The First Crusade
Page 37
Between 1096 and 1099 the forces of the Latin West and Islam fought each other as enemies. But neither side appears to have truly viewed the other as an 'alien' species for whom they had an inbuilt, genetically encoded hatred. The crusaders' conquest of Jerusalem obviously did nothing to promote inter-religious harmony, but within a decade the Frankish settlements in the East had begun to be gradually incorporated into the political fabric of the Levant. Trade and commerce blossomed, and diplomacy took its place alongside conflict. In 1108, and again in 1115, the Latins even campaigned alongside Muslim allies.7
Only when the memory of the First Crusade was appropriated and refashioned in western Europe did the atmosphere of Latin-Muslim antipathy solidify. Unrelenting papal propaganda advanced the ideals of religious intolerance in the course of the twelfth century, and soon those earliest crusaders were being celebrated as much for their brutal attacks on Islamic foes as for the dramatic recapture of Jerusalem. In the Levant, a series of ambitious Muslim warlords, culminating in the mighty Sultan Saladin, seized upon the crimes of the First Crusaders. Demanding revenge, they re-ignited the fires of jihad, and under the cover of this ideal set out to unify Islam under their despotic rule. By 1300, the memory of the crusade as a war engendered by fanatical hatred had become embedded in the collective consciousness of western and eastern society. The lines of religious discord hardened; Christendom and Islam had been set on the path to enduring conflict.
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