Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

about more than a tussle of ascendant monotheisms. It was about the changing shape of the western world at large. From the time of the First Crusade until the end of the Middle Ages, popes ordered or sanctioned military campaigns on three continents, against enemies who included Turkish warlords, Arab sultans, Kurdish generals, and Spanish Arab emirs, as well as Baltic pagans, French heretics, Mongol chieftains, disobedient western Christian kings, and even Holy Roman emperors. In other words, Islam held no monopoly on victimhood when it came to holy war; even if we ignore the many differences between the Muslims of Spain, Egypt, and Syria, still the so-called Saracens were one enemy among many. And just as important, it was never the case that Christians and Muslims of the crusading period were automatic and implacable enemies. There were times when they tore each other to shreds. But there were many other times and places in which crusaders and Muslims rubbed shoulders, traded, and interacted without feeling the least need to behead or burn one another to death. This is not to write the Crusades out of existence—simply to say that the importance of crusading in medieval history and its legacy to the world today is very often misconstrued as being about relations between Christians and Muslims and nothing more. As we shall see in the remainder of this chapter, crusading was important precisely because it was such a varied phenomenon and a malleable concept. It did not sim...