[muawiyah]

Christians did, in fact, recover Christian lands. Let me start with a small list ~ Portugal, Spain, France, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Hungary, Sicily, Italy ~ and then ALL of North Africa, ALL of Africa, Iraq, Syria, lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia, Morocco, etc.

All of those places had once been Christian or partly Christian, and they were recovered.

We've subsequently let some of the territory backslide into slavery at the hands of an Islamic "upper class".

You find a substitute for OIL and these guys will collapse like a house of cards.

[paudio]

Not one of the biggest one: the Second Rome, Constantinople. Although briefly during the Balkan Wars in the beginning of the 20th century, that part was under Bulgaria I believe.

[RobbyS]

I have read somewhere—where I cannot recall—that in 1096, the Levant still had a large, in some places a majority Christian population, because the Arabs preferred to tax Christians and Jews rather than convert them. In other words, it was a bit like Ireland under the British.The difference was that the Christians and Jews in these Arab land provided the skills that kept civilization going. Lots of such folks died at the hands of the Mongols.