During the Crusades,East and West firstmet-on the battlefield

BY ANDREW CURRY

I t was the fall of t187, and an emissary

! from the besieged city of Jerusalem had

I come to beg Saladin, the sultan of Egypt,

I fot mercy. After barely four days of as-

I saults. the Christian defenders saw thatSaladin had them hopelessly outmatched. Wait-ing in his tent outside the city's walls, the Mus-

lim ruler knewboth sides had a lot riding on the

outcome of this battle.For the city's defenders, the prospect of Sal-

adin's wrath loomed. The last time Jerusalemwas sacked by an invading army-a Christianone-its narrow streets ran red with blood. For

Saladin, his honor depended on capturingJerusalem. All summer his armies had battledtheir way north through the Holy Land, sweep-

ing through the Christian fiefs like an angry

desert wind, with only one goal: recapturing the

holy city that had been occupied by European in-vaders for 88 years.

Now the sultan stood on the hills north ofJerusalem. But the Christian emissary trudg-ing toward him had no prize to offer, only sur-

render. For days Saladin's men had bombard-ed the city from the heights to the north, finallybreaching St. Stephen's Gate. The few defenders

who remained knew that prolonging the fightwould only worsen the consequences of defeat.

And so a triumphant Saladin entered Jeru-salem on Oct. 2,11.87. For the sultan's army, itwas a moment of both joy and sadness. The

fhe first Crusaders entered Jerusalem with Peter the Hermit(|eft, with cross) and Godfrey of Bouillon (center, on horsel.

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Christians had profaned some of Islam'sholiest sites. The al-Aqsa mosque hadbeenused as a stable for horses. Pieces of therock from which Mohammed was said tohave ascended to heaven had been chippedaway to sell in ConstantinoPle.

But the victorious Saladin forbade acts

ofvengeance. There were no more deaths,no viol=ence. A token ransom was arrangedfor the thousands of residents. Saladinand his brother paid for hundreds ofthepoorest themselves and arranged guards

lor the caravans of refugees'Sound familiar? If not, don't feel bad'

Saladin doesn't get much play in Westernhistorybooks. You're more likely to readabout Richard the Lion-Hearted, theleader ofthe European expedition to re-take Jerusalem-and even he is most oftenremembered as a peripheral character inRobin Hood tales. But ask most Muslims,and they'll tell you all about Saladin andhis generosity in the face of Christian ag-

grer=siott and hatred. And they'llte.right-' The battle between Saladin and Richard

marked the high point of the Crusades, thefirst major clash between Islam and West-ern Christendom, which lasted more than

Land, they looked like one undifferentiatedbarbaric mess to their Muslim foes, whocalled them all Franks. But the unsophis-ticated Franks were tough. In 1099 they sur-

rounded Jerusalem, assaultingthe well-de-fended city for weeks. Finally, Godfrey andTancred broke through, and the Crusaderspoured in. Bloodthirsty after their fiercely?ought siege, they swarmed over the wallsand set upon the city's inhabitants-Mus-lim, JewiJh, and even Christian. Latertheyboasted of wading through the city's holysites }nee deep in blood' Their brutality hor-rified the Muslim world. "Amongst theMoslems, who hadbeen readyhitherto toaccept the Franks as another factor in thetangled politics of the time, there was hence-

forward a clear determination that theFranks must be driven out," writes Britishhistorian Steven Runciman. "When later,wiser Latins in the East sought to find some

basis onwhich Christian andMoslem couldworktogether, the memory of the massacre

stood always in the waY."It took almost a centurybefore a leader

strong enough to unite the Muslim Mid-dle Eist appiared. When Saladin finalllretook Jerusalem, it was Christendom'sturn to be shocked. The archbishop of

iI nothing short of sweeping away thename of God." Echoing Urban rr, the popepromised salvation through violence: Heivould "acquit before God all the sins ofthose who would bear the sign of the cross

to go recover the Promised Land, provid-edlhat they had confessed and were trulypenitent," wrote contemporary chroniclerWilliam of Tyre.

The pope'smessage of salvation and theoouotfnttity for earthly glory drew themost poweiful kings of Europe-like thevoons Richard the Lion-Hearted, whosailed''east leading armies of knights andpeasants. Expeditions like Richard'swouldbe repeit"d ott a smaller scale overand over again for almost five centuries,from Io95, when the First Crusade was de-

clared, to t578, when the last true Crusade

was launched against Turks in Morocco.Though historiins used to write of eightdistinit Crusades, scholars today arguethat "Crusades were going to the HolyLand all the time during the 2oo years

that the Franks were able to hold ontotheir states in the Middle East," as author

three centuries. And though they are onlytaint in the Western consciousness, in the Muslim world the Cru-

sad"s .till loom large in cultural memory' When Osama binLaden declared his own jihad in 1998, he accused America oftrp"u*"uaingl the cruiade against the Islamic nation"'Andi" itup" r"l"atEd to his followeri lastyear,.he promised that the

*orta'*oUa "see again Saladin carrying his sword, the blood ofunbelievers dripping from it"'

iis words tappedlnto a reservoir of ill will' "The impact o{the

Crusades "ruut"i

a historical memory which is with us today-ih" *u..toty of a long European onslaught," says Akbar Ahmed,

Twe. a Christian stronghold north of Jerusalem, hurried west

to Italy on a black-sailed ship with news of Jerusalem's fall, along

*tn tltters begging for help-and a crude drawing of an-Arab

beating a blood'i6d fesus. Chroniclers say thatwhen Pope Urban

rrr leained of Saladin's victory, he died of grief' His successor,

Gregory VIII, sent messengers to spread the word of a new Cru-

rudJto *t"ti back the holy crty. "Every person of ordinarydis-cretion is well able to appieciate both the greatness ofthe dan-

eer and the fierceness olihe barbarians who thirst for Christian

6lood," he wrote. "The goal of those who profane the holy plac-es

chair of Islamic studies at American Uni-versity in Washington, D.C. Its le€acy w-as

profound. For Muslims, then probablytheitrongest and mostvibrant civilization on

the globe, the Crusader victories and thedestiuction that followed were a confi-dence-shaking blow. At the same time, theCrusades were a tipping point for Europe,pushing the continent out of an isolatediark age and into the modern lvorld.

Ghriitian soldiers. From their begin-nings in 1O95, the Crusades inspired morepasiion than anyone expected. The Firstbrusade was preceded by droughts andfamine and heralded by meteor showers.The idea of an expedition to reclaimJerusalem from the unbelievers seized theimagination of people from all social class-

es. ied by deeply religious knights likeGodfrey of Bouillon and Tancred, armiesof "Laiin" Christians (followers of theChurch of Rome) from France, Germany,England, and elsewhere marched throughwhit is now Hungaryto Constantinople,the great center of Christianity in tle Easl.

When the Crusaders arrived in the Holy

38 U.S.NEws & woRLD REPoRr, APRrL 8' 2oo2 TOP: oORAIS/ STAPLETON CoLLECTIoN

Karen Armstrong writes in Iloly War : TheCrusades and Their Impact on Today'sWorld. "Long after they lost these states itwas not uncommon for kings and baronsto take the cross and vow to march onJerusalem." Many scholars now also be-lieve that crusading eventually spannedthe entire continent of Europe, as thechurch used it to fight "heretical" Chris-tians and convert pagans at sword point.

The First Crusade, inwhichwide swathsof the Holy Land were seized by LatinChristians, is the only one that can be con-sidered a European victory. Crusades ttrere-after were either catastrophes or barely suc-cessful attempts to preserve Europeanstrongholds in the Middle East known as

the "Latin kingdoms." But the Third Cru-sade is the best remembered, perhaps be-cause ofthe personalities involved. LikeRichard the Lion-Hearted, the handsomeand temperamental king of England:Though known today as a paragon ofchivalry, Ridrard was a merciless adversary.The son ofEleanor ofAquitaine, queen ofFrance and England, he was already a vet-eran warrior and strategist when he arrivedin the Holy Land in 1191 at the age of 33. Hetook a different view of war from Saladin's.After one battle, he had the captured men-16,ooo of them, ac-cording to William of Tyre's occasionally inflated account-be-headed within fuIl view of their own armies. For 16 months, Sal-adin and Richard battled across the parched plains ofthe HolyLand. Finally, ill and leading an exhausted army, Richard nego-tiated a truce with Saladin and headed home. He never returned.

Golonial West. But Richard did come back in the popular imag-ination-if in a different guise. Marching into a Jerusalem cap-tured from the Turks in 1977, a British general, Sir Edmund Al-lenby, proudly declared "today the wars ofthe Crusaders arecompleted," and the British press celebrat-ed his victorywith cartoons of Richard theLion-Hearted looking down at Jerusalemabove the caption "At last my dream cometrue." The colonial powers glorified the Cru-saders as their ideological forebears.

At the same time, Western expansioninto the Middle East embittered Arabs."For [Muslims], imperialism is a dirtyword, and they turned the Western mem-ory of the Crusades on its head and de-monized it," says Jonathan Riley-Smith, ahistorian at the University of Cambridgein Britain and author of The Crusades: AShort History. Angry Muslim nationalistsadopted the Crusades as a convenientmetaphor. It still works. "Since the late19th century, Western imperialism andZionismwere portrayed as a modern cru-sade," says Hebrew University historianBenjamin Kedar. "This is why the topicis so timely in,Arab political discourse."

Undoubtedly, George W. Bush had adifferent sense of the term in mind afterSeptember ll when he told the nation "thiscrusade, this war on terrorism, is going to

take awhile." But Bush's statement re-sounded like thunder in the Muslimworld. "It was precisely the worst word hecould have used-it allowed bin Laden andothers to conceptualize the nature ofthestruggle into resisting Christian and Jew-ish invaders and point out the hostility ofthe West to the Muslim world," Ahmedsays. "Crusader lore is only part ofthisrage, but it's a significant part."

This rage is in fact a relatively recentphenomenon, beginningjust over a cen-tury ago, when memories of the Crusadeswere revived as a historical analogy tocolonialism. Before Europe's colonial ex-pansion into the Middle East, Muslimchroniclers paid little attention to the Cru-sades. "In actual historical reality, theCrusades were far more important forthe West than for the Muslim world,"says John Voll, associate director of theGeorgetown University Center for Mus-lim-Christian Understanding.

For decades. Westernhistorians held onto the idea that the Crusades were a colo-nialventure motivated byjust about every-thing but the cross: greed, lack of oppor-tunity in Europe, territorial expansion, orjust plain aggression. Few gave credence to

the idea that the Crusaders were motivated by genuine religiousfeeling. But recently Crusades scholarship has recognized thatfaith could move peopleto violence as easilyas could greed orland.The best example is the First Crusade, called by Pope Urban lI'Eager to unite warring Christians, on Nov. 27,lOgl,he spoke toa massive crowd gathered near Clermont in France. Describingthe cruelties inflicted by Muslims on Christian pilgrims tryingto visitJerusalem andthe defeats sufferedbythe Byzantine Chris-tians, he called on all ofWestern Christendomto rescue their East-ern brethren. "They should leave offslaying each other and fight

instead a righteous war, doing the work ofGod, and God would lead *rem. For those

that died in battle there would be abso-lution and the remission of sins." Runci-manwrites. "Here theywere poor and un-

huppy; there they would be joyful andprosperous and true friends of God."

The response was tremendous. Urban'sspeech was interrupted by cries of "Deuslo aolt"-"Godwills it." Hundreds crowd-ed up to Urban begging permission to goon the holy expedition. Soon tens ofthou-sands of commoners and knights wereheading offto the Holy Land. Across Eu-rope, preachers called the faithful to sewcrosses on their clothes, to mark themuntil they succeeded in their quest.

United under the cross and ruled by strictreligious principles, the Crusaderswere ableto set aside their differences. "Among thosepeople who spoke so many different lan-guages there were the strongest pledges ofconcord andfriendship," reads a Crusader'scode written in 1147. "In addition to this theyenforced the severest laws, for example thata death was to be demanded for a death, a

U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT, APRIL 8, 2OO2 39

CULTURE & IDEAS

tooth for a tooth. Theyforbade everykind of display of rich clothes;and women were not allowed to go out in public." The key toUrban's call was a revolutionary (and doomed) theologr: salvationthrough the sword. "There is a very powerful devotional element,"says Riley-Smith. "West European Catholics believed they couldaid their salvation by fighting the infidei in the East. [Crusadingisl as much a penance as fasting on bread and water. . . . This ideais without precedent in Christian history."

"Milk and honey." Jerusalem was the medieval Christians'equivalent of Mecca, Christ's tomb their quest. To take up thecross in the city's defense was a deeply spiritual act. And more:Ever on the edge of starvation, usually tied to a lord's land, su-perstitious peasants sawthe journey as a roadto heaven. "To ig-norant minds the distinction between Jerusalem and the NewJerusalem was not very clearly defined," writes Runciman inHistory ofthe Crusades. Fiery itinerant preachers like Peter theHermit, whose army of starving peasants had no place in Urban'svision of an orderly march on Jerusalem, promised paradise."Many . . . believed that he was promising to lead them out oftheir present miseries to the land flowing with milk and honeyof which the Scriptures spoke," Runciman writes.

Peter's success was cited over and over again in the years tocome. The defeats suffered by better-organized Crusades ledmany to believe that it was the humble who were destined to suc-ceed, not the proud, rich military classes. In the end, these "Peo-ple's Crusades" ended in disaster too. None ever reached the HolyLand, and most of the peasant Crusaders were either slaughteredas they plundered their way across Europe or disbanded beforeever reaching a port. Without the resources to reach the HolyLand, most turned on more-convenient targets, namely Europe'sJewish communities. "Fryhyl are we going to seek out our pro-fanity and to take vengeance on the Ishmaelites for our Messiah,when here are the Jews who murdered and crucified him" wasthe rationale, as recorded by a Jewish eyewitness.

But persuading landed knights to take up the cross took morethan antisemitic rants and vague stories of the Promised Land.Europe's warrior class, the fighting force Pope Urban rr reallywanted, had a lot to lose: Crusaders faced death, disease, or cap-ture. There were also more-mundane risks. Aknight's lands andtitle could be stolen in his absence. If his Crusade failed. thereturning knight risked the scorn of those whoblamed him for failing to do God's work. And thecosts involved in crusading were a risk in themselves.King Louis rx of France (later to become St. Louis)set out in 1249 on crusade from a harbor he had spe-cially constructed with an artificial canal and grandtower, stocked with plentiful supplies. He spent sixtimes his annual revenue on the venture, which endedwhen he was captured and forced to pay a 4OO,OOO-pound ransom. "Most Crusaders engaged in a dan-gerous, unpleasant, unprofitable, and extremely ex-pensive enterprise, and they do not seem to haveexpected anything else," says Riley-Smith.

Though mostwere military and financial fiascoes, theCrusades had a long-term impact on European civi-lization that went beyond finding an outlet for the vi-olence ofwarring Christian hngdoms. "[The Crusades]made the Continent more cosmopolitan and gave Eu-ropeans a far greater awareness of the wider world. Iikeall wars, veterans came back and had seen things theynever would have ifthey had stayed in their villages,"says James Reston Jr., author of Warriors of God:Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Cra-sode. The stories they brought back also sparked a cre-ative blaze in Europe. Beginning in the 12th century, or

40 U.S.NEWS & WoRLD REPoRT. APRIL 8, 2OO2

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around time of the First Crusade, literatureand verse flowered in the form of memoirand song. Coming after the virtual silencethat marked the Dark Ages, the prolifera-tion of Crusader epics like the French Songof Roland is referred to by some scholarsas the "l2th-century Renaissance."

Many chose not to return at all, espe-cially second and third sons with nochance of inheriting land back in Europe.Those who stayed created a cultural, military, and mercantileoutpost in theHoly Land. The fortresses they built after theFirsl Crusade were usually transplanted reflections of the Eu-ropean feudal system, but over time the "Latin kin-gdoms" inthe Holy Land also served as a powerful integrating force. Con-tact witir the libraries of the Arab world opened up new worldsfor the isolated scholars of Europe, who gradually gained ac-

cess to a wealth of ancient Greek texts that had been preserved

for centuries in Arabic. "Violent interactions were paralleledby economic and conceptual exchanges," argues, George-to\Mn's

Voll. "In some ways the Crusades'positive intellectual dimen-sions outweigh the negative impact."

First contaCt. "The Crusades were an absolute failure, but theydid integrate European travelers and traders into an ongoingworld syitem," says Janet Abu-Lughod, author of Before Euro'p e an Hb gemo ng : Th e World Sy st em A. D. 1 2 5 o - 1 35o' Increaseddemand for Middle Eastern luxury items meant that Europeanshad to come up with trade goods of their own, helping buildindustries like wool and textiles. "By stimulating an interest inthe goods ofthe East, they had a double-back effect on the de-

velopment of European economies." Evenlater failures may have hidden some pos-itive benefits. The end of the Crusades andthe Latin kingdoms meant the end of easyaccess to Asian trade goods, but not to de-mand. Some historians have speculatedthat the closing of the Middle East to Eu-ropean merchants in the 15th century ac-celerated the voyages of discovery that ledto the NewWorld.

But even the Europeans'increasing sophistication did littleto redeem them in the eyes of the Muslims whose land they oc-

cupied and controlled. To the Arabs they were "illiterate bar-baiians, for whom physical force is a supreme virtue, their re-ligion is a despised polytheism, their medicine a collection ofsriperstitions,'t*titei hitto"ian Joshua Prawe r in The Cttlsaders'Kingdotn: European Colonialism in the MiddleAge.s. "Far fromfeeling inferiorio the conqueror, the conquered regarded him-self not only as his equal but by far his superior."

More than nine centuries after Urban rr called the first Crusade,

the legacy of misunderstanding and animosity is still with us today.

Inthe-WLst, manyofthe mostlasting misperceptions of Islam stem

from that time. In the Arab and Muslim world, the Crusades have

made an unfortunate rhetorical comeback. "Such analogies are re-

ally notveryhelpful to understand the Crusades or present-dayre-aliiies-they obicure rather than clariff," says Kedar. "People get

so obsessed with . . . the past that they don't react to the realitybut to the reflection."Withthat reflection distorted almostbeyondrecognition by rhetoric and misunderstanding, a clearer visionof the past has never been more important' o

42 U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT' APRIL 8, 2OO2