, a huge
Muslim naval fleet set off to attack Rome, and met the Italian naval
fleet at the mouth of river Tiber near Ostia. In the confrontation, the
Arabs were routed.
In 856, the Arabs attacked and destroyed
the Cathedral of Canosa in Puglia. They assaulted and occupied Ascoli
in 861, slaughtered the children, and carried away the inhabitants as
captives. In 872, they attacked and besieged Salerno for six months,
before being freed by Emperor Ludovicus II.
In 876, they entered the Roman territory
again, and attacked Latium and Umbria, slaughtering the inhabitants,
enslaving them and sacking the villages, before marching towards Rome;
they turned the Roman country into an unhealthy desert. Pope John VIII
(872–882) defeated the Arabs at Circeo, and freed 600 enslaved
Christians from 18 Muslim vessels. He attempted to expel the Arabs after
the depredations, but with little help from European kings forthcoming,
he failed and was forced to pay tribute. Muslims continued their
devastation of Latium both on the coast and inland. Subiaco was
destroyed for a second time.
Muslim invaders continued consolidating
their conquest 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 continued through the 880s and 890s. By this time, Muslims
had plans to establish an Emirate in Southern Italy. In 916, Marquis
Adalbertus of Tusca, Marquis Albericus of Spoleto, Prince Landulf of
Capua and Benevento, Prince Gaimar of Salerno, the dukes of Gaeta and
Naples and Byzantine Emperor Constantine entered into an anti-Arab
alliance, with Pope John X personally heading the land troops. The Arabs
were totally defeated, and mainland Italy was freed from the invaders,
although Sicily remained under the Muslim control until 1091. Later on,
Muslims attacked Venice (Italy) in the 1420s, albeit from another front.
Ottoman attacks on Europe form the Byzantine front:
At the time of Islam’s birth, Byzantium (Eastern Roman Empire) had
bridged tracts of Europe with West Asia and North Africa. Muslim
invaders captured Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Tiberias, Cana, Tyre,
Sidon, Damascus, Caesarea and Egypt from Byzantium quite early in bloody
battles. They made naval attacks on Constantinople, the Byzantine
capital, first in 674, then in 677–78 and 717–18, suffering severe
reverses in each case.
In 838, Amorium (Anatolia) was captured
and devastated, yielding so large a number of slaves that Caliph
al-Mutasim sold them in batches of five or ten, while Sultan Alp Arslan
devastated Armenia (also Georgia) in 1064: those not enslaved were
slaughtered.[28]
The biggest Muslim blow to Byzantium yet came in 1071 when Sultan Alp
Arslan defeated the Byzantine army at Manzikert (Armenia) bringing the
Muslim army ominously close for a land-attack on Constantinople. By the
mid-fourteenth century, the Byzantine Empire on the east was mostly
captured except the tiny Bosporus or Istanbul Strait. This enabled the
Ottoman army to cross over to Europe via Thrace, east of Constantinople,
in the 1350s. In the 1360s, Islamic invaders seized Adrianople [now
Edirne] and Philippopolis [Plovdiv]. Adrianople became a royal residence
in 1366 to facilitate the Ottoman conquest of Europe.[29]
In the early 1370s, General Murad
started making incursions deeper into Europe. Having himself become the
Sultan in 1383, Murad intensified his campaigns, capturing the Bulgarian
capital Sofia and the city of Niš in 1385. Although the Serbs inflicted
a crushing defeat on the Ottomans in 1387 in the battle of Plocnik,
they marched anew deep into Europe two years later (1389). They defeated
a Serbian-Bulgarian coalition army at the battlefield of Kosovo Polje.
Murad quickly advanced into Bulgaria, and captured the cities of Dráma,
Kavála and Seres (Serrái), but the Sultan was killed by valiant Serb
warrior, Miloš Obilic. Having lost the capital Kosovo, the Jerusalem of the Serbian Empire, the Balkan was lost to the Muslim invaders.
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