In the course of the thirteenth century, popes like Innocent III strove to control crusading through increased regulation and the effective institutionalisation of holy war. But they faced the converse problem: how to tame fervour without smothering the fire that lent these sanctified campaigns their strength? They also failed to find a workable formula, and new ideas about reconfiguring the whole basis of crusading activity–with professional forces stationed semi-permanently in the Near East–came too late and incited little response.

Some historians have suggested that Christendom was defeated in the war for the Holy Land because of a gradual slump in crusade enthusiasm after 1200–a malaise supposedly brought on by papal manipulation and dilution of the ‘ideal’. This view is somewhat simplistic. True, the thirteenth century did not witness the same massive expeditions that had punctuated the period between 1095 and 1193, but a plethora of smaller-scale campaigns still enjoyed substantial recruitment, even when directed against new enemies and into different theatres of conflict. If anything, the decline came in Latin Europe’s direct concern for the fate of the Holy Land, but this apparent deterioration likewise should not be exaggerated. The huge campaigns of the twelfth century were themselves only spawned in the wake of seismic shocks–the fall of Edessa and the Battle of Hattin–and otherwise western Christendom often remained immune to Outremer’s urgent appeals for assistance. Domestic problems and concerns, from succession disputes and dynastic rivalries to failed harvests and outbreaks of heresy, might only too easily trump the needs of the embattled crusader states. Evocative and potent as the fate of Jerusalem and the Holy Land might be, the course of crusading history proves that most Latins living in Europe did not exist in a permanent state of anxiety over events in the East and thus were rarely willing to upend their lives at home to save a distant, if sacred, outpost.

In reality this was a function of another, decidedly practical consideration that impacted upon the outcome of the battle for the Near East. In physical and conceptual terms, the Levant was simply a long way from western Europe. Christians living in France, Germany or England faced journeys covering thousands of miles to reach the Holy Land. The huge distances involved caused significant difficulties when it came to mounting military expeditions or even maintaining regular contact with the Latin settlements in the East. The comparison is by no means perfect, but the other major territorial contest being played out between Latins and Muslims–the so-called Spanish Reconquista–ended in Christian victory at least in part because of the basic fact of Iberia’s relative geographical proximity to the rest of Europe. Outremer’s problems of separation were partially alleviated by the rise of the Military Orders as supranational institutions and the growth in trans-Mediterranean trade, but the gap was never fully bridged. At the same time, the Levantine Franks failed to cooperate fully or effectively with the eastern Christian allies, from the Byzantine Empire to Cilician Armenia, who could have helped to mitigate their isolation, and allowed themselves to become embroiled in countless highly disruptive internal power struggles.

For all these reasons, Outremer found itself in a precarious state of vulnerability throughout much of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Nonetheless, it took a concomitant degree of strength and advantage for Islam to be capable of exploiting Frankish weakness. The crusader wars were not fought, in the first instance, in the political or cultural heartlands of Eastern Islam, but rather in the frontier zone between Egypt and Mesopotamia, and neither can the Holy Land be characterised in any way as a uniformly Muslim society. Yet even so, in the long run Islam did benefit from the physical propinquity of the Levantine battlefield and the inescapable fact that it was waging a war on what was tantamount to home ground. The Muslim world was also lifted to victory in this prolonged struggle by the insightful and charismatic leadership offered by Nur al-Din and Saladin, and by Baybars’ unflinching ruthlessness.3

CONSEQUENCES IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD

The crusades have been presented as an international conflagration that reshaped the world: dragging Europe out of the Dark Ages towards the beckoning light of the Renaissance; consigning Islam, militarised and radicalised in the pursuit of victory, to centuries of insular stagnation. Some have characterised these holy wars as apocalyptic conflicts that left indelible scars of ethnic and religious hatred, initiating an unending cycle of hostility. Such grand assertions rely upon simplification and exaggeration. Huge changes were undoubtedly wrought across the medieval world between 1000 and 1300. This was a period marked by population growth, migration and urbanisation; advances were made in learning, technology and cultural expression; and international commerce was extended. Yet the precise role of the crusades remains debatable. Any attempt to pinpoint the effect of this movement is fraught with difficulty, because it demands the tracing and isolation of one single thread within the weave of history–and the hypothetical reconstruction of the world, were that strand to be removed. Some impacts are relatively clear, but many observations must, perforce, be confined to broad generalisations. It is certain that the war for the Holy Land was not the sole influence at work in the Middle Ages. But equally, this Levantine struggle did have a significant impact upon medieval history, especially in the Mediterranean basin.

The eastern Mediterranean

The threats posed by the Franks, both real and imagined, presented the Muslim world with an enemy to rally against and a cause for which to fight. This enabled Nur al-Din and then Saladin to resurrect the ideal of jihad. It also allowed them to impose a degree of unity upon Near and Middle Eastern Islam that, while yet imperfect, still far outstripped anything witnessed since the early era of Muslim expansion. The process reached its ultimate expression, with the added and overriding danger presented by the Mongols, when the Mamluks forged a unitary state under Baybars and Qalawun.

However, for all the contact between Muslims and Latins witnessed in this era–through war and peace–Islam’s attitude towards western Christendom was not radically altered. Old prejudices remained, among them popular misconceptions about the worship of Christ and God as an indication of polytheism, as well as entrenched antipathy towards the use of figurative religious images, forbidden in Islam, and wild assertions of Frankish sexual impropriety. Familiarity does not seem to have bred much in the way of understanding or tolerance. But equally, contrary to the suggestion of some scholars, the advent of the crusades did not prompt widespread deterioration in Muslim relations with indigenous eastern Christians. There were some intermittent signs of a hardening in attitudes, particularly in cases where native Christians living under Islamic rule were suspected of aiding or spying for the Franks, but, broadly speaking, little changed until the rise of the more fanatical Mamluks.

For both Islam and the West, perhaps the most striking transformation wrought by the crusades related to trade. Levantine Muslims already maintained some commercial contacts with Europe before the First Crusade through Italian seaborne merchants, but the volume and importance of this economic interaction were revolutionised in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, largely as a result of the Latin settlement of the eastern Mediterranean. The crusades and the presence of the crusader states reconfigured Mediterranean trade routes–perhaps most powerfully after Constantinople’s conquest in 1204–and played a critical role in solidifying the power of the Italian mercantile cities of Venice, Pisa and Genoa. Europe’s adoption of Arabic numerals can also be dated to around 1200 and likely resulted from trade with Islam, though this cannot definitively be connected to contact with the ‘crusader’ world.