The Impossible Victory - They Ate Leather Shoes and Drank Horse Blood — Then Won a Miracle at Antioch (by Raymond Ibrahim).
This week in history featured several military engagements between the forces of Islam and Christendom, though none more decisive and dramatic — indeed, long seen as miraculous — than the battle that took place before the walls on Antioch on June 28, 1098.
As discussed here, earlier that month, the Crusaders had managed to liberate from Islamic abuse the ancient Christian city of Antioch — the place where the very word “Christian” was first coined (Acts 11:26).
Before they could celebrate, however (or even recuperate), Kerbogha, the Turkish lord (or atabeg) of Mosul, arrived with a “countless and innumerable throng” of forty thousand fighters consisting of Turks, Arabs, Egyptians, Africans, and Persians. “It is quite obvious that these people are completely mad,” the atabeg observed of the hopelessly outnumbered Crusaders. “They are a presumptuous race…. Doubtless they have every confidence in their courage. But by Muhammad, it was a bad day for them when they entered Syrian territory.”
Kerbogha quickly blockaded Antioch, and the Christians who only the day before had been the besiegers became the besieged. Worse, by the time the Crusaders took Antioch, most of its stores had been depleted by the Turks during their lengthy besiegement, forcing the feral Franks to eat leather shoes and drink horse blood.
FULL ARTICLE AT: https://uk.mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/1/messages/AAJefgFZ7bCBIPULOuYnLm1qejA
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