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When the Byzantine Empire began aggressively moving east in the tenth century, Sayf alDawla, a celebrated Shi'ite ruler of the northern Iraqi Hamdanid dynasty, declared an annual jihad against Byzantium. Later in the same century, the Hamdanid rulers in what is now Turkey began delivering celebrated jihad sermons in ornate and rhymed phrases. The Hamdanid court had been famous for its poets. Now, using such poetic devices as alliteration and repetition, these sermons on jihad, considered a high point in the tradition of Arab oratory, challenged Muslims to holy war. The sermons were said to be so beautiful that people were moved to tears, and also to kill. They became an enduring model for Islamic war propaganda.
    But by the late eleventh century, when the Arabs were about to face their greatest military challenge, Arab writers were complaining that nobody seemed interested in jihad anymore.
    By this time in Europe, the Church had so skillfully perfected the ability to make peace that it held the power to make war as well. Pope Gregory VII took the next step, demanding that secular princes do their part to furnish the Church with fighters and weapons whenever he needed them “in the service of Saint Peter.”
    The eleventh century was an impassioned time. The excitement about the new millennium in 2000 focused largely on whether computers would continue working; but in the year 1000, Europe was focused on the first millennium of Christ. All events—storms, comets, wars, floods, epidemics—were given momentous significance. God's wrath was seen at every turn. Christians seemed to believethey had strayed very far from God's will. People flocked to the churches and clung to the words of the clergy. But the Church was not talking about restoring the teachings of Jesus Christ; rather, the clergy spoke of defending the Church against its enemies. In the course of the first century of the new millennium, the Church, the most powerful institution in Europe, had overwhelmed European princes, to the point where its only remaining challengers were the Saracens. The fact that these Saracens were in decline made battling them all the more irresistible. It was time for a Christian lesser jihad.
    Two popes later, Urban II, a Frenchman, launched the Crusades in a rousing speech at a “peace council” at Clermont in 1095. Urban declared that the pope could now define both the peace and truce of God for all of Christendom. Christendom itself, the idea that all Christians were a cohesive singular force, was a relatively new concept that the papacy had been nurturing for the past two centuries. He then declared peace in the West, freeing Christians to launch a “holy war” to liberate Jerusalem from the Saracens—granting Peace of God protection to the families and property of those who marched off to the Holy War. Now the doctrine of the peace movement—that without peace, God could not be served—was slightly bent to a new truth: that without peace in the West, the Church could not successfully launch its expedition to the East. This expedition was to be one final war in the peace movement, a war that would bring the Peace of God—that is, the protection of the Church—to Jerusalem, which was now called “the holy city.”
    In declaring that the Saracens must be stopped, Urban said that they had “destroyed churches and devastated the kingdom of God.” Urban challenged Christendom: “Oh what a disgrace that a race so despicable, degenerate, and enslaved by demons should thus overcome a people endowed with faith in Almighty God and resplendent in the name of Christ. Oh what reproaches will be charged against you by the Lord Himself if you have not helped those who are counted like yourself of the Christian faith.”
    Urban's speech became for the West what the tenth-century Hamdanid sermons became for the East, a textbook model for rallyingthe troops. It contains all of the traditional lies by which people are convinced to die and