The Kingdom of Heaven

I watched Ridley Scott’s latest movie “The Kingdom of Heaven”. Ridley continues to pick similar topics after “The Black Hawk Down” and “The Gladiator” Although I found most of the people complaining about Ghassan Massoud who played the role of Great Salahudin but the guy seemed okay to me. Liam Neeson had a small role, Orlendo Bloom was okay but Eva Green looked very pretty in the beginning of the movie.

Overall a good movie, considering the fact it was made by the west. Some western critics claim that Salahudin was not as soft as portrayed in the movie; while I have my criticism that it didn’t provide much information about the pre-attack hundred years. How the Muslims were treated; even the western Christian historians such as Michaud and Mill have testified the brutal events, for e.g. Mill writes “The dignity of age, the helplessness of youth and the beauty of the weaker sex were disregarded by the Latin savages. Houses were no sanctuaries, and the sign of a mosque added new virulence to cruelty”

“The streets ran with blood until ferocity was tired out. Those who were vigorous or beautiful were reserved for the slave market at Antioch, but the aged and the infirm were immolated at the altar of cruelty” and these lines are not coming from a Muslim historian but Mill. Michaud says “All the captives, whom the lassitude of carnage had at first spared, all those who had been saved in the hope of rich ransom, were butchered in cold blood. The Muslims were forced to throw themselves from the tops of towers and houses; they were burnt alive; they were dragged from their subterranean retreats, they were hauled to the public places, and immolated on piles of the dead. Neither the tears of women nor the cries of little children—not even the sight of the place where Jesus Christ forgave his executioners, could mollify the victors”.

Few more lines from Mill “It was resolved that no pity should be shown to the Muslims. The subjugated people were, therefore, dragged into the public places, and slain as victims. Women with children at their breast, girls and boys, all were slaughtered. The squares, the streets and even the un-inhabited places of Jerusalem, were strewn with the dead bodies of men and women, and the mangled limbs of children. No heart melted in compassion, or expanded into benevolence”.

Since they did not portray this brutal, slaughtering events as they should have it lessens the chances of understanding why Sultan Salahudin came to attack Jerusalem. Alas. Atleast they did admit his honorable personality with such a compassionate behavior with the locals and for that, the movie makers should be credited. Sultan’s dignified, noble and compassionate behavior is not only recorded by Muslims but like earlier, it can be found in the chronicle of Ernoul. Ernoul was in the Jerusalem the time Sultan attacked it and other western Historian’s.

Sigh. Too much of movie talk.