Never knew, they'd be so much history in this film..!

Rating: Null/10 (16 June 2005)

The great battle of Gondor and the distraction on Sauron by Aragorn to help Frodo destroy the ring have a lot of historic facts Tolkien must have bored to finish his story, from the Balkanic wars implicating Arabs, Ottoman Turks, Byzantines and, Bulgarians in the Middle Ages.
Minas Tirith is nicknamed "City of the Kings", the same nicknamed used for Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium or Eastern Roman Empire, which makes Gondor, the Byzantine Empire at Tolkien's perceptive.
When the Orcs of Mordor attack Minas Tirith, it's like the Arab and Ottoman invasion on Constantinople and as the Rohirrim cavalry is summoned to help Gondor win the battle, it's like the one time alliance between Byzantines and Bulgarians to fight together, pushing back the Arab invaders in the years 710-714 a.d. .
But the Orcs are more like the Ottoman Turks and the mercenaries on the olyphants are more like the Arabs, since they're portrayed as this Arabic dressed soldiers.
King Theoden has this personality bored from one of Bulgaria's greatest czars, czar Simeon the Great (893-927 a.d.) who was a great defender of his country and as for Aragorn. When his crowned king of Gondor, not only it's like he's crowned new Byzantine emperor, but from his coronation reestablishing a kingdom, it's like the restoration of the Byzantine Empire in 1204 after it was divided in many kingdoms after the Crusaders sack its capital two centuries earlier.
Middle Earth is Europe imagined by Tolkien and on its map, Mordor looks a lot like the Anatolia peninsula which is an entrance to the Muslim world from Europe. Finally, when Aragorn leads the soldiers in battle to distract Sauron and allow Frodo to destroy the ring, his speech about "The men of the West" gives the impression that they're like the Crusaders off to fight the Islamists.
All of this fits in, history lovers like me can agree that this movie(only the last chapter of the Rings trilogy), has so much of it. But Tolkien's perceptive is simply a new way of learning it.