Mongol Trial

                Overall, I really enjoyed this project. In my opinion, this project was a little bit harder for me because I’ve always been a nervous person when it comes to oral presentations or talking in front of people, but I was really impressed with myself. I managed to get up there, and although my voice was a bit shaky at first… I pulled it together and became much more confident and relaxed as it progressed and used a lot of historical evidence to back up my story! I was really happy with the way I presented my case as TWO witnesses, which wasn’t easy : ( but I have no regrets with my testimonies. However, what I do regret is the first cross-examination with Subedei because, I have to admit, it was sort of nerve-racking and although I held up my case, Billy proved some really good points. My second cross-examination went over a lot better and I think my responses helped our case regain some credibility, and I was sort of proud of myself with my whole, “ I WAS DEAD” comment : ). I was also extremely pleased with my team. Everyone did AWESOME! Sabrina’s statement was convincing, Mark and Nick did a good job at stumping the opposing witnesses, and my fellow witnesses did a good job at helping the defense.

                I came to a decision that I honestly think the Mongols were not horrible monster, in fact, I thought they were more along the lines of typical empire builders. Any empire and its leaders take risks and engage in wars in order to gain land and expand their growing society, it’s just the way things worked back then. It was inevitable. Yes, the Mongols did kill many in order to achieve their aspirations, but so did the Persians, Greeks, Romans and so on. They were aggressive and relentless, but also reasonable and fair at the same time. They never surprised attacked anyone, they used diplomatic approaches, civil interactions, and benevolent leadership to enlarge their empire.

                Completely disregarding the trial as a whole, I do not think the Mongols are guilty of the crimes of genocide, kidnapping, and terrorism. Although I’m generalizing a bit, these things are bound to happen during a state of war and it wasn’t just the Mongols who did it. I thought they proved themselves to be fair and humane leaders who did not persecute any racial group  and they were understanding of those who they conquered. Yes they killed, but they never did so without reason, provocation, or after genuinely attempting to attain diplomatic relations prior to the killing.

Genghis Khan – Psychopath or Passionate leader?

Genghis Khan was definitely a man of multiple personalities. He proved himself quite capable of creating a massive land empire, but at the same time, made people question whether or not he was mentally stable. On one hand, it is clear to see the compassionate side of Khan during certain situations throughout his lifetime. For example, whoever deemed that Genghis was a sociopath was definitely delusional because claiming he was antisocial is completely false. First of all, he was able to maintain a very tight relationship with his best friend, Jamuka. Also, when his wife went missing, Khan was so depressed and distraught that he sent out thousands of men in a desperate search for his wife. A man of zero emotion would not have gone to that extent to uncover where his wife had disappeared to if he, in fact, did not care. He did show affection towards women and their children…for the most part lol. And plus, at the end of the day, most rulers that we have studied in history share one common interest; conquest and expansion of their empires. Any leader will be relentless and ruthless when it comes to how they achieve that, as long as they are able to sustain control and conquer neighboring territories as effectively as possible. In addition to this, some of Genghis’s behavior is justified by his childhood, seeing as how his father died when he was very young, and he had to cope with his half-brothers/sisters, which was clearly at time difficult because the family had to fend for itself. He kinda grew up in an environment which taught “every man for himself” ethics.

                On the flip side, he ended up ordering the execution of his “best friend” Jamuka…guess that friendship definitely experienced some roadbumps. He also killed his half-brother for stealing his fish when he was younger…clearly he was a killer in the making. He showed no real limits when it came to killing everything and everyone that got in the way of his goal to expand his territory and reign, but I guess that was beneficial in some ways too. Overall, I don’t think Genghis khan was a psychopath, but he most definitely was materialistic and had an obscene amount of avarice for conquest.

Link to My Project and the Bibliography!

Ok here it is, the link to my project is :

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Muslims-React-to-the-Medieval-European-Crusades/346313748712162?sk=wall&filter=1

^ make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom first and work your way up! And make sure the setting is under "Everyone (Most Recent)" So you can see everything!

Bibliography

1.      Rickard, J.. "Third Crusade, 1189-1192." . N.p., 20 April 2007. Web. 12 Jan 2012. .

2.      Myers , P.V.N. (2007, November). The crusades. Web. 12 Jan 2012.  Retrieved from http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/the-crusades.htm

3.      Wikipedia. (2010, April 2). Fifth crusade. Web. 12 Jan 2012. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Crusade

4.      Joax. (2008, November 29). The fifth crusade. Web. 12 Jan 2012. Retrieved from http://www.medievality.com/fifth-crusade.html

5.      Williams, Y. (2010, April 8). The fifth crusade (1217-1221). Web. 12 Jan 2012.  Retrieved from http://www.unexplainable.net/Religion/Fifth-Crusade-1217-to-1221.shtml

6.      Fletcher, Richard. (2011, October 2). The crusades. Web. 12 Jan 2012. Retrieved from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/The_Crusades

Final Thoughts

My projects all done and I feel really good about it! Eveything went as planned, and my project turned out exactly like I wanted it to. It's really cool because its just a facebook page that I had three fake Muslims comment on different questions, surveys, and pictures that I posted about.

Crusades Project ...Final Day

Wahhoooooo!!! Almost done! All that's left to do is the bibliography and the last crusade post on my facebook page. I think so far my project has gone really well. At first, I thought that having too much freedom with this project and not having a lot of guidelines would be difficult, but I actually came to really like the creative options I had when it came to designing my project. For once I didn't do things by the book, and I actually let my imagination lead to way. But anyway, I collaborated with a bunch of people and I found it super helpful using the websites suggested to me by other classmates because it provided me with information that I had failed to find on my own time!

Collaboration and more ideas about the project..

I've decided that the best way for me to collaborate with my classmates will be to comment on their blogs with certain websites that I found super helpful when it came to researching the crusades. I have a series of links that I definitely think will be helpful so I plan on commenting on Alison Pflanz, Julia Roberto, and Mark Steinbach's blogs with my websites in hopes that they'll return the favor! Also, my facebook idea has been going well so far, it was just a bit of a pain to have to make 3 fake emails and facebooks and having to log out and log in every time I want a different person to post something. Other than that, I think I'm on a great start to completing this project!

Finding the Information and The Outline for my project

Even though it is old-school, I ended up using google as my main search engine. I tried out "sweetsearch.com" but, to be honost, I didn't really care for it much. Google and Bing became my two most used search engines when it came to finding information on the crusades. I did not have trouble finding information on the first, third, and fourth crusades, but there was definitely less information provided regarding the fifth.
For this project, I have created my own Facebook page and three different, fake "Muslim" facebook user accounts under different names. I plan on posting each persons different responses to the crusades this way, and maybe even uploading a picture/diagram here or there!

Outline for the Crusade Project

So after fully completing my project's research on the crusades, I have decided that I am going to do the first, third, fourth, and fifth crusades. I chose the first one because it is really the only truely sucessful crusade in which they are able to capture Jerusalem but there are also interesting details in how they got to that point, including Peter the Hermit's untrained ragtag army.  The third crusade seemed interesting because the Muslims are able to retrieve Jerusalem with the help of Saladin and disunite the crusades a bit. I picked the fourth crusade because it includes the ruthless sack of Constantinople. Lastly, I liked the fifth crusade because they attacked Egypt, which definitely sparked some hostile attitudes among the Muslims.