For those who believe in the inevitability of a ‘clash of civilisations’ and a global conflagration between Islam and the West, the crusades and the societies they begat can serve as grim proof of mankind’s innate propensity to savagery, bigotry and tyrannical repression of an enemy ‘other’. Alternatively, the evidence of transcultural fusion and peaceful coexistence in Outremer can be harnessed to underpin the ideal of convivencia (literally ‘living together’), to suggest that peoples of differing ethnic and religious backgrounds can live together in relative harmony.
