The Crusades and the Near East

The Crusades are often seen as a time when hostility between Christian West and the Muslim Near East reached an all time high. However, this is far from the whole story, and this volume reveals a complex picture of conflict mixed with conflict and cohabitation. As this distinguished group of contributors discuss, contemporary Western writers of the same region wrote very differently about the pagan enemy; cultural exchanges flowed westwards, to the benefit of Europe; peace treaties and a culture of intercommunication evolved where Christian rulers settled in the Near East. The idea that the crusades led to a hardening of a fundamental division between Christians and Muslims in the Near East is complicated by the fact that the arrival of crusaders in the region contributed to the destruction of the region's existing major Christian powers: the Byzantine Empire and the principalities of Armenia. This survey of this issue sheds light on the cultural realities of East-West relations and fills a long standing gap in the literature on the Crusades.