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Sultan Qilij Arsalan of the Seljuq Sultanate of Asia Minor
Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On October 21, 1096 AD, Sultan Qilij Arsalan of the Seljuq Sultanate of Roum or Asia Minor, soundly defeated the first attempt by a large army of Christians of Western Europe to invade Muslim lands in their east. Known as the People's Crusade or the Peasants Crusade, a 40,000 strong force of thugs, robbers and killers from France, Germany, Italy and other lands marched overland towards and through the Byzantine territories, pillaging, killing, and robbing towns that lay in their path.
The main reason for this military march of the marauders, posing as ‘pilgrims to Palestine’ was drought, famine, and plague afflicting France and Germany for many years, and most of them had envisioned the crusade as an escape from these hardships. The trek to the east started in April 1096 and the first victims of these killers were the Jews that had ventured out of the safety of Muslim lands to settle among Christians. Some 4,000 Jews including women and children were slaughtered, while the remaining were driven to suicide, or forced to convert to Christianity.
Then they killed 4,000 Hungarian Christians under the jurisdiction of the Byzantine Empire, a crime that brought swift wrath upon them from the emperor’s forces who massacred 10,000 of these marauding crusaders. The Byzantines then thought of a plan to use them against the Turks and transported the remaining 30,000 Germans, French, and Italians to Asia Minor.
Here, near the village of Dracon, in what is now southwestern Turkey, these crusaders were completely routed by the Muslim defenders, and of those captured and wished to remain alive, Sultan Qilij Arsalan spared their life on condition of becoming Muslims and sent them to distant Khorasan in northeastern Iran.
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