The Franks residing in Outremer did not live in a hermetically sealed environment. Pragmatic reality and political, military and commercial expediency meant that these Latins were brought into frequent contact with the native peoples of the Levant, including Muslims and eastern Christians, and later the Mongols. In this way, the crusades created one of the frontier environments in which Europeans were able to interact with and, in theory, absorb ‘eastern’ culture. The ‘crusader’ society that developed in Outremer certainly was marked by a degree of assimilation, though whether this was the result of conscious choice or an organic process remains uncertain. There can be no doubt that the social milieu found in the Latin East was utterly unique. This was not the result of an unprecedented degree of connection with Islam–indeed, this type of contact was as, if not more, common in medieval Iberia and Sicily; nor was it a consequence of the ongoing holy war in the Near East. Instead, the distinctive character of ‘crusader’ Outremer was born of the extraordinary array of different Levantine influences encountered–from Greek and Armenian to Syriac, Jewish and, of course, Muslim–and the mixture of so many western European influences, drawn from the likes of France and Germany, Italy and the Low Countries.4

Western Europe

Historians have long recognised that interaction between western Christendom and the Muslim and wider Mediterranean worlds during the Middle Ages played an important, perhaps even critical, role in advancing European civilisation. These contacts resulted in the absorption of artistic influences and the transference of scientific, medical and philosophical learning–all of which helped to stimulate far-reaching changes in the West, and ultimately contributed to the Renaissance. Gauging the relative importance of different spheres of contact within this process is all but impossible. Thus, while the art and architecture of the ‘crusader’ Levant exhibited unquestionable signs of intercultural fusion, ‘crusader’ styles of manuscript illumination or castle design cannot reliably be tracked back to the West and categorically isolated as the sole inspiration for any given European exemplar. By its nature, the textual transmission of knowledge is easier to trace. In this area of exchange Outremer played a notable role–as witnessed in the translations made at Antioch–but its importance was secondary to the plethora of copied and translated texts that poured out of Iberia in the Middle Ages. At best, we can conclude that the crusades opened a door to the Orient, but by no means was it the only portal of contact.

Other forms of change brought about by the crusades in Latin Europe can more easily be determined. On a practical level, large-scale expeditions had a huge political, social and economic impact upon regions such as France and Germany, culminating as they did in the interruptive disappearance of whole kinship groups and sections of the nobility. The absence of the ruling classes, and especially crown monarchs, could cause widespread instability and even regime change. The advent of the Military Orders and the spread of their power to virtually every corner of the West had an obvious and profound effect upon medieval Europe–as new and formidable players on the Latin stage, these orders possessed the might to rival established secular and ecclesiastical authorities. The popularity of crusading served to increase the authority of the papacy and to reconfigure the practice of medieval kingship. It also influenced the emerging notions of knighthood and chivalry. By creating a new form of penitential activity, these holy wars likewise altered devotional practice–a process that accelerated markedly in the thirteenth century with the vast extension of crusade preaching, the commutation of vows and the system of indulgences.

Throughout this period, it is true that more Latin Christians stayed in the West than were actively engaged in crusading activity or fighting in the war for the Holy Land. But by the same token, between 1095 and 1291, few living in Europe remained wholly untouched by the crusades–whether through participation, taxation or the broader formulation of a communal Latin Christian identity within society.5

THE LONGER SHADOW

In February 1998 a radical terrorist network, describing itself as the ‘World Islamic Front’, declared its intention to wage ‘Holy War against Jews and Crusaders’. This organisation, led by Osama bin Laden, has come to be known as al-Qaeda (literally, the ‘base’ or ‘foundation’). Five days after al-Qaeda’s 11 September attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, US President George W. Bush walked on to the south lawn of the White House and, before a crowded huddle of international journalists, affirmed America’s willingness to defend its soil, warning that ‘this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while’. Later, in October that same year, bin Laden responded to the approaching allied invasion of Afghanistan. He characterised this operation as a ‘Christian crusade’, stating that ‘this is a recurring war. The original crusade brought Richard from Britain, Louis from France and Barbarossa from Germany. Today the crusading countries rushed as soon as Bush raised the cross. They accepted the rule of the cross.’6

How can it be possible that this language of medieval holy war has found a place in modern conflicts? This rhetoric seems to suggest that the crusades have somehow continued unabated since the Middle Ages, leaving Islam and the West pitted against one another–locked in an undying and embittered war of religion. In fact, there is no unbroken line of hatred and discord connecting the medieval contest for control of the Holy Land to today’s struggles in the Near and Middle East. The crusades, in reality, are a potent, alarming and, in the early twenty-first century, distinctly dangerous example of the potential for history to be appropriated, misrepresented and manipulated. They also prove that a constructed past can still create its own reality, for the crusades have come to have a profound bearing upon our modern world, but almost entirely through the agency of illusion.

Among the root causes of this phenomenon is the disjuncture between popular and collective interest in, and perception of, the medieval crusading era, across what might broadly be termed the Muslim world and the West. At a basic level this difference can be shown in terminology. From around the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the crusades came to be known in Arabic as al-hurub al-Salabiyya (the ‘Cross’ wars), a term that underlines the elements of Christian faith and military conflict. In English, however, the word ‘crusade’ has largely been disassociated from its medieval and devotional origins–taken now to denote striving in the interests of a cause that is often presented as just. The term ‘crusade’ is strewn with casual abandon through media and popular culture in the West. Indeed, it is quite possible to speak of a crusade against religious fanaticism, even of a crusade against violence. Western interpretation of the Arabic word jihad is equally jarring. Many Muslims consider that the idea of jihad relates, first and foremost, to an inner spiritual struggle. But in the West the word is commonly thought to embody a single meaning: the waging of a physical holy war. As with so many of our modern attitudes to the crusader era, this problem with terminology emerged only in the last two centuries. To an extent, however, the divergence of Western and Islamic memories and perceptions occurred in the more immediate aftermath of Outremer’s eradication.