Crusades: Crescent & the Cross

History Channel's the Crusades Crescent and Cross is about the 11th century Catholic crusades brought about by religions politicizing of beliefs based on bad intelligence and misinformation by Pope Urban. A gullible and zealot population of poor and rich alike get together to take over the holy land by force and war. As in every war, the atrocities committed remain the responsibility of those that do them and those that sent them. Since each religious group involved worships the same God, it is very strange that they would be fighting each other in the name of that same God. You get some pretty good accounts from both the Catholic side and the Muslim side, not much from the Jewish side. The take away is that religious wars are for the ignorant and the bloody thirsty.

This is an excellent introduction to the Crusades presented clearly and creatively. Many original period documents are used as the basis of the narrative, and the visuals in many cases are stunning. The filmmakers hit the high points of the 200-year struggle, re-enacting many of the main battles (some shot in Morocco rather than at the original sites). Not as whimsical as the Terry Jones series of the previous decade, but probably easier to follow and great to watch. The companion DVD in the History Channel set is a mixed bag. There's an hour-long program about the Templars which relies too much on speculation and tabloid-style rumors (including many presented by the author of the justly-maligned book which was the basis of the DA VINCI CODE). It was obviously filmed on a shoestring compared to the main feature. There's also an interesting behind-the-scenes intro to the series, interviewing several of the producers and actors...but strangely padded by interviews with contemporary men and women who are involved in various charitable ventures. The insights into how they used CGI for the crowd scenes are worth watching.

Seldom does a documentary manage to captivate history as The Crusades: Crescent and the Cross does. With good CG (Computer Graphics), it looks almost like a movie though with a historically accurate depiction. though i did miss the exact dates being shown, the presenters however mention the years. It also shows how the crusades was being told by the Muslim perspective though on certain accounts, the Muslim version is either too brief or totally missing. Despite some flaws, it has to get full marks for the visually rich presentation - given that its a documentary - and the entertainment value. A must see for anyone remotely interested in history/Islamic conflict or just for the information this documentary has to show.

As a historian who has spent 30 + years studying the crusades unfortunately I was left a little disappointed with the accuracy of the documentary.

Majority of the content was accurate however it was very clear from the onset the narrative of the documentary was to disparage the knights templars as some barbaric army that just slaughtered men, women and children every where they went. This is simply not true and historically inaccurate.

The two "specialists" in the documentary that provide details are Muslims that clearly have a very biased and one sided opinion.

The documentary fails to mention the Islamic caliphates from 600 - 1000AD that absolutely decimated nation after nation town after town through out the whole Middle East. Killing, raping, kidnapping, forcing conversions, forcing militarisation etc etc.

The Islamic movement at that time was a horrible and barbaric movement. The knights templars were instructed to destroy this barbaric movement and reclaim Christian towns and nations.

The Islamic movement were not victims as this documentary paints it out to be, but rather they themselves were the largely the aggressors for hundreds of years.

Secondly, the narrative displayed in this documentary that the crusaders committed war crimes and killed indiscriminately. Simply not true.

Firstly, what we would constitute now days as war crimes were extremely different to how that would have looked like 1000 years ago. Secondly, there is absolutely no primary source of evidence that gives merit that the templars killed women and children, fellow Christians or otherwise. These are fable stories passed down from generation to generation and heavily reliant on the confession of the last templar master under extreme torture to which he later recanted as he was about to be killed.

There is so much more I could write and include here however in closing if you decide to watch this documentary, try to see it with out the bias narrative of the narrators and so called specialists.