Franks And Crusades In Medieval Eastern Christian Historiography

This volume is an introduction to twelve of the main medieval Eastern Christian historians used by modern scholars to reconstruct the events and personalities of the crusading period in the Levant. Each of the chapters examines one historian and their work(s), and first contains an introductory examination of their life, background and influences. This is then followed by a study of their work(s) relevant to the Crusades, including the reasons for writing, themes, and methodology. Such an approach will allow modern researchers to better understand the background and contexts to these texts, and thus to reconstruct the past in a more nuanced and detailed way. Written by twelve world-leading scholars, and examining chronicles written in Armenian, Greek, Syriac, and Copto-Arabic, this book will be essential reading for anybody engaged in research on the Crusades, as well as Eastern Christian and Islamic history, and medieval historiography.

Building upon previous volumes by the same editor, this book contains studies of nine of the most important Arabic-language textual sources for the Crusades and the Frankish presence in the eastern Mediterranean in the period 1097-1291.

While research on the crusades tends increasingly to bifurcate into study of the crusade idea and the crusading expeditions, and study of the Frankish states the crusaders established in the Levant, Benjamin Kedar confirms-through the articles reproduced in this latest selection of his articles-his adherence to the school that endeavours to deal with both branches of research. Of the ten studies that deal with the crusading expeditions, one examines the maps that might have been available to the First Crusaders and their Muslim opponents, another discusses in detail the Jerusalem massacre of July 1099 and its place in Western historiography down to our days, a third sheds light on the largely neglected doings of the Fourth Crusaders who decided to sail to Acre rather than to Constantinople, while a fourth exposes unknown features of the well-known sculpture of the returning crusader-most probably Count Hugh I of Vaudémont- who is embracing his wife. Of the ten studies that deal with the Frankish Levant, one proposes a hypothesis on the composition stages of William of Tyre's chronicle, another provides new evidence on the Latin hermits who chose to live in the Frankish states, a third examines the catalogue of the library of the cathedral of Nazareth, while a fourth calls attention to convergences of Eastern Christians, Muslims and Franks in sacred spaces and offers a typology of such events, and a fifth proposes a methodology for the identification of trans-cultural borrowing in the Frankish Levant.

*Includes pictures *Includes medieval accounts of various battles during the Crusades *Includes a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and to [persuade] all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it is meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it." - Pope Urban II, 1095 When a crusader army of Western European Franks took Jerusalem by storm on July 15, 1099, it was one of the more unexpected conquests in history. Everything seemed to be against them for the previous three years of crusade, right up to the final siege, and yet they finally prevailed. And when they did, they massacred most of the population before establishing a Christian realm in a region that had been taken over by the Muslims in 634. Ironically, this First Crusade is a difficult and polarizing event, even among modern historians, despite the fact it went largely unnoticed in the Islamic world at the time. For some, the crusaders were heroes and saints, and for others they were devils who disrupted the peaceful local sects of Muslims, Jews and Christians, establishing an alien colony that heralded modern European imperialism. Debate over whether the Crusades can truly be perceived as an early example of European colonialism continues in medieval historiography, though the evidence for this is thin. The territory taken by the Franks from the Turks had previously belonged to Eastern Christians and had only recently been seized by the Turks themselves. The Crusaders themselves saw it as a holy war of reclamation of previously lost, albeit almost-mythical, territory, and to them, the Muslims were the first aggressors. They were somewhat bolstered in this view by the support that they largely held from local Christians. These territories, which came to be known as the Crusader states, were relatively small and weak, and while they nominally aimed to be a bulwark of Christianity in the Holy Land, the Crusader States were reconquered centuries before modern European colonialism began. Nonetheless, the Crusades and the Crusader States galvanized the Christians of Western Europe to expand their world. While it remains unclear how much that world expanded in practical terms such as trade, or how it affected later attitudes during the expansion to the New World and other regions, it definitely engaged the European mind in both positive and negative ways. As such, the crusades soon achieved near-mythic status in the European literature and remain among the most important events of the Middle Ages. At the same time, the Crusader states were not one homogenized region but actually several distinct territories that had their own unique histories and interests. In fact, many of them were founded a century apart, with the Kingdom of Antioch established in 1097 and the Duchy of Cyprus in 1191, and they stretched across the Near East and the Mediterranean. As such, each one had different political, religious, and economic characteristics. Some of the smaller ones were tributaries to the larger states, and while some states like Antioch and Constantinople had a land-based feudal order, others like Cyprus were wholly owned subsidiaries of the Venetian oligarchy. The Crusader States: The History of the European States Established in the Middle East during the Crusades analyzes the controversial history and legacy of medieval Christianity's front lines during the crusades. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Crusader states like never before, in no time at all.

"I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and to pers­e all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it is meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it." - Pope Urban II, 1095When a crusader army of Western European Franks took Jerusalem by storm on July 15, 1099, it was one of the more unexpected conquests in history. Everything seemed to be against them for the previous three years of crusade, right up to the final siege, and yet they finally prevailed. And when they did, they massacred most, if not all, of the population, before establishing a Christian realm in a region that had been taken over by the Muslims in 634 CE.The First Crusade is a difficult and polarizing event, even among modern historians. For some, the crusaders were heroes and saints, and for others they were devils who disrupted the peaceful local sects of Muslims, Jews and Christians, establishing an alien colony that heralded modern European imperialism. To serve the needs of whatever story they want to tell, some historians will begin their tale at some convenient point in history that makes their "side" look good. In fact, the First Crusade is also a signal example of why it is unwise to choose sides in history, because neither side was correct and the situation was highly complex.Though it went largely unremarked in the Islamic world at the time, the First Crusade has since become a contentious symbol of European imperialism in the Middle East. Debate over whether the Crusades can truly be perceived as an early example of European colonialism continues in medieval historiography, though the evidence for this is thin. The territory taken by the Franks from the Turks had previously belonged to Eastern Christians and had only recently been seized by the Turks themselves. The Crusader States were relatively small and weak, and were reconquered centuries before modern European colonialism began. The Crusaders themselves saw it as a holy war of reclamation of previously lost, albeit almost-mythical, territory. To them, the Muslims were the first aggressors. They were somewhat bolstered in this view by the support that they largely held from local Christians. The medieval world of The First Crusade was quite different from the world of modern colonialism. However, the question of the connection between the two worlds is important.

Sir Steven Runciman examines the Frankish states to the re-conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin.

Beginning shortly after Charlemagne's death in 814, the inhabitants of his historical empire looked back upon his reign and saw in it an exemplar of Christian universality - Christendom. They mapped contemporary Christendom onto the past and so, during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the borders of his empire grew with each retelling, almost always including the Christian East. Although the pull of Jerusalem on the West seems to have been strong during the eleventh century, it had a more limited effect on the Charlemagne legend. Instead, the legend grew during this period because of a peculiar fusion of ideas, carried forward from the ninth century but filtered through the social, cultural, and intellectual developments of the intervening years. Paradoxically, Charlemagne became less important to the Charlemagne legend. The legend became a story about the Frankish people, who believed they had held God's favour under Charlemagne and held out hope that they could one day reclaim their special place in sacred history. Indeed, popular versions of the Last Emperor legend, which spoke of a great ruler who would reunite Christendom in preparation for the last battle between good and evil, promised just this to the Franks. Ideas of empire, identity, and Christian religious violence were potent reagents. The mixture of these ideas could remind men of their Frankishness and move them, for example, to take up arms, march to the East, and reclaim their place as defenders of the faith during the First Crusade. An Empire of Memory uses the legend of Charlemagne, an often-overlooked current in early medieval thought, to look at how the contours of the relationship between East and West moved across centuries, particularly in the period leading up to the First Crusade.

In the wake of Jerusalem's fall in 1099, the crusading armies of western Christians known as the Franks found themselves governing not only Muslims and Jews but also local Christians, whose culture and traditions were a world apart from their own. The crusader-occupied swaths of Syria and Palestine were home to many separate Christian communities: Greek and Syrian Orthodox, Armenians, and other sects with sharp doctrinal differences. How did these disparate groups live together under Frankish rule? In The Crusades and the Christian World of the East, Christopher MacEvitt marshals an impressive array of literary, legal, artistic, and archeological evidence to demonstrate how crusader ideology and religious difference gave rise to a mode of coexistence he calls "rough tolerance." The twelfth-century Frankish rulers of the Levant and their Christian subjects were separated by language, religious practices, and beliefs. Yet western Christians showed little interest in such differences. Franks intermarried with local Christians and shared shrines and churches, but they did not hesitate to use military force against Christian communities. Rough tolerance was unlike other medieval modes of dealing with religious difference, and MacEvitt illuminates the factors that led to this striking divergence. "It is commonplace to discuss the diversity of the Middle East in terms of Muslims, Jews, and Christians," MacEvitt writes, "yet even this simplifies its religious complexity." While most crusade history has focused on Christian-Muslim encounters, MacEvitt offers an often surprising account by examining the intersection of the Middle Eastern and Frankish Christian worlds during the century of the First Crusade.