There's not much to basic diesel maintenance- but sitting for a really long time and running with really old fuel is NOT a good idea. You SHOULD have hand-turned the engine first anyway, it's always a good idea and there's ALWAYS a bolt on the front pulley- but fortunately there apparently wasn't any damage, you have to get oil into the bearings and pistons, etc. and that's far safer at very low rpm, and you'll avoid undue wear and premature failure of your starter.
"When I was young..."
Dad had an old A-C farm tractor (he may have bought new in the 1940s, but it may have been used even then) we could ONLY start by hand-crank or roll-start...never had to worry about starter problems until he finally broke down and had the thing rewired to start off the generator (they didn't have alternators back then, so it was a handy DC pony motor) in the 1970s.