The Crusades, 1095-1204, 2nd Edition

'Why Study the Crusades'

The study of the history of the crusades is flourishing in schools and universities, in academic research (in Europe, the Middle East and North America); it is also a subject that attracts considerable interest from the general public. In part this is a consequence of the enduring fascina­tion fostered by such a dramatic and important aspect of the histories of western Europe and the Middle east, of christianity and Islam and, to a lesser extent, christianity and Judaism. the sense of adventure in trying to conquer and hold a distant and unknown land still exerts a powerful pull on the imagination of the modern West; the perceived glamour of men such as Richard the Lionheart and saladin has great allure too. alongside this, there is, to some modern western eyes at least, curiosity and confusion as to how and why people could fight and kill in the name of God.

There is also the historical legacy of the crusades – a legacy of brutality and fanaticism that has cast a deep shadow across relations between christianity and Islam, christianity and Judaism, and amongst christians themselves. From the sixteenth century onwards, first the Protestant Church and then an increasingly secular European society began to relegate the crusades to a distant and exotic escapade carried out by barbaric and foolhardy knights. During the nineteenth century, however, the crusades found new resonance. The colonial empires of Europe spread into North Africa and the Near East, reviving memories of times gone by while the emergence of nationalism as a powerful force during this period meant that people looked back positively to past successes and times of unity (such as the First Crusade). In the world of literature the phenomenal international success of historical writers such as Sir Walter Scott, author of Ivanhoe (1819) and The Talisman (1825) did much to spawn artistic and musical material that glorified the age of chivalry, including the crusades. World War I proved a fertile ground for combatants on all sides to depict their struggle as a righteous fight against the devil and to use crusading language and imagery. During the 1930s bishops who sup­ported General Franco’s Nationalist forces invoked divine help and Franco described himself as a crusader. The unprecedented horrors of World War II and the nuclear age largely expunged any sense of romanticism in warfare and in the West the ideas and imagery of the crusade have largely faded from an explicitly military context. One grim exception to this was the appalling massacre perpetrated by the Norwegian extremist, Anders Brevnik, in 2011 whose manifesto invoked a crusading message in his hatred of Muslims.

Recent academic scholarship has formulated a more sophisticated picture of the crusades as a complex and central element in the history of medieval Europe. In discovering how this legacy has endured though the centuries, it is evident that the origins and meaning of the word have become obscured. From the nineteenth century the term ʿcrusadeʾ has also been used in a non-military context in western society such as by the Women’s Temperance Movement of 1873 in Ohio, or participants in the Jarrow March who bore the banner ʿJarrow Crusadeʾ in 1936. Today it has become casualised and secularised. It is used readily in everyday life: a crusade to cut hospital waiting lists, a crusade for fair play in sport. Given the fact that, ultimately, the crusades to the Holy Land collapsed, the continued deploy­ment of the word in such ways shows how far removed it has become from historical reality. Why do people want to identify with something that failed? In its contemporary, generic meaning, therefore, people are embracing a sense of moral right, and/or a quest for justice. Such sentiments have their roots in the medieval usage and this broadly positive meaning explains why the word still has such currency.

In the world of contemporary Islam, however, the crusades have retained a much sharper and more vivid presence, in large part because the outline of events in the medieval period have a number of pertinent parallels to the present. In 1099 the armies of the First Crusade (representing the Catholic Church of western Europe) captured Jerusalem and were popularly reported as wading ankle-deep in the blood of their slain Muslim foes; in the wake of this conquest the Crusader States were formed and Christian rule was estab­lished in the Levant. By 1187 Saladin had drawn together the Muslims of the Eastern Mediterranean region under the banner of the jihad, or holy war. The forces of Islam retook the city of Jerusalem and relegated the Christians to a strip of land on the Mediterranean coast until their eventual expulsion in 1291. For the Muslim world of modern times the ingredients seem familiar: violent western incursions, slaughter and oppression of the faithful and the loss of the holy city of Jerusalem. These are among the reasons why the crusade still has such a high profile in the Muslim Middle East. Emerging scholarship shows that, contrary to previous claims by historians, the memory of the crusades and the standing of Saladin as a man of admirable virtues, had not (as previously thought) disappeared from view but remained clearly percep­tible down the centuries and grew stronger once the western Europeans began to invade the region with Napoleonʾs attempted conquest of Egypt in 1798.

At the start of the twentieth century, as the Arab Near East began to shake off the shackles of western imperialism, their predecessorsʾ struggles against the crusaders seemed especially relevant and this is a perception that has continued. Even more significantly, Saladin provided a redily avail­able role model: a devout Muslim who had succeeded in driving out the invaders. Such a figure has obvious attractions in the modern age and contemporary political leaders have often sought to appropriate his legacy. In the late 1950s President Nasser of Egypt clashed with the British and French over the Suez Canal. He also created the United Arab Republic (1959–61) which joined Syria and Egypt together – just as Saladin had done in the twelfth century. Nasser frequently invoked the sultan in his struggles against the West and drew parallels between the defeats of the crusaders and his actions in Suez and his hopes for the recovery of Jerusalem. President Saddam Hussein of Iraq also compared himself to Saladin, not least because they were both born in Takrit in northern Iraq. A mural depicting Saddam leading his Iraqi tanks into battle against the West alongside Saladin who rode at the head of his mounted warriors conveyed the appropriate message. Similar representations appeared on more prosaic and mass-produced items, such as bathmats, showing the wide circulation of such an image. Saddam, therefore, identified himself as someone who, like Saladin, would defeat the westerners and drive them from the Middle East. In 1992, the late President Hafiz Asad of Syria commissioned a large equestrian statue of Saladin in Damascus. The emir is shown riding to victory, guarded by Muslim holy men as defeated crusaders slump behind his horse. Placed just outside the old citadel of Damascus, Saladin is, of course, symbolically protecting the city, while the West bows to him.

A further, important parallel with the age of the crusades exists for Muslim militants in the form of the state of Israel. Although the First (and subsequent) crusades were responsible for numerous atrocities against the Jews of Jerusalem (in 1099) and in western Europe (1096, 1147, 1190), the close identification of Israel with the USA, and, in the eyes of some, as an enemy of Palestine and occupier of the holy city, means a perception that the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem was a forerunner of the modern Israeli state. Some Muslim polemicists argue that the creation of Israel was the Westʾs revenge for the failure of the crusades and they point out that the Christians were eventually expelled from the Levant: inevitably, therefore, they argue that the Jews will suffer the same fate. The militant Islamic groups in the Middle East, Hamas and Hizbollah, both invoke the struggle between the crusaders and jihad in their efforts to liberate Palestine.

Undoubtedly the most high-profile use of the word ʿcrusadeʾ in recent times was when, after the terrible attacks of 11 September 2001, President George W. Bush stated that ʿthis crusade . . . this war on terror is going to take a whileʾ. Once the implications of the word were revealed to him, Bush tried to distance himself from the comment but it was too late. In calling the fight against bin Laden a crusade he had created the historical parallel the Islamist leader had long claimed existed and offered an opportunity to tap into the emotional tinderbox of centuries of conflict: ʿSo, Bush has declared in his own words: “crusader attack.” The odd thing about this is that he has taken the words right out of our mouth . . . So the world today is split into two parts, as Bush said: either you are with us or you are with terrorism. Either you are with the crusade or you are with Islam. Bush’s image of him today is of him being in the front of the line, yelling and carrying his big cross.ʾ Just to complete the circle, the head of the CIA unit charged with hunting bin Laden described him as: ʿan Islamic hero, as the faithʾs ideal type, and almost as a modern-day Saladinʾ (Phillips, 2009: 348).

'The Impact of Crusading in the West'

The crusades to the holy Land and the settlement of the Latin east are a central part of medieval history. Through the crusading movement the power and influence of Catholic Christendom grew and the physical, cultural and intellectual horizons of the people of the West changed. With the call to the first Crusade in 1095 all of western europe found a common cause that crossed geographical and political boundaries and brought out one of the few characteristics shared across the region, namely the Catholic faith. The crusade also reflected contemporary hopes, fears and aspirations regarding spiritual salvation and, as well as the desire for honour, financial advancement and, for some, the wish to conquer land. four years later and the map of Christendom had changed dramatically, with Jerusalem, the heart of the Christian faith, under Catholic rule. hitherto unthought of opportunities opened up: the papacy had created a new way of attaining salvation and had a means of exerting authority over the people of the West; many thousands of western europeans went to settle in the Levant; large numbers of pilgrims could visit the holy sites; and the prospects for trade and the acquisition of knowledge expanded dramatically.

Along with these new opportunities came new responsibilities. There was the need to consolidate and defend these lands and there were times when crusading activity exerted a profound impact in the West. The second and Third Crusades saw western european rulers absent from their lands for years at a time, and in the case of emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the death of one of these men. The decision to crusade must have galvanised and absorbed a country like nothing else: households and governments had to organise themselves, to arrange regencies, to raise large sums of cash – by taxes, by voluntary contributions, loans, or mortgages – transactions which affected ecclesiastical and secular society alike. The Venetian commitment to transport the army of the Fourth Crusade was the most dramatic example of all. The practicalities of transport and supply must have commanded peoplesʾ attention too. Smaller crusades, such as those seen in the 1160s and 1170s, would have mirrored the same effects on a lesser scale. Alongside these sudden surges of activity, other, more permanent, reminders of the fight for the Holy Land appeared in the East. Relics arrived from the Holy Land (see pp. 34, 142–3 above) to be venerated in churches across the Latin West. More prominent still were the substantial holdings of the military orders, and their presence as powerful landlords, bankers, and as ecclesiast­ical and medical institutions, became a factor in many peoples' lives.