Crusader Complex

An Old Book Cures Oversimplification

Sometimes an old book can shed some indirect light on a contemporary question. In this case, the old book is Steven Runciman's A History of the Crusades (3 volumes, 1950-1954).

In discussions about Islam and the West today, two extreme opinions often emerge: (1) the "Western guilt" position (all problems with the Islamic world are caused by Western imperialism); and (2) the "West is the best" position (Islam embodies values alien to the West, and therefore not merely terrorists but Islam as such must be opposed). These views are often reflected in historical assessments of the Crusades. Champions of the first view see the Crusades almost wholly in terms of European imperialism; champions of the second see them almost wholly as the liberation of the East from theocratic tyranny.

Notably, the holders of both views tend to understand both medieval Christianity and medieval Islam as monolithic in nature. But what does the historical record show? A few examples, from Runciman's account of the First Crusade and its aftermath, are instructive.

The Christian Crusaders took Jerusalem from the Muslim Fatimids of Egypt in 1099; yet only the year before, those Muslim Fatimids, who were Arab and Ismaili, had themselves taken Jerusalem from the Muslim Ortoqids, who were Turkic and Sunni. On the other side, the Eastern Christian (Byzantine) state had recruited the Western Christians to help them fight the Muslims; yet Bohemond, one of the leading Crusaders, in 1107 assembled a fresh Western army for the conquest of the Byzantine state. Also, military crossovers often occurred; for example, in 1108 the Christian Crusaders Baldwin and Joscelin fought alongside the Muslim Turk Jawali against the Muslim Turk Ridwan of Aleppo; Ridwan was aided by the Christian Crusader Tancred of Antioch. These features of the Crusading era—battles between Christian and Christian, between Muslim and Muslim, and between Christian-Muslim alliances—necessarily complicate the picture.

The Christians fought bravely and well, sometimes against overwhelming odds; yet in the early years of the Crusades, the struggle of the Christian leaders for primacy often hampered their cooperation and seriously endangered the campaign, and only Muslim -disunity saved the day. The Fatimids of Egypt resented Turkish Muslim incursions as much as the Byzantine emperor did, and so the Fatimids and Byzantines had achieved a degree of détente in the early part of the Crusades, which gave the Crusaders a free hand against the Turks. As for the petty Muslim princes of Syria and Armenia, their internecine strife made the Crusader conquests much easier than they would otherwise have been.

The motives of the Crusaders were mixed. They had genuine piety and sincerely desired the restoration of Christian rule in the Holy Land. Yet many of the leaders had ambitions of founding Eastern kingdoms, personal dynasties of their own; and often they put those ambitions before the good of the Crusade itself.

The portrait of Eastern Christians groaning under the Muslim yoke is partly misleading. Orthodox Christians were not always mistreated by Muslim rulers; the Fatimids in particular had frequently been tolerant. Further, the East was heavily populated with Christians who were neither Orthodox nor Roman, and Jacobites, Nestorians, and Armenians often had more religious freedom under Muslim princes than under the Byzantines, who deemed them heretics. A return to hated Byzantine rule, or a swap of Muslim for uncertain Crusader rule, was often not their best bet.

Runciman's account checks the tendency to treat the Muslim and Christian "sides" in the Crusades as monolithic entities. I think there is a take-home message for current global affairs. If we are to deal wisely with the tensions of our times, we need an analysis that does justice to the diversity and complexity of both the Islamic and Western worlds. Partisan formulations, with their simplified appeal to clashes of grand ideas, will not help.