These wars lay bare the power of faith and ideology to inspire fervent mass movements and to elicit violent discord; they affirm the capacity of commercial interests to transcend the barriers of conflict; and they illustrate how readily suspicion and hatred of the ‘other’ can be harnessed. But the notion that the struggle for dominion of the Holy Land–waged by Latin Christians and Levantine Muslims so many centuries ago–does, or somehow should, have a direct bearing upon the modern world is misguided. The reality of these medieval wars must be explored and understood if the forces of
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