This was not a friendly era agreements easiest and harmony, but seeing prevailing realities of the world in general, should not be a surprise. West itself in the Middle Ages was fraught with rivalries between Christians and endless wars, social and religious intolerance was also growing everywhere. According to these standards, blending contacts and continuing conflicts in eastern Mediterranean during the Crusades was not so great. In an analysis of balances, tells the story of the Crusades is not at all that Islam and the West were then destined to go to a "clash of civilizations"
Powerful images and immediate memory associated with the medieval Crusades were dominated by war and violence: the first messengers of the Crusades who walked on the blood of Muslims knee on July 15, 1099, after the barbaric killings of the capture of Jerusalem ; crusade army 88 years later in the battlefield of Hattin, in the wake of a terrible loss at the hands of the greatest hero of Islam, Saladin, and Baibari, Sultan of the Mamluks of Egypt relentless, which closed doors in Antioch kryqëzatorit May 19, 1268, before being slaughtered in their thousands.
In this background, anyone can perceive this as an era of "total war" between Islam and the West, an era of fierce conflict, fueled by hatred and reciprocal cycles of violence. This is certainly the vision of the Crusades, used to promote the idea of an inevitable clash of civilizations between Europe and the Muslim world. But is this really a concept for the era of the Crusades, if you scrutinize?
Death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 was followed by a wave of Islamic expansion furious, as Arab tribes poured out of the Arabian peninsula and drew Palestine (including Jerusalem), Syria, Iraq, Iran and Egypt with an unusual speed. In the century that followed, the pace of expansion slowed somewhat, but he nevertheless continued as among eighth century Muslim world stretched from the Indus River and the borders of China in the east, along the northern Africa to Spain and southern France in the west.
Already in 1000 the Muslims living in border communities in Western Europe, the best known in the Iber and Sicily. Those looking to find evidence of contacts constructive and not destructive in medieval Islam appointments with the Christian West, usually come from these two border areas. There reveal abundant evidence for intercultural exchanges, broadcasting intellectuals and artistic fusion.
In contrast, the history of the Crusades often accepted as unidimensional as driven only by holy war and jihad Christians and Muslims. In fact, such an approach greatly underestimates the complexity and colors of war for the Holy Land began with the First Crusade in 1095 and ended with the collapse of states built by the Crusaders in 1291.
The land beyond the sea
After the first crusade, was created four countries - isolated outposts Christians that lasted almost two centuries and was recognized as OUTREMER (land across the sea). Impressive history of those four settlements certainly reveals a constant battle against the Muslims mbijtesë eastern Mediterranean.
But history OUTREMER provides numerous examples of relations between Christians and Muslims, in a way that throws up the idea that this was a world of perpetual conflict. States raised from the Crusades were rapidly assimilated by local customs and all parties began to show a pragmatic desire to make a bargain, even alliances with those who were supposed to be their enemies when necessary.
So in 1108, less than a decade after the brutal Jerusalem from the Crusades, Latinos and Muslims fought alongside Antioch neighboring city of Aleppo against a common enemy, in this moment, a second unusual coalition, consisting of strength Christian rivals set by the state of the Crusades, of Edessa, and Iraqis from Mosul.
Some contacts were at a more personal level. Antioken nobleman Robert Fitz Fulk, developed a close friendship with Turkish fighter Tughteini of Damascus in the early 12th century. Desecrate it helped cement a short-lived alliance between their two cities in 1115. But until 1119, the two were very cool with each other.
When Robert was arrested and brought to Damascus that year, he may have hoped that would be left free. In fact, when he refused to renounce his Christian faith, anger and Tughteinin grabbed Robert's head cut off "by hurling a sword". Later he said he had washed Tughteini gold skull old friend.
In the remainder of the twelfth century and beyond, Muslims and Christians from the West often appeared willing to negotiate temporary agreement that would be beneficial to both parties. Even Saladin, who took power in Syria in 1174 with the promise it would hold jihad and denouncing other Muslims constantly making deals with the Latins, Comte secretly made an agreement with Tripoli in 1176. Sultan continued to demonstrate the same flexible approach to diplomatic contacts for the rest of his career.
Great care must be made when evaluating the significance of these examples of negotiations, arrangements or alliances. They do not represent an attempt to make lasting peace between Islam and the West. They were more exercises to achieve maximum convenience. In the Middle Ages, diplomacy was usually a tool for conflict, which used to reach advantages, or a temporary reprieve during which had regained strength to resume hostilities. However, it is striking to observe that, even in the context of a war of religiously charged by the domination of the Holy Land, the persistence of a "total war" proved impossible, and perhaps undesirable.
Throughout the first half of the 13th century, the descendants of Saladin were more willing to make deals with countries created by the Crusades. It seems that their goal was to maintain a delicate balance of powers in the East, so that trade agreements between East and West empowered. In fact, the era of the Crusades not only resulted in a glut of trade between sworn enemies, but there was even an almost exponential growth in the size and scope of trade contacts between Islam and Latin Europe.
Italian merchants from Venice, Pisa and Genoa played a role in this process, creating enclaves in major ports of the States of the Crusades, as well as in coastal cities, while created a complex network of trade routes transmesdhetare.
These pulsating artery of trade, connecting the east and close to the West, East and products enabled valuables from the Middle East and Asia to reach the European markets.
The transfer of goods from the Muslim world in the Mediterranean ports was very important not only for Christians. It became one of the key elements of near eastern economy as a whole, life for Muslim traders establish trade routes for caravans eastward; very important for income Islam's great cities, Aleppo and Damascus. These common interests and interdependence produced stirred carefully curated contacts, even in times when political and military conflicts were at their peak. In the end - even among holy war - trade was too important to cut.
And Iberian Muslim pilgrim traveler Ibn Jubayr was a living witness of this phenomenon. During a trip in early 1180 that he began in North Africa, Arabia, Iraq and Syria, he passed through the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, with a caravan of Muslim merchants from Damascus, visiting Akre and tire prior to boarding the ship to Sicily .
He described the structured systems to ensure the free flow of commercial traffic, strict safety regulations, customs more efficient, including a Akká where customs officers were hired to speak Arabic as holding registers, as well as two-storey warehouses for storing Akká goods. Business between Christians and Muslims carried out "with citizens and respect and with no injustice".
Until the 13th century, with the encouragement of Ayybid, Akká had become the most important port of entry in the Mediterranean - the Levant warehouses in which goods coming from all countries of the Crusades, the near east and beyond. They magazinoheshin there before they left the ship to the west. Meanwhile, the traffic sent from west to east.
It became increasingly common for traders to travel to Latin Muslim territories, by trading woolen goods and saffron (the only western spice found in East market) in Damascus, before returning to the acre of a new shipment of silk and precious stones and semi precious stones.
Not all were impressed by the rapid pace of life in the Mediterranean port. A Latin bishop called "a second Babylon," calling Akká "a city filled with awesome ... indecent acts and evil deeds", with a population that was "dedicated to all the senses of the body" - said Prostitution has flourished so much that even the clergy gave it their rented rooms prostitutes.
Condemnatory tone of these comments was at least partly a response to Aker status as a "meeting place" culture: a meeting place between Islam and the West, where Latinos can be exposed and met with the habits of native states.
The debate is still open how many residents of states embraced crusades lifestyle and practices of people in the eastern Mediterranean. A veteran of the First Crusade certainly suggested that there was an element of customization when he wrote in 1120 "that God had transformed the West in the East. For us Westerners had been already turned east we were. " However, credible evidence of assimilation are very rare.
Perhaps the most remarkable source of information in this regard is Osama bin Munqidh 'and his book "Book of Contemplation", a collection of tales and anecdotes. Born in 1095 - the same year when the Crusades began - Osama was a noble Syrian Arab who had enjoyed a long career enormously diverse as the warrior, diplomat and advisor. As such, he was the right person to witness the Crusades.
Myslimanëve.Për entertainment orientalize issue of Latinos, Osama wrote: "There are some who are accustomed to Western and Muslim societies attending. These are better than those who have just arrived from their countries, but these are the exception and can not be considered as typical cases ". Later, he mentions the story of a knight in Antioch Latino elderly, who already use the kitchen just east had employed "Egyptian cook" amuse and delight guests with Muslims. This approach to near eastern food is also due to the spread between Latinos of different local foods - from citrus and pomegranates, to rice and lentils.
Elsewhere, Osama bin Munqidh described how he had visited a bath in Tyre, open to Latino and Muslim, and the fact that he had heard of a bath run by Muslims to take. The latter directed by a named Selim, who had a history recounted Usamas (which he considered egregious) for a frank rider who had visited his premises. Knight had decided that, as the Aegis depilohej hooked and was so pleased, that he had called his wife: She fell, and jockey said: "Do it like you did on me!" So, I depilova and his wife, while the rider sat on saw. Later, he thanked me and thanked me for my service. " Osama then reflect on the great contradiction that drive this anecdote, that Westerners "have no sense of ownership or honor, yet they have a lot of great courage."
Interest Osama was almost always to the strangest and unusual, so his material should be viewed with caution. However, his work often offers impressive views of daily life in the states shows that the Crusades and the newcomers did not live in a seal the culture, but they were committed to a mass adoption and assimilation. During the war for the Holy Land, and timeliness pragmatic political reality, military and commercial arrivals meant that the Crusades would have frequent contact with the natives of the countries of birth, including Muslims. Thus, the Crusades created a border of environments where Europeans were able to interact with and absorb eastern eastern culture.
Although characterized by a religious war for territories holy crusades were not held as "total war" and led to the meeting point between Christians and Muslims, not very different from those observed in Sicily and Iber.
This was not a friendly era agreements easiest and harmony, but seeing prevailing realities of the world in general, should not be a surprise. West itself in the Middle Ages was fraught with rivalries between Christians and endless wars, social and religious intolerance was also growing everywhere. According to these standards, blending contacts and continuing conflicts in eastern Mediterranean during the Crusades was not so great. In an analysis of balances, tells the story of the Crusades is not at all that Islam and the West were then destined to go to a "clash of civilizations".
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