The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (82 page)

Melisende Psalter, Egerton 1139, MS London, British Library; J. Folda,
The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187
(Cambridge, 1995), pp. 137–63; L.-A. Hunt, ‘Melisende Psalter’,
The Crusades: An Encyclopaedia
, ed. A. Murray, vol. 3 (Santa Barbara, 2006), pp. 815–17. On crusader art in general see: J. Folda,
Crusader Art in the Twelfth Century
(Oxford, 1982); J. Folda,
The Nazareth Capitals and the Crusader Shrine of the Annunciation
(University Park, PA, 1986); J. Folda,
The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187
(Cambridge, 1995); J. Folda, ‘Art in the Latin East, 1098–1291’,
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades
, ed. J. S. C. Riley-Smith (Oxford, 1995), pp. 141–59; J. Folda, ‘Crusader Art. A multicultural phenomenon: Historiographical reflections’,
Autour de la Première Croisade
, ed. M. Balard (Paris, 1996), pp. 609–15; J. Folda,
Crusader Art in the Holy Land, 1187–1291
(Cambridge, 2005); J. Folda,
Crusader Art: The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1099–1291
(Aldershot, 2008); H. W. Hazard (ed.),
Art and Architecture of the Crusader States (History of the Crusades
, vol. 4) (Madison, Wis., 1977); L.-A. Hunt, ‘Art and Colonialism: The Mosaics of the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem and the Problem of Crusader Art’,
Dumbarton Oaks Papers
, vol. 45 (1991), pp. 65–89; N. Kenaan-Kedar, ‘Local Christian Art in Twelfth-century Jerusalem’,
Israel Exploration Journal
, vol. 23 (1973), pp. 167–75, 221–9; B. Kühnel,
Crusader Art of the Twelfth Century
(Berlin, 1994); G. Kühnel,
Wall Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
(Berlin, 1988).

83 In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the crusader states were commonly interpreted, in a positive light, as a form of proto-colonialism. Particularly among French scholars such as Emmanuel Rey, the forces of integration, adaptation and acculturation were emphasised, and Outremer was painted as a glorious Franco-Syrian nation. In contrast, by the mid-twentieth century the opposite viewpoint was being championed by the likes of the Israeli academic Joshua Prawer: the crusader states were presented as oppressive, intolerant colonial regimes in which Latin conquerors exploited the Levant for their own material benefit and that of their western European homelands, while staunchly maintaining their own Frankish identity through the imposition of an apartheid-like separation from the indigenous population. E. G. Rey,
Les Colonies Franques de Syrie au XIIe et XIIIe siècles
(Paris, 1883); J. Prawer, ‘Colonisation activities in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’,
Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire
, vol. 29 (1951), pp. 1063–1118; J. Prawer,
The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages
(London, 1972); J. Prawer, ‘The Roots of Medieval Colonialism’,
The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period of the Crusades
, ed. V. P. Goss (Kalamazoo, 1986), pp. 23–38. For the record of an illuminating symposium on this issue held in 1987 see: ‘The Crusading kingdom of Jerusalem–The first European colonial society?’,
The Horns of Hattin
, ed. B. Z. Kedar (Jerusalem, 1992), pp. 341–66. For more up-to-date overviews see: Jotischky,
Crusading and the Crusader States
, pp. 123–54; Ellenblum,
Crusader Castles and Modern Histories
, pp. 3–31.

Fulcher of Chartres, p. 748. In exceptional circumstances, Muslim nobles might even be granted land within a crusader state. One such figure, Abd al-Rahim, gained the friendship of Alan, lord of al-Atharib, after 1111, and was granted possession of a nearby village and served as an administrator on the principality of Antioch’s eastern frontier. R. Ellenblum,
Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
(Cambridge, 1998); H. E. Mayer, ‘Latins, Muslims and Greeks in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’,
History
, vol. 63 (1978), pp. 175–92; B. Z. Kedar, ‘The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant’,
Muslims under Latin Rule
, ed. J. M. Powell (Princeton, 1990), pp. 135–74; Asbridge, ‘The “crusader” community at Antioch’, pp. 313–16; J. S. C. Riley-Smith, ‘The Survival in Latin Palestine of Muslim Administration’,
The Eastern Mediterranean Lands in the Period of the Crusades
, ed. P. Holt (Warminster, 1977), pp. 9–22.

Usama ibn Munqidh,
The Book of Contemplation
, trans. P. M. Cobb (London, 2008), pp. 144, 147, 153. On Usama’s life and work see: R. Irwin, ‘Usamah ibn-Munqidh, an Arab-Syrian gentleman at the time of the crusades’,
The Crusades and Their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton
, ed. J. France and W. G. Zajac (1998), pp. 71–87; P. M. Cobb,
Usama ibn Munqidh: Warrior-Poet of the Age of the Crusades
(Oxford, 2005); P. M. Cobb, ‘Usama ibn Munqidh’s
Book of the Staff
: Autobiographical and historical excerpts’,
Al-Masaq
, vol. 17 (2005), pp. 109–23; P. M. Cobb, ‘Usama ibn Munqidh’s Kernels of Refinement (
Lubab al-Adab
): Autobiographical and historical excerpts’,
Al-Masaq
, vol. 18 (2006); N. Christie, ‘Just a bunch of dirty stories? Women in the memoirs of Usamah ibn Munqidh’,
Eastward Bound: Travel and Travellers, 1050–1550
, ed. R. Allen (Manchester, 2004), pp. 71–87. Alongside this adoption of customs there appears to have been some adaptation of dress to suit the Levantine climate–including greater use of silk by the aristocracy and high clergy–but this was not universal. Frankish envoys from Outremer visiting the great Muslim leader Saladin in February 1193 were said to have scared the sultan’s infant son to tears because of ‘their shaven chins and their cropped heads and the unusual clothes they were wearing’. Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad,
The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin
, trans. D. S. Richards (Aldershot, 2001), p. 239.

Ibn Jubayr, pp. 316–17, 321–2. It has to be noted, however, that Ibn Jubayr travelled through only a small corner of Outremer, and that this section of his journey took only a few weeks; so his testimony may not be wholly representative. It is also clear that he wrote his account in part to advocate fairer treatment for Muslim peasants living under Moorish rule in Spain, so he may even have sanitised his description of Latin lordship.

In 1978 Hans Mayer concluded that ‘Muslims [in the kingdom of Jerusalem certainly] had no freedom of worship’ (Mayer, ‘Latins, Muslims and Greeks in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem’, p. 186), but his analysis has since been rebutted convincingly (Kedar, ‘The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant’, pp. 138–9). Not all Muslims residing in Outremer were peasants or farmers: in Nablus, for example, Usama ibn Munqidh stayed at a Muslim-run inn. Nonetheless, some Muslim Hanbali peasant villagers living near Nablus (and within the lordship of Baldwin of Ibelin) decided to leave Frankish territory as refugees and resettle in Damascus in the 1150s. The Muslim chronicler Diya al-Din recorded that Baldwin increased the poll tax imposed on the villagers fourfold (from one to four dinars), and that ‘he also used to mutilate their legs’. It is worth noting, however, that Hanbalis held particularly hard-line views regarding the Franks and even Diya al-Din acknowledged that the group’s leader ‘was the first to emigrate out of fear for his life and because he was unable to practise his religion’. J. Drory, ‘Hanbalis of the Nablus region in the eleventh and twelfth centuries’,
Asian and African Studies
, vol. 22 (1988), pp. 93–112; D. Talmon-Heller, ‘Arabic sources on Muslim villagers under Frankish rule’,
From Clermont to Jerusalem. The Crusades and Crusader Society, 1095–1500
, ed. A. Murray (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 103–17; D. Talmon-Heller, ‘The Shaykh and the Community: Popular Hanbalite Islam in 12th–13th Century Jabal Nablus and Jabal Qasyun’,
Studia Islamica
, vol. 79 (1994), pp. 103–20; D. Talmon-Heller, ‘“The Cited Tales of the Wondrous Doings of the Shaykhs of the Holy Land” by Diya’ al-Din Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahid al-Maqdisi (569/1173–643/1245): Text, Translation and Commentary’,
Crusades
, vol. 1 (2002), pp. 111–54.

Fulcher of Chartres, pp. 636–7; Ibn al-Qalanisi, pp. 162–3, 246. Zangi also agreed an ‘armistice’ with Frankish Antioch that apparently allowed hundreds of ‘Muslim merchants and men of Aleppo and traders’ to operate in the Latin principality. This trading pact held until 1138, when it was broken by Prince Raymond (perhaps because of the arrival of the Byzantine imperial army in northern Syria). On trade and commerce in the crusader states see: E. Ashtor,
A Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages
(London, 1976); J. H. Pryor,
Commerce, Shipping and Naval Warfare in the Medieval Mediterranean
(London, 1987); D. Jacoby, ‘The Venetian privileges in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem: Twelfth-and thirteenth-century interpretations and implementation’,
Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer
, ed. B. Z. Kedar, J. S. C. Riley-Smith and R. Hiestand (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 155–75. For a selection of articles by the same author see: D. Jacoby,
Studies on the Crusader States and on Venetian Expansion
(London, 1989); D. Jacoby,
Commercial Exchange across the Mediterranean
(Aldershot, 2005).

C. Burnett, ‘Antioch as a link between Arabic and Latin culture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’,
Occident et Proche-Orient: contacts scientifiques au temps des croisades
, ed. I. Draelants, A. Tihon and B. van den Abeele (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2000), pp. 1–78. William of Tyre, the Latin historian of Outremer, was certainly intrigued by Islam. Around the 1170s he researched and wrote a detailed history of the Muslim world, but he probably could not read Persian or Arabic himself and had to rely on translators. Unfortunately, no manuscripts of this text have survived to the modern day–but this in itself may suggest that the work gained only a limited audience in the West. P. W. Edbury and J. G. Rowe,
William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East
(Cambridge, 1988), pp. 23–4.

C. Burnett, ‘Stephen, the disciple of philosophy, and the exchange of medical learning in Antioch’,
Crusades
, vol. 5 (2006), pp. 113–29. Al-Majusi’s
Royal Book
detailed a remarkable range of medical treatments, some practical even by modern standards, some staggeringly bizarre. The section ‘On the adornment of the body’ included advice on how to remove unwanted hair and deal with cracks in lips and hands, curbing the growth of breasts and testicles, and dealing with body odour. Elsewhere, the section ‘About the regimen of travellers on land and sea’ was a mine of information useful to pilgrims: heat-stroke could be alleviated by pouring cooled rosewater over the head; bodily parts affected by frostbite should be rubbed with oils and grey squirrel fur; and a cure for seasickness was a syrup made from sour grapes, pomegranate, mint, apple and tamarind. The suggestion that an infestation of lice could be resolved by rubbing the body down with a mercury poultice was not quite so judicious.

It is worth considering what this evidence actually reveals about Outremer in the twelfth century. Did the patrons who commissioned works expressly demand pieces that reflected the variegated culture of the East; did they employ Latin craftsmen who absorbed oriental styles and techniques, either through deliberate study or organic transmission? If so, then it might reasonably be suggested that a flourishing, immersive artistic culture was developing in the Frankish Levant. It is possible, however, that more practical considerations were also at play; that Latin patrons simply employed the best craftsmen available. Usama ibn Munqidh, pp. 145–6; S. Edgington, ‘Administrative regulations for the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem dating from the 1180s’,
Crusades
, vol. 4 (2005), pp. 21–37. On the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, crusader architecture and material culture in Outremer see: Folda,
The Art of the Crusaders
, pp. 175–245; A. Boas,
Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East
(London, 1999); N. Kenaan-Kedar, ‘The Figurative Western Lintel of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’,
The Meeting of Two Worlds, Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period of the Crusades
, ed. V. P. Goss (Kalamazoo, 1986), pp. 123–32; N. Kenaan-Kedar, ‘A Neglected Series of Crusader Sculpture: the ninety-six corbels of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre’,
Israel Exploration Journal
, vol. 42 (1992), pp. 103–14; D. Pringle, ‘Architecture in the Latin East’,
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades
, ed. J. S. C. Riley-Smith (Oxford, 1995), pp. 160–84; D. Pringle,
The Churches of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1993–2007).

B. Hamilton, ‘Rebuilding Zion: the Holy Places of Jerusalem in the Twelfth Century’,
Studies in Church History
, vol. 14 (1977), pp. 105–16; B. Hamilton, ‘The Cistercians in the Crusader States’,
Monastic Reform, Catharism and the Crusade
(1979), pp. 405–22; B. Hamilton, ‘Ideals of Holiness: Crusaders, Contemplatives, and Mendicants’,
International History Review
, vol. 17 (1995), pp. 693–712; A. Jotischky,
The Perfection of Solitude: Hermits and Monks in the Crusader States
(University Park, PA, 1995); A. Jotischky, ‘Gerard of Nazareth, Mary Magdalene and Latin Relations with the Greek Orthodox Church in the Crusader East in the Twelfth Century’,
Levant
, vol. 29 (1997), pp. 217–26; B. Z. Kedar, ‘Gerard of Nazareth, a neglected twelfth-century writer of the Latin East’,
Dumbarton Oaks Papers
, vol. 37 (1983), pp. 55–77; B. Z. Kedar, ‘Multidirectional conversion in the Frankish Levant’,
Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middles Ages
, ed. J. Muldoon (1997), pp. 190–97; B. Z. Kedar, ‘Latin and Oriental Christians in the Frankish Levant’,
Sharing the Sacred: Contacts and Conflicts in the Religious History of the Holy Land
, ed. A. Kofsky and G. Stroumsa (1998), pp. 209–22; B. Z. Kedar, ‘Convergences of Oriental Christian, Muslim and Frankish worshippers: the case of Saydnaya and the knights Templar’,
The Crusades and the Military Orders
, ed. Z. Hunyadi and J. Laszlovszky (Budapest, 2001), pp. 89–100.