Sunnis, Shias, Crusaders and Mamelukes
632-1300 AD
A. The Early Successors of Muhammed & What Distinguishes Sunnis and Shias
Challenge of succession. When Mohammed died in 632 at age 62, the Muslims faced the age-old challenge of all societies – how to choose the new leader. Muhammed wore many hats including supreme spiritual leader, head of state, chief judge, sole legislator, and commander in chief of the army. How should the new leader be chosen? A battle among the strongest? Absolutely not. A son of the old leader? Although 8 of Muhammed’s 12 wives were living at the time of this death, only one of his children survived him, a daughter named Fatima, and she would die within 6 months. Fatima’s husband, Ali, was a cousin of Muhammed. Did Muhammed designate a successor? Well, that was an unresolved question that rages even now. The Shias say he named Ali. The Sunnis say Muhammed left it up to his closest companions to confer and make the best choice. And they chose one his closest friends and the first convert to Islam outside of Muhammed’s family: Abu Bakr.
What title to give the next leader? He could not become The Prophet of Allah; that title would always be Muhammed’s alone. Should he also be the spiritual leader of Islam? They decided yes and the title derived for the next leader was Khalifah Rasul Allah, “Successor of the Prophet of God.” (From this appellation came the title Khalifa (Caliph).
The 1st Caliph – Abu Bakr. Three years younger than The Prophet, Abu Bakr was a wise and gentle man. He succeeded in holding together the remarkable and talented men who had risen to prominence in this new society. Understandably, many tribes in Arabia who had pledged fealty to Muhammed attempted to breakaway upon his death. Abu Bakr quickly established dominance over all of Arabia and re-converted wayward apostates to Islam. The Arabs were mainly traders with caravans and a primary source of goods came from plundering. As Muslims, they were not to attack fellow Muslims. So, Abu Bakr turned his eyes northwestward to Syria & Palestine. In 634, the Muslims defeated the Byzantines in a battle near Gaza and wrested much of Palestine from the Byzantine Christians. With the fall of Jerusalem in 638, Muslims would hold that region until the arrival of the Crusaders, four and half centuries later.
The 2nd Caliph – Umar. Abu Bakr died in 634. Muhammed’s Companions conferred again and selected 43-year-old Umar as the second Caliph. Unlike Abu Bakr, Umar had been a bit of a latecomer in accepting Muhammed and his spiritual claims. But there was no doubt he was a true believer committed to spreading the faith. He gave his attention to the area northeast of Arabia – Mesopotamia and Iran, which were under the dominion of the Sassanids (Persians). They were Zoroastrians who worshipped a monotheistic god. Within a few years, to the astonishment of many historians, the Muslims totally defeated the armies of the Sassanids and captured their lands and tremendous treasures – silver, goal, silk, and precious stones. At the same time, other Muslim armies were engaged in conquering Syria and Egypt. By 641, all the key cities in Egypt had changed from Byzantine to Muslim control.
Umar ruled for ten years. He devoted much of his energies to setting policies for administering the huge amount of recently acquired lands and peoples. Armies of occupation were required to live in camps outside the urban centers. Governors mainly used previous officials to manage their provinces. Non-Muslim monotheists (such as inhabitants of Iran and Palestine) could not bear arms and were subject to their own existing laws. Most of them found the burdens of taxes and control to be lighter under Muslims than they had been under their previous masters. The great wealth that was gained by the plundering armies presented vexing problems on how to properly distribute it. Umar set up policies for doing so. Much of the later success of the Muslim Empire can be attributed to the wise administration of this second Caliph. In 644, at the height of his power and prestige, Umar was mortally wounded at worship by an Iranian Christian slave who had a grudge to settle.
The 3rd Caliph – Uthman. On his deathbed, Umar appointed six men to select the next Caliph. They chose a 70-year-old close companion of Muhammed’s, Uthman Ibn Affan. He would rule for 12 years before he, too, would be assassinated.
Now let’s step back and think about this. The Muslim religion had only been established for 30 years. The key players were all Arabs who had personally known, and many had fought with Muhammed. Most were illiterate and had not had prior managerial experience. And now they had this huge super wealthy empire to manage. And, of course, very poor communications. I am trying to envision what it was like for a septuagenarian suddenly being made supreme leader over all this. Meanwhile, 40-year-old Ali, who believed Muhammed had wanted him to be the Caliph, was fuming that he had not been chosen.
Uthman did as well as one could expect of him. He is most remembered for convening a committee of scholars and tasking them with establishing the official Quran. (There were several versions floating around.) They completed their work in 651, 19 years after Muhammed’s death, and the Quran they certified has remained the only version ever since.
Uthman had a predilection for assigning members of his family to powerful positions which irked many Muslims. Among Uthman’s appointees was his cousin Muawiya, who he made governor of Syria. Dr. Fisher says Muawiya “was one of the greatest administrators in Muslim history.” The guy built a fleet, captured Cypress and Rhodes, and destroyed most of the Byzantine navy. Be that as it may, malcontents rose up, overtook the palace in Medina and murdered Uthman.
The 4th Caliph – Ali. Anarchy reigned for a week until the notables agreed to make Ali the 4th Caliph. While Ali did not participate in the assassination of Uthman, it became known that he was aware of the plot. Afterwards, Ali took no action to punish the assassins. Even so, throughout the Muslim world, he was accepted as Caliph – everywhere that is, except in Damascus where Muawiyah was governor and refused to resign. Turns out that Aishah, perhaps the most dynamic of Muhammed’s living wives, hated Ali and rallied an army that included many of Muhammed’s Companions to oppose Ali. In this first battle of Muslim against Muslim, known as The Battle of the Camel, Ali’s forces were victorious and nearly all the old Companions were killed. Aishah retired to Medina where she lived out her life in a house under the floor of which were buried Muhammed, Abu Bakr, and Umar.
Five years after The Battle of the Camel, guess what happened to Ali? Same fate as the two prior Caliphs – he was assassinated. The assassin used a poisoned soaked sword. Ali’s folks appointed Ali’s son, Hasan to be the next Caliph. Muawiyah later convinced Hasan to resign, retire on a royal pension, and allow Muawiyah to become the Caliph in 661. Muawiyah reigned until 680 and is recognized as the founder of the Umayyad dynasty.
These first four Caliphs Abu Bakr to Ali are referred to by the Sunnahs or Sunnis as “the Rightly Guided Caliphs”.
Back to the Shias. I used to think that the Shias also considered the first three Caliphs plus Ali as legitimate and included them among the rightly guided, but I have been wrong. The Shias aka Shites reject all but Ali because the others were not blood related to Muhammed. Shias maintain that Caliphs must be blood descendants of The Prophet – i.e., Fatima and Ali’s descendants. As we noted, Hasan renounced the Caliphate. His younger brother, Husayn, did not. However, he kept that to himself until Muawiyah died. When Muawiya’s son, Yazid was selected as the next Caliph (the first to descend from the prior Caliph), Husayn raised a small army and challenged him. Husayn’s forces were defeated at Karbala in 680 where Husayn was beheaded. For good measure, Yazid had Hasan poisoned as well.
Yazid turned out to be by far the worst Caliph to date – he was a drunkard and so was his pet monkey – which really irked the orthodox Muslims especially the Shias. So, they rallied behind Husayn’s son, Ali ibn Husayn, who the Shias consider to be the fourth of The Twelve Imams. (Ali, Hasan, and Husayn are 1, 2 & 3.) Yazid’s successor had Ali Ibn poisoned. As a matter of fact, 9 of the 12 Imams died from being poisoned upon the command of the reigning Sunni Caliph. So, what about the Twelfth Imam? Muhammed Al-Mahdi went into a cave and “occulated” in 941. One day, the Shias believe he will exit the cave and make the world a better place, particularly for the Shias. (This is a link to a Wiki article on the 12 Shia Imams.)
To summarize: Shias believe that the Caliphate passed to The Prophet’s family beginning with Ali and the Sunnis think it went to Yazid and his successors. And now you know.
B. Fractured yet still Islamic and Arabic.
As noted, within 130 years after winning their first battle, the Muslims controlled over 4 million square miles of territory or about twice as much as the Romans amassed at their peak. . (By contrast, the US is 3.3 M sm.) And the Roman Empire became so huge that in 286 Diocletian split it in two to make it more manageable. This was 800 years after the founding of the Roman Republic – a period during which the Romans established the best educational, administrative and miliary institutions in world history. So of course, there was no way these former Arabian desert dwellers and caravan raiders could keep their gargantuan empire intact. So, it fractured into multiple kingdoms as shown on the map of the Islamic World in 1000 AD.
The Shias and Sunnis split back in the 600’s. Three and half centuries later, we see that the Sunnis are on the east and west edges of the Muslim world and included modern Iran (which is now Shia.) The Shias controlled the middle including Saudi Arabia (now Sunni.) This is a link that addresses some of the key happenings with the Abbasids in the east. In the far west, the Iberian Peninsula (Al Andulus), the Umayyads, descendants of Muawiya ruled there for two and half centuries and during the first half of the 10th C became arguably the wealthiest, most cultured and powerful kingdom in the western world. What is so amazing is that the religion of those Arab founders, Islam, would remain the predominant religion throughout this huge region of the planet and that the Arabic language would continue to be the lingua franca throughout the Muslim world.
C. Palestine Abbasids to Fatimids – this is a newly added paragraph as of 5-31-2024.
When the Abbasids displaced the Umayyads they soon moved the capital from Damascus to Bagdad. The Palestinian region diminished significantly in importance. It is astounding just how unsettled things were in Palestine over the next 500 years. I really did not pick up on this when I first did this essay. This is a link to an article in Wikipedia that I encourage you to read. It does an excellent job explaining what took place in Palestine during the period between rebellions that began in the late 8th century until the advent of the Crusades. The poor people in this region did not begin to have order until the Mamelukes reasserted control following the defeat of the Mongols in 1259, which is about the same year that Osman, the founder of the Ottoman Empire was born. True stability would only come when Palestine was firmly in the hands of the Ottomans.
D. Summary of the Invaders of the Muslims.
What goes around, comes around. The Muslims had a grand time for nearly four centuries invading, plundering, and dominating other nations and kingdoms including each other. With all their success, it was just a matter of time until the predator became the prey. Two invaders came from the east, first the Seljuks and later the Mongols. The Seljuks’ success instigated an invasion from the west – the Crusaders. Our main focus will be on the Seljuks and the Crusaders. However, the Mongols were truly one of the worst scourges in human history. By some estimates, the Mongols slaughtered up to 10% of the world’s population within a century and half. Fortunately, their westward advance was halted by the Muslim Mamelukes of Egypt in a decisive battle in Palestine. So, our little area of focus, that is sometimes considered as backwater real estate, has played some pivotal roles in world history.
E. The Seljuks.
Around 950, a group of Turkic nomadic tribesmen, led by a chief named Seljuk, moved out of Central Asia, and settled in a region north of Iran. Seljuk converted to the Sunni form of Islam. His grandson, Toghril Beg is considered the true founder of the Seljuk Dynasty. That man was a military and administrative genius. He was able to conquer/unite the many Sunni kingdoms in the east.
The Sunni Caliph resided in Bagdad and he and other Sunni leaders commissioned Toghril to overthrow the Shia Caliph in Cairo Egypt ruled by the Fatimids. Meanwhile, the Shia Caliph made a similar arrangement with a fellow named Basasiri and in 1058, Basasiri’s forces with help from Shias in Persia, invaded Bagdad and captured the Sunni Caliph. The following year, Toghril and his boys retook Bagdad, freed the Sunni Caliph, Toghril married the Caliph’s daughter, and they lived happily ever after. Not exactly. Toghril made himself Sultan and ruled the state and military. The Sunni Caliph in Bagdad was relegated to being just the religious leader.
The history during this period of who did what to whom is just way too complex to address. Some of the key things to know include:
Toghril died in 1063 and after some scrapping, his nephew Alp Arslan became Sultan and was at the head of the Seljuk army at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The Byzantine army was destroyed and the Emperor, Romanus, was captured. Alp Arslan extracted major land cessions before releasing him. Upon his return to Constantinople, Romanus was blinded and later murdered. Years of chaos and civil war in Byzantium followed the demise of Romanus. In 1081, general Alexius Comnenus seized the throne and consolidated control over the remaining empire as Emperor Alexius I. Meanwhile the Seljuks were running rampant throughout what was left of the Byzantine Empire.
There have been many times in history where it was a horrible time for the indigenous population living in Palestine and especially in Jerusalem. The latter part of the 11th century was one of the worst. Palestine had been controlled by the Fatimids until a faction of the Seljuks took it from them in the 1070’s with Jerusalem falling in 1073. Christian churches were destroyed. Jews were killed and exiled. So, whereas the Fatimids had allowed, if not encouraged Christian pilgrims to come to the Holy Lands, this ended with the Seljuks. Reopening the Holy Lands to Christians was the primary justification for the Crusades.
F. The Crusaders.
In 1095, Alexius sent envoys to Pope Urban II asking for mercenary troops from the West to help confront the Turkish threat. Though relations between Christians in the East and those in the West had long been fractious, Alexius’s request came at a time when the situation was improving. In November 1095, at the Council of Clermont in southern France, the Pope called on Western Christians to take up arms to aid the Byzantines and recapture the Holy Land from Muslim control. This marked the beginning of the Crusades. Pope Urban’s plea was met with a tremendous response, both among the military elite as well as ordinary citizens.
The history of the crusades is immensely complex. This video, which we will show in class, is a 15-minute Youtube video that give you an excellent synopsis.
The First Crusade (1096-1099). Four armies of Crusaders were formed from troops of different Western European regions. These groups departed for Byzantium in August 1096. A less organized band of knights and commoners known as the “People’s Crusade” set off before the others under the command of a popular preacher known as Peter the Hermit. Ignoring Alexius’ advice to wait for the rest of the Crusaders, Peter’s army crossed the Bosporus Strait in early August. In the first major clash between the Crusaders and Muslims, Turkish forces crushed the European invaders.
Another group of Crusaders, led by the notorious Count Emicho, carried out a series of massacres of Jews in various towns in the Rhineland in 1096, drawing widespread outrage and causing a major crisis in Jewish-Christian relations. (This is another example of Jews being less safe with Christians than Muslims.)
In May 1097, the Crusaders and their Byzantine allies attacked Nicaea, the Seljuk capital in Anatolia. The city surrendered in late June. Despite deteriorating relations between the Crusaders and Byzantine leaders, the combined force continued its march through Anatolia, and captured another important Seljuk city, Antioch, in June 1098.
Meanwhile, the Fatimids took advantage of the Seljuks’ preoccupation with the Crusaders and retook Jerusalem from the Seljuks in Feb of 1098. They sent enjoys to the Crusaders offering to join forces with them to defeat the Seljuks. The Fatimids would return things to where they had been where Christians would be welcomed to the Holy Lands again and they would work with the Crusaders and the Byzantines to keep the Seljuks in check. Would they deliver full control of the Holy Lands to the Christians? Of course not. So, no deal. The Crusaders set forth from Antioch to fight not the original enemy, the Sunni Seljuks, but the Shia Fatimids. This was great news for the Seljuks who, of course, would not aid the hated Fatimids. This disunity of the Muslims was the main reason the Crusaders prevailed in the First Crusade. When the Muslims later united, the Crusaders would be doomed to failure.
The Christian army marched south along the eastern Mediterranean coast and entered into Fatimid (Shia) territory with the goal of capturing Jerusalem. They besieged the City for six weeks. Tancred, one of the Crusade leaders assured the City’s governor they would spare its inhabitants if he surrendered. Despite Tancred’s promise, the Crusaders slaughtered hundreds of men, women, and children – both Muslims and Jews – in their victorious entrance into Jerusalem. They later exiled most of the Muslims and Jews.
After winning the 1st Crusade, many of the participants returned to the west. Those who remained established four principalities along the Levant which included Palestine. If you want to dig deeper into the Crusades, the overall best information I found is: https://www.crusaderkingdoms.com/
Saladin/Unification of Muslims in the region. There was a major shift in power on the Muslim side. Ultimately, Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, commonly known as Saladin, a Sunni, conquered/united Muslims from Arabia to Egypt up to Syria and made himself Sultan of the Sunnis. Saladin ended the reign of the Shia Fatimids and established the short-lived Ayyubid Dynasty, He retook much of the territory won by the Crusaders including Jerusalem. This precipitated both the 3rd and 4th Crusades. The 3rd is perhaps the most famous since it pitted Saladin against Richard the Lionhearted. However, we are going to focus on the 4th Crusade since It was the most consequential. It resulted in the invasion and sacking of Constantinople and led to the ultimate collapse of the Byzantine Empire at the hands of Mehmed II, the 7th Sultan of the Ottomans.
The Disastrous (for the Byzantines) Fourth Crusade. I used to think that sacking of Constantinople was purely the fault of the perfidious avaricious Latin Christian Crusaders. Further study reveals there is another side to the story. The Crusaders did have some justification for attacking Constantinople. The 4th Crusade was initiated by Pope Innocent III in 1202. While Saladin was now dead, Jerusalem remained in the hands of his successors, the Ayyubids, whose capitol was in Cairo, Egypt. The Crusaders’ plan was to sail to Egypt with a large Western European army, assisted by the Byzantines, where they would defeat the Muslim forces and retake Jerusalem. Due to miscommunications and a shortage of funding, the plan went very awry. The Crusaders did not have enough money to pay the Venetians for the fleet the Venetians built for the Crusaders’ invasion force. So, the leader of Venice beguiled the Crusaders into plundering a rich Byzantine city, Zara, on the Adriatic Coast to get the treasure to pay for the fleet. The Crusaders did so and upon learning of it, the Pope excommunicated everyone involved.
The Crusaders then set sail for Jerusalem. Among the leaders was the Byzantine prince Alexios Angelos who convinced the Crusaders to first stop in Constantinople and restore his deposed father, Issac II Angelos, as emperor. Alexios promised the Crusaders they would be paid handsomely if they successfully restored his father. Some of the Crusader leaders accepted the proposition. Others did not.
On 23 June 1203, the main Crusader army reached Constantinople. In August 1203, following the siege of Constantinople, Alexios was crowned co-emperor. However, in January 1204 he was deposed by a popular uprising, depriving the Crusaders of their promised bounty payments. Following the murder of Alexios on 8 February, the Crusaders decided on the outright conquest of the city. In April 1204, they captured and plundered the city’s enormous wealth. A description of the plundering and its results are given by an American historian in Byzantium and Europe.
Only a handful of the Crusaders continued to the Holy Land thereafter. As noted, there were several prominent Crusaders who had been totally against attacking the Byzantine cities, refused to take part in them, and left the crusade. When Pope Innocent III heard of the conduct of his pilgrims, he was filled with shame and rage, and he strongly rebuked them. Even so, the Greek Orthodox Church broke with the Latins and the Great Schism continues even now.
Following the capture of Constantinople, the Crusader and Venetian leaders selected the new Byzantine emperor. The Western Europeans would control the diminishing Byzantine Empire for half a century before Byzantine descendants reclaimed it.
The Crusades were a disaster and a great tragedy by most accounts. Their purpose had been to support the Byzantines in reclaiming the Holy Land from the Muslims. Instead, they so weakened the Byzantines that their entire Empire was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453. By the end of the 13th century, all the Crusaders were defeated and evicted from Palestine. Constantinople was the repository for the finest art, literature, philosophy and history of ancient Greece and Rome. Priceless treasures of Western civilization were lost or destroyed by the Latins in the 4th Crusade. Besides the Ottomans, the Venetians most benefited from that Crusade. Among their great plunder were the Horses of the Hippodrome, which are still prominently displayed in Venice’s St. Mark’s Square.
G. The Seljuks/Sultanate of Rum/Mongols.
In Section B above I provided a link to the Abbasids. If you did not stop and read it before, you might want to do so now. In 1055, the Seljuks co-opted the Abbasids with military power but allowed the Abbasid Sunni Caliphate to continue in Bagdad. In the mid-12th century, the Seljuks suffered multiple defeats from various foes. The Abbasids regained military control of Bagdad and Mesopotamia in 1157. Further to the east, the Khwarazmian Empire, which the Seljuks had made a vassal state in the Seljuk heyday, broke away and became independent in 1190. By 1200, the only Seljuk ruled kingdom was The Sultanate of Rum in eastern Anatolia. In 1220, the ruler of the Khwarazmian Empire did something super-stupid that precipitated the Mongol invasion of the eastern half of the Muslim world. Khwarazm was the first of many Muslim kingdoms to be crushed by the Mongols.
Mongols – Wave One. If you are unfamiliar with the Mongols, then you might want to devote some extra time studying them. Alex the Great and the Roman empires at their height were about 2 million Square miles. The Muslims hit 5 million. In a span of 150 years, the Mongol empire reached a maximum size of 9 million sqm of continuous land. By some estimates, they killed 10% of the world’s population in the process. They had western Europe in their sights and may have vanquished it when the Great Khan Ogedei suddenly died in 1241 and the Mongols pulled back. (I will share a short video on the history of the Mongols in the class).
The Mongols came into the region of our study in two waves. This first wave was led by Batu Khan, the founder of The Golden Horde, who conquered Russia and South-Central Europe by 1240. Over half the population of Hungry was killed by Batu’s warriors. In 1243, he allied with the Latin Christians in the Levant and Anatolia and his army defeated the Sultanate of Rum. Batu then returned to the East to assist the new Great Khan as needed. No doubt, the Mongols would soon return.
H. The Abbasids/Ayyubids/Mongols/Mamelukes.
Abbasids. As noted, the Abbasids threw off the yoke of the Seljuks and restored their rule of Mesopotamia and Iran. Their capital was Bagdad which vied with Constantinople as one of the greatest repositories of classical art, literature, and architecture in the world.
Ayyubids. If you watched the video on the Crusades or read the link to Crusader Kingdoms, then you are familiar with Saladin who was the nemesis of Richard the Lionheart in the 3rd Crusade. Saladin, a Sunni, was the second ruler of what is known as the Ayyubid Dynasty that made Cairo its capital after displacing the Shia Fatimids in 1171.
Mongols – Wave Two. In 1258, the Mongols under Hulegu Khan with Batu at his side, defeated the Abbasids, killed the Caliph, ended the dynasty, and spent a week pillaging and destroying Bagdad. Priceless treasures from antiquity were lost. The Mongols then continued westward. The Latin Christians, who still ruled some areas in the Levant all submitted to Hulegu and joined forces with him to fight the Muslims. They besieged Aleppo and when it fell in 1260, Latin Christian Prince Bohemond VI assisted the Mongols in slaughtering all the Jews and Muslims there. Damascus surrendered without a fight.
Mamelukes. In Arabic, the term Mameluke means “one who is owned” i.e. a slave. In the process of conquering so many lands, the Muslims acquired many slaves. Some of the strongest and most competent were trained in martial skills and became part of Arab leaders’ armies. Over time, the Mamelukes became a powerful military knightly class in various Muslim societies that were controlled by dynastic Arab rulers. This was particularly true in Egypt and Syria with the Fatimids and the Ayyubids.
In 1249, the Ayyubid Sultan died. His young son had been designated as his successor. Mameluke generals were unhappy with how accommodating the Ayyubids had been toward the Christians and at the end of the day, disposed of their masters, and took over the rule of Egypt.
In 1259, there was a struggle for power and Mameluke General Qutuz became Sultan of Egypt. Priority #1 – prevent the imminent annihilation of his kingdom. After destroying Aleppo, Hulegu sent envoys demanding that Qutuz surrender without a fight. This was an understandable demand considering that the Mongols had never been defeated. And those who had surrendered had fared much better than those who had held out. So, what did Sultan Qutuz do when Hulegu’s envoys delivered the ultimatum? He had their heads chopped off and put them on a gate outside Cairo.
Was Qutuz nuts? No, he had learned that Hulegu had substantially reduced his forces and also that the Great Khan Möngke had died which required Hulegu to return to Mongolia to deal with the succession.
The Mamelukes under the command of a general named Baybars fought five battles with the Mongols, winning all but one. The Mongols were evicted from the Mameluke territory and never returned. Meanwhile, Baybars killed Qutuz and made himself Sultan. Thereafter, killing one’s predecessor and assuming the Sultanate, became the standard method of succession for the Mamelukes. (Perhaps we should experiment with that in America and see if we get better leaders.) They ruled Egypt for over two and half centuries until they were displaced by the Ottomans. The Mamelukes proved to be remarkably good rulers. Egypt prospered during their dynasty.
To learn how the Mamelukes were able to defeat the heretofore invincible Mongols, go to this article. They proved to be as good, if not better horseman and archers than the Mongols. Extensive training was the key. Their favorite sport was polo. They were formidable fighters.
This is the link to the recorded Zoom presentation of Session #3. Before clicking on it, copy the passcode so you can enter it. https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/NzcWstIaeiJqjqk6_B9U_JrzltUWsx6akABfnMRXaepq8-s1D2HfjxAS5-hsu_wL.lFyUXVbWmnMFvGZZ
Passcode: @Yy60.u1
This is the link to the Power Point presentation. https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ps8rt6imciu9px/HoP%20Presentation%203%20sans%20embedded%20videos.pptx?dl=0
It is a Dropbox link. When you select it, you will need to choose “open in” and then select “Power Point on the Web”. Then choose “slide show” and then chose “from beginning”
Links to other Session Essays: https://quotesbydavid.com/history-of-palestine/