Source 10.6: More than Conflict

The Crusades have long been seen as an arena of conflict between Christians and Muslims with violence and brutality on both sides. And yet at least on occasion it is possible to witness something more than this. Trade between Christians and Muslims persisted, and they rented property to one another. The mid-twelfth-century Muslim writer Ibn al-Qaysrani penned celebratory poems about the churches of the Crusader city of Antioch, the beauty of Greek Orthodox church liturgy, and the loveliness of Frankish women. A Muslim warrior named Usmah Ibn Munqidh (1095–1188), who had fought the Crusaders with Saladin, wrote of a Frankish knight who called him “brother.” “Between us,” Usmah Ibn Munqidh declared, “were mutual bonds of amity and friendship.” In the first selection below, Usmah, who elsewhere wrote of Europeans in highly negative terms, described his encounter with a group of Christian monks.

Questions to consider as you examine the source:

Source 10.6A

Usmah Ibn Munqidh

Christian Piety and Muslim Piety, Mid-Twelfth Century

I paid a visit to the tomb of John [the Baptist in Damascus]. . . . After saying my prayers . . . I entered a church. Inside were about ten old men, their bare heads as white as combed cotton. They were facing east. . . . They gave hospitality to those who needed it. The sight of their piety touched my heart, but at the same time it displeased and saddened me, for I had never seen such zeal and devotion among the Muslims. For some time I brooded on this experience, until one day, as Mu’in ad-Din and I were passing the Peacock House . . . we dismounted and went into a long building set at an angle to the road. For the moment I thought there was no one there. Then I saw about a hundred prayer mats, and on each a sufi, his face expressing peaceful serenity, and his body humble devotion. This was a reassuring sight, and I gave thanks to Almighty God that there were among the Muslims men of even more zealous devotion than those Christian priests. Before this I had never seen sufis in their monastery, and was ignorant of the way they lived.

Source: Francesco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades, translated by E. J. Costello (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 50–51. Translation copyright © 1969 Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. Reproduced with permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS in the format Republish in a book via Copyright Clearance Center and by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.

Source 10.6B

The Latins in the East

In this next passage, a French priest, Fulcher of Chartres, who accompanied the First Crusade to Jerusalem and lived there until 1127, wrote about Europeans who had settled permanently in one of the Crusader states.

Questions to consider as you examine the source:

Fulcher of Chartres

The Latins in the East, Early Twelfth Century

Consider, I pray, and reflect how in our time God has transferred the West into the East, for we who were Occidentals now have been made Orientals. He who was a Roman or a Frank is now a Galilaean, or an inhabitant of Palestine. One who was a citizen of Rheims or of Chartres now has been made a citizen of Tyre or of Antioch. We have already forgotten the places of our birth; already they have become unknown to many of us, or, at least, are unmentioned. Some already possess here homes and servants which they have received through inheritance. Some have taken wives not merely of their own people, but Syrians, or Armenians, or even Saracens [Muslims] who have received the grace of baptism. . . . There are here, too, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. . . . Different languages, now made common, become known to both races, and faith unites those whose forefathers were strangers. . . . For those who were poor there, here God makes rich . . . and those who had not had a villa, here, by the gift of God, already possess a city. Therefore why should one who has found the East so favorable return to the West?

Source: August C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-Witnesses and Participants (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1921), 280–81.