I
“Deus Vult!” [1]

During March 1095, when an embassy from the Byzantine emperor Alexius I came to Pope Urban II for assistance against the Seljuk Turks, the Eastern Holy Roman Empire was a shadow of its former self.  Egypt, Syria, and the majority of Asia Minor, all formerly Orthodox eastern provinces, had been overrun by invading Islamic armies.  Now the “infidels” were within striking distance of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople.  However, even before receiving Alexius’ delegation, Urban II had already decided that during his next journey through France, he would make an appeal to the western European nobility.  In November, at the Council of Clermont, the Pope would address both the problems in the East as well as the multitude of abuses toward the church at home, which had brought a declination of the adherence to the “Peace of God.”  He called onto the large body of the assembly:

“Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private war-fare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have been begun long ago. Let those who for a long time, have been robbers, now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain the eternal reward. Let those who have been wearing themselves out in both body and soul now work for a double honor.”[2]

Taking up arms to aid fellow Christians was not necessarily a new idea.  Former Popes had requested the nobility’s aid in retaking the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims over twenty years earlier.[3]  However, Urban hit on a significant idea of summoning that, once established, fused the ideas of religion and of war together.  And as he proclaimed the importance of bellum sacrum, or religious war,[4] throughout France, Urban II set in motion a movement that would only officially peter out in the late eighteenth century, but whose ideas and legacy continue on into the present day.

              Roughly three decades after Urban II’s famous speech at Clermont, there stood an unnamed Frankish knight waiting at his home in Antioch on a guest that he had invited to dinner.  He was a knight who had come to the Levantine[5] “with the early expeditions of the Franks.”  Now, possibly too old to fight, he enjoyed a quieter life entertaining company on “an estate on the income of which he lived.”  However, that night the Frank would entertain an unexpected visitor.  Their subsequent interactions would make its way into the writings of Usamah ibn-Munqidh and provide today’s historians with a rare glimpse into the daily lives of inhabitants living in Levantine during the early twelfth century.[6] 

Usamah records in his autobiography, Kitab al-I'tibar, that the unnamed Frank was a friend of al-Ra'is Theodoros Sophianos, a man whom Usamah “was bound by mutual ties of amity.”  Prior to that evening, Usamah had sent one of his men, an unnamed Muslim merchant, to conduct business with al-Ra’is.  It was after business had been concluded that al-Ra’is extended Usamah’s man his dinner invitation.

            “I am invited by a friend of mine who is a Frank.”  Al-Ra’is said enthusiastically, “Thou shouldst come with me so that thou mayest see their fashions.”

            Being respectful, Usamah’s man accepted, accompanying al-Ra’is to the Frank’s home.  At dinner, he was impressed; the knight presented an excellent table, with food that was “extraordinarily clean and delicious.”  However, Usamah’s man remained on guard, abstaining from food that may have been sacrilegiously cooked in someway.  Seeing this, the knight tried to discourage such negative thoughts.

            "Eat, be of good cheer! I never eat Frankish dishes, but I have Egyptian women cooks and never eat except their cooking. Besides, pork never enters my home." Reluctantly, Usamah’s man ate.  After which, he and al-Ra’is departed.

            A short time later, while Usamah’s man was passing through Antioch’s marketplace, a Frankish woman unexpectedly lunged at him, clinging to his clothes and muttering incoherently in the Frankish language.  The spectacle of the bewildered Muslim man and the distraught Frankish woman began to draw a crowd.  However, his actions appeared to anger them, as most were of Frankish descent, convincing Usamah’s man that surely “death was at hand.”  But, suddenly the same Frankish knight from dinner appeared.  On seeing his former dinner guest, he pushed through crowd to confront the woman, saying sternly:

            “What is the matter between you and this Muslim?”

            “This is he who has killed my brother, Hurso!”  She cried.

            “This is a bourgeois (merchant) who neither fights nor attends a fight.” He shouted back, wrenching her off the man.  The knight then yelled at the assembled crowd, dispersing them.  With a dangerous situation now resolved, the Frank took the bewildered trader by the arm, leading him quickly away.  “Thus the effect of the meal was my deliverance from certain death.”

            The Christian armies that gathered outside of Nicaea to form the First Crusade in June 1097 may have consisted of upwards of 60,000 persons, of which 5,000-10,000 were nobles or knights like our unnamed Frank in Antioch.  Their struggle across Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine in hopes of reclaiming Jerusalem for Christendom is, needless to say, well documented by centuries of historians.  Led by a council of princes including Raymond IV of Toulouse, Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert II of Flanders, and Bohemond of Taranto, the Latins, or Franks as they were usually called by onlookers, embarked on their journey.  Count Stephen of Blois wrote home to his wife, Adèla, just before his departure from Nicaea that “we will reach Jerusalem in five weeks, unless Antioch should thwart us." In fact, it would take over two years. As the crusaders crossed Anatolia,[7] they confronted a large Muslim force outside of the town of Dorylaeum.  Their victory, as undeserved as it was, provided the Crusaders with a free passage across the breadth of Asia Minor.  However, by the time they reached Antioch, food shortages had devastated the army, bringing the First Crusade to the brink of annihilation.  But, the Franks persevered and after a seven-and-a-half month long siege Antioch was finally captured and the expedition continued south toward their ultimate goal.  The establishment of the first crusader state, the County of Edessa by Baldwin of Boulogne, afforded the Crusaders a buffer zone from further Muslim aggression and added desperately needed supplies for the last push toward the Holy city.  Jerusalem was finally captured on 15 July 1099. [8]  With their mission successful, many of the crusaders returned to Europe.  However, some, like our unnamed knight, decided to stay in the three burgeoning “crusader states” of the Levant.

In fact, these events in world history have been so well fawned over and every possible contemporary document scrutinized by latter historians that in our modern time, we are now seeing a withdrawal from research of the larger concepts in the Early Crusading period.  Now, with the advance of technology, investigations can focus exclusively on one of the countless microcosms of the Crusading field.  This is not necessarily a bad development.  Such immense detail opens new doorways into the Crusading world, allowing us to review people, places, and events under a literally new lens. Yet, even with this mass injection of new information, historians view the Franks and their legacy, the Crusading States, with the same presumptions as they did nearly fifty years ago; specifically the ability (or its lack) of  Frankish society to assimilate into the Near Eastern culture.  Why is this?

 The Franks, it was argued, had intentionally created an apartheid system by confining themselves within the largest cities/fortresses and created laws that limited intermingling with their Muslim subjects.[9]  In so doing, Frankish society underwent an accelerated process of urbanization that fell outside general trends of Near Eastern culture during the period. “Let it be stated from the beginning,” said Joshua Prawer, “the Crusaders’ society was predominantly… an urban society.”[10]  While relying on the same contemporary sources, this interpretation reversed previous ideas which depicted Franks as a highly integrated group within Islamic society.  Modern historians accepted the earlier evidence that the Franks, such as the knight in Usamah’s anecdote, readily took to numerous Middle Eastern habits; clothing themselves in eastern garments, eating fruit and dishes of the country, and employing Muslims for their household.  However, these implementations were not indicative of “cultural assimilation” and thus could not confirm anything more than acceptance to the required external conditions of daily life. 

Why such a change occurred in historian’s school of thought is outside the scope of this investigation, but the result is a field that only acknowledges limited influence of Muslim culture in structuring Near Eastern Frankish society.  The idea stands like one of the many ruined “Crusader fortresses” that still litter the Levantine countryside.  In fact, within the last two decades, most sites dating to the Frankish period have been identified by scholars as fortresses or towers; only differing in size, defensibility, and ownership.  However, more than half of these “fortresses” were not located along the borders of the kingdom.  Instead, they were constructed in areas that enjoyed relative peace for more than fifty year, from the mid-1120’s until the late 1170’s.[11]  Therefore, the identification of so many reported castles would appear to be problematic.  And like these “castles,” if we look beneath such surface level investigations of the Frankish structure, we’ll see something much different. 

The object of my study is to redefine the basic assumptions regarding Frankish acclimation in their initial drive into and settlement of the Levantine.  I’ll demonstrate that although the Crusaders never achieved the complete assimilation exhorted by earlier historians, they did attain a level of integration that surpasses modern day acknowledgement.  From the very beginning of the First Crusade, the Crusaders demonstrated a willingness to adapt to their new surroundings that would serve them well throughout the early Crusading State period.  They recognized the Muslim world for what it was, a land severely divided amongst rival groups, and were willing to be absorbed into the Near Eastern political sphere in order to exploit divisions that would advance Christian agendas.[12]  If the Latins desired to maintain control, they needed to accept, or at least tolerate, the prevalent Islamic culture.  But, political maneuvering alone could not preserve power.  Warfare was also an inlet too and an expression of Frankish acclimation to the Near Eastern.  If correctly used, it proved a critical instrument in furthering a Frankish foothold within the Levant. And like all Latin societies of the period, the Eastern Christians geared their people toward war.  Violence was an accepted measure, resorted to as a matter of course and culture.[13]    Yet, how they utilized violence can suggest how the Franks structure was transformed by the Near East. 

The First Crusade was more than an attempt to recover Jerusalem; it was an attempt to establish Western Christian authority over the Near East,[14] even if this went against their original oaths given to Alexius.[15] During a council near Edessa in 1110 Baldwin I, King of Jerusalem, reminded Tandred that even before setting out on the First Crusade, it was decreed “…whatever anyone might seize from the defeated kingdoms and lands of the gentiles in this land of our pilgrimage, he might hold it peacefully and freely; no one might send any army to him to harm him, but only to help him, and each would lay down his life for his brothers.”[16]  This agreement suggested a formalized privilege of right through conquest amongst the crusaders.  Coupled to this prerogative were the numerous sieges which captured strategic Muslim cities and created a chain of Latin strongholds down the Mediterranean coastline.  Their garrison changed the Franks from a transient/migratory group of warriors to a permanent/fixated group with long term interests in the region.

Adapting Near Eastern concepts also found its way into the crusader states institutional framework, which required the ability to force contacts across communal divisions.  The Middle East offered Frankish rulers a populace that was culturally and religiously familiar with alien elites that were indifferent or even hostile to their indigenous subjects.[18]  Thus, if correctly coupled with the use of military strength, allowed for an institutional framework that was uniquely of their own design.[19]  And although the result was a political idiom that remained severely westernized, imposing a hierarchical power structure that placed themselves firmly at the apex, Latin rulers did borrow more from Byzantine and possible Islamic institutions the further north one traveled from Jerusalem.  

The livelihood of the Franks depended on using, not ignoring, their surroundings and neighbors.  As they had early in the First Crusade, the crusader states were willing to interact with other Muslim States, if only to further Christian goals. In the Principality of Antioch, this created an opportunity for Antiochene princes to increase their own power by taking advantage of Muslim factionalism.[20] Through the use of annual tribute, Antioch established a relationship of dependence with the neighboring city of Aleppo that culminated in military alliances.

By the 1120's, Fulcher of Chartres , a settler first of Edessa then of Jerusalem, expressed how the Latin society established in the Levant was that of a growingcivilian population successfully coming to grips with their newly adopted environment.  Furthermore, he insisted, although not altogether plausibly, Jerusalemites no longer hung to every story from visiting pilgrims about their homeland and had, in fact, wholly forgotten their native soil.  He had a point though; new castles, fortified settlements, and towers built by the Christian kingdoms were rising amongst the peaceful, interior regions.  The Occidental army was progressively looking more Oriental while the government absorbed and adapted Near Eastern ideas for bettering its administration.  This analysis should not, however, be seen as an attempt to return to an earlier model of complete Frankish assimilation into Near Eastern culture.  Such a portrayal of the crusader states as a haven for inter-communal, let alone inter-faith, harmony would be ridiculous.  In 1152, Raymond II, Christian ruler of the Kingdom of Tripoli, was murdered by Assassins, an Isma’ili sect known as the New Preaching originating in north-western Iran in the late eleventh century.  The consequences were severe.  In a vain attempt “that the perpetrators of the foul deed might be found,” Raymond’s widow, Hodierna, ordered the entire eastern indigenous population of Tripoli massacred, regardless of their religious affliation.  The offenders were never found.[21]  Cultural tensions between inter-communal groups were very real and the inequality of justice, such as Hodierna’s immediate and extreme response, exposed a latent racism amongst the ruling Frankish class over their Islamic subjects. But, I believe that even though friction between Frankish and Syrian groups occurred on a daily basis and the life of the Crusaders and the Latin Kingdoms were comparatively brief, the need to adapt to the prevalent Near Eastern power structure produced a Latin society that may not have been as similar to their European cousins as modern historians attest.  Looking back to our unnamed Frankish knight, here, at least, was one Frankish settler whose stay in the east was not temporary, superficial, transient, or destitute.  As Fulcher of Chartres had triumphantly expounded about his Jersumalites, our Antiochene knight was an Occidental who had become an Oriental.