Exchange During the Crusades

Rural Cultural Exchange between Christians and Muslims during the Crusades

By Nicholas Mason

         Many people would say that Christians and Muslims have been constantly fighting for hundreds of years. However, there have been countless times where both cultures have come together in peace and interacted by exchanging parts of their cultures. In the Crusades Christians and Muslims were fighting throughout the Holy Land, the leaders on both sides would sometimes encourage interactions with each other to better understand each other; not just to find a way for peace but to also learn from each other to improve both sides' way of life. For the purpose of this paper we will focus on the 11th century to the 13th century. Cultural exchange between Christians and Muslims during the Crusades led to many European Christians to adopt agricultural methods and stay in the Mediterranean to become farmers and merchants because it helped better their social standing.
         Islamic society already had a major presence throughout the Mediterranean long before the European Crusaders arrived there. The Muslims had multiple trade routes spanning from Northern Africa to East Asia. Venetian merchants were trading with Muslims in Egypt leading to interactions between Christians and Muslims but these interactions were small in comparison to the Crusades. Once the Muslim Turks began to rise in power they started to attack other kingdoms' territories; the Byzantine Empire, a Christian based empire, became worried and asked the Vatican to assist them in order to push the Muslim Turks away from the Holy Land. Many Arabs were even fearful of the Muslim Turks' power at this point. The Byzantine Emperor Alexios I made the request because of Muslim Turk invaders from Anatolia. In 1095, Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont called upon Christians throughout Europe to help their Eastern Christian neighbors and to retake Jerusalem from the Muslim Turks. Crusades like this happened for another two hundred years and many Europeans that went on these Crusades decided to stay in the Mediterranean instead of going back to their homelands in Europe. The interactions that Christians and Muslims had during the times of the Crusades were not always conflicts, many of them started to share each other's cultures and ways of life.1
The Crusades could be described as a seesaw where Christians are on one side while Muslims are on the other. The group that had the most power throughout the Holy Land, or possession of Jerusalem, was only going to hold power for a few decades before the other group defeats them in combat. The group that was in power would change on and off throughout the years but even though there was many battles and conflicts, both the Christians and Muslims did interact with each other peacefully at times. These peaceful interactions is what helped both groups learn about each other's cultures and eventually leading to many European Christians settling into the Holy Land to better their social standings. When the Crusades ended, with many Muslim victories, it gave rise to the Ottoman Empire in the 1300s. The Ottoman Empire hired many European Christians that settled in the Holy Land to work in the Ottoman government with Islamic laws protecting Christian churches.2
In an analysis of Chris Wickham's Medieval Europe, Charles Kimball and Joseph Khichian's Muslim-Christian Relations, and Carole Hillenbrand's The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives one will see the different opinions and arguments of Christian and Islamic interactions and relations. One would be able to see how the authors describe Christian and Islamic relations and then look at the differences of these descriptions to find a common ground of agreement about what Christian and Islamic relations were like.
         In Chris Wickham's Medieval Europe he writes about how the Christian groups and cities were very cautious when it came to Muslim groups and cities because during the times of the Crusades the Muslims were to be considered a threat. He goes on to write that even though there was a great deal to learn from both sides, Christians had a hard time learning a lot from the Muslims due to this idea that they had to be cautious around them. He states that some older historians, such as Henri Pirenne, believed that Europe had a unified economy and that the Islamic people destroyed it by breaking the unity of the Roman and post Roman Mediterranean but Wickham states that the idea is completely false due to the European economy collapsing in the seventh century without any dealings with the Islamic people. Later on in Chris Wickham's writings, he states that the First Crusade was a major factor in Christian-Muslim Interaction because not only were Venetians trading with Muslims in the Mediterranean but many Europeans were heading to the Holy Land which led them to buy decorative pottery, tapestries, crops, and products such as sugar to send back to Europe. In a way, one can say that Chris Wickham's reasoning in describing Christian-Muslim relations is that trade and war are what brought these two cultures closer together but the urge to be cautious was always in the minds of the Christians.3
         Charles Kimball and Joseph Khichian's Muslim-Christian Relations is somewhat similar to Chris Wickham's writings in a sense that both Christians and Muslims were trying to understand each other better. In Muslim-Christian Relations official interactions, like political meetings or business meetings, were called "Muslim-Christian dialogue." They call these interactions dialogues to show that when Christians and Muslims interacted in manners such as these they would, for the most part, not be one-sided. Kimball and Khichian believe these dialogues were a way for both Christians and Muslims to meet to find common ground to better understand each other while clearing up stereotypes at the same. One can say that if Chris Wickham's writings about Christian and Muslim interactions near the First Crusade were about warfare and starting trade, then Kimball and Khichian's writing about the interactions focused on trade and peace talks in order to find common ground among these two cultures.4
While Wickham's writings focus closely to the Christian side of the interactions, Kimball and Khichian's writings focus closely on the Muslim side of the interactions. It is interesting to find that even though it was difficult for Muslims and Christians to consider each other on equal terms, some Muslim-ruled cities treated Christians as protected people and vice versa. Ultimately, Wickham along with Kimball and Khichian would have agreed that Christians and Muslims were trying to find common ground throughout daily life but could never be fully able to coexist without conflict.
In Carole Hillenbrand's The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, she writes in a similar way to Kimball and Khichian because she focuses on the Islamic point of view. She uses solely Muslim sources in order to show that the histories written about the Crusades were not just from European Christians but Muslims that also witnessed the interactions of both cultures during the Crusade period. She looks at the career of Saladin and also uses the accounts of Ibn Jubayr and Usamah b. Munqidh. She writes that the Muslims had stereotypes for the Franks and other Europeans even though they would sometimes interact without conflict. Her writing sheds some light that whatever the Europeans thought about the Muslims, the Muslims had their own thoughts about the Europeans as well.5
Compared to the other authors, Carole Hillenbrand's work is more brutally honest that even though there was some peaceful interactions between Christians and Muslims, there was still incredible amounts of tension and stereotypes among both the Europeans and the Islamic people. Carole Hillenbrand is the only author out of these four to not write about trade but she does show the tension that some Muslims had toward Europeans when they interacted. Even though she sometimes has a darker and straightforward way of stating her case, her work shows that even though the Muslims at times were extremely weary of the Europeans they still helped each other in some way. One must be able to look at her work and think about the situation that both the Europeans and Muslims were in during these difficult times of on and off war.
In conclusion, all of the authors would agree that even though they fought on and off, Christians and Muslims benefitted from each other because of the interactions they had with each other. The way that the authors looked at the interactions were different and yet they all somewhat came to the same conclusion that Muslims and Christians helped each other in some way due to their interactions. Wickham looked at the interactions through a European standpoint while Kimball and Khichian looked at it from a Muslim stand point with Hillenbrand looking at a Muslim point of view at a different angle. The writings were all done at different times as well and that just reinforces that the ideas of the authors, when it comes to Christian and Muslim interactions, is very strong and backed up.
         Even though the Venetians were already trading with Muslims in Egypt before the Crusade, the trade was just a fraction of the scale of world economic expansion. The biggest world economic expansion happened once the First Crusade was underway and tens of thousands of Christian Europeans swarmed into the Mediterranean on their way to the Holy Land. Many of these Europeans had never interacted with Islamic culture before the Crusades started so to many of these Europeans they were walking into a completely different world. They saw extraordinary pottery, new textiles, and crops they had never seen before. While some would send pottery and textiles back to their homelands in Europe, others decided to forget about Europe entirely and settle down in the Mediterranean after they finished their active duty in the military.
         An example of cultural exchange in an agricultural standpoint is when the Crusaders first received sugar from Muslim traders. The elite and higher class Crusaders enjoyed this new product because they were accustomed to using honey and fruit juices as sweeteners, while sugar was cheaper and much more common. The majority of the Crusaders were commoners and former prisoners who had never tasted anything as sweet as sugar. This led to a fascination with the product, a fascination that ultimately led to an expansion in trade for sugar and sugarcane. Crusaders sent the product back to their homes in Europe and some even decided to never return to Europe to become merchants and farmers of sugarcane.
         When the Crusaders first came to the Holy Land, most of them were commoners and peasants that were either helping the nobility or paying penance for crimes they had committed. Some of these peasants were simple farmers and craftsmen while others were criminals. They formed bonds with the men around them because they knew that if they were going to survive they would have better chances together. Many of the men had never seen a dessert or may have never even left their villages before the Crusades. To the Crusaders this was a whole new world with many new adventures but also struggles. A major struggle for the Crusaders was hunger.
         The first time the Crusaders faced starvation was in 1097 after they had built a road for Emperor Alexius, the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire. The Crusaders were to build a road in exchange for supplies from the Emperor. However, he was very slow in honoring his agreement and many of the commoners and peasants with the Crusaders began to starve. It is said that a loaf of food was being sold to the Crusaders for between 20 to 30 denarii before the supplies arrived. The Crusaders received supplies not long after that and did not have to worry about running out of supplies for some time but in the panic of starvation, many realized that they could purchase food from local merchants instead of relying solely on the leaders of the Crusaders. It also made some of the Crusaders distrust Emperor Alexius because of how slow he was when it came to delivering the supplies they greatly needed. It showed the Crusaders that they must trust the local merchants along with the leaders of the Crusades if they wanted to live through their journey to the Holy Land. The peasants and commoners with the Crusaders started to see how the local merchants would be willing to trade with them and be willing to sell them food and other supplies. It was the beginning of a new cultural bond where Crusaders started to buy different varieties of fruits and other foods from the local merchants.6
         1097 was not a good year for the Crusaders when it came to resources. The Crusaders faced starvation many times. One such time was when they were chasing the Turks out of Anatolia. The Turks were always a few days ahead of the Crusader army and would go to Christian cities and would take all of their resources before leaving for the next one. When the Crusaders would get to the cities they would not be able to restock on food and other resources. With time, this created a mass spread of starvation throughout the Crusaders. Many of the horses began to die from the lack of food so many of the knights had to fall in line with the other footsoldiers. The Crusaders were saved from starvation when they arrived at the city of Iconium, modern day Konya. The city welcomed the Crusaders with opened arms and gave them all the supplies they needed. The citizens of Iconium even taught the Crusaders new ways of carrying water while they are in the desert. This new way of carrying water through the desert would eventually help those who decided to stay in the Holy Land and become farmers and merchants after they finish their duty as Crusaders. This new way of carrying water let the Crusaders travel farther and have enough water to drink and plant crops.7
         With starvation being a major issue for the Crusaders, they had to learn to adapt to this new environment that they were not used to. They had to learn new ways of carrying water and planting crops. They learned these new techniques from traveling merchants, local farmers, and civilians living in rich cities. These techniques were adopted by the Crusaders that stayed in the Holy Land after they had completed their time of duty. These Crusaders later became farmers and merchants that lived scattered throughout the Holy Land but many of them lived on the Island of Cyprus.
         Ibn Jubayr, a Muslim traveler, wrote about his journey in the Holy Land during the times of the Crusades. He saw many things in his travels including some of the interactions between Christians and Muslims. He would do business with Christians if he had to but he overall did not like them. In his writings he talks about an unusual thing that happens between Muslim and Christian interactions. He writes that if the Crusaders and the Muslims were to fight, Muslim and Christian pilgrims and travelers could go between them and not get hurt. This shows that both sides had a silent agreement to only attack the enemy in front of them and to not touch the travelers that were just trying to get past the two armies. Both sides understood that the travelers that walked between them were the people they were fighting for and that without the travelers and pilgrims they would lose most of the support of the people.8
         Ibn Jubayr also witnessed Crusader and Muslim economic and agricultural interactions. The Crusaders would usually make travelers pay a toll on major roads for their protection and as a way to fund the Christian governments in the Holy Land. However, the Crusaders did not tax merchants that were on the way to Christian cities because they knew that these merchants were helping them by going to the cities. This led to more merchants going to Christian controlled cities so that they would not have to pay a toll for the road. With the increasing number of merchants going to the different Christian cities, Christian and Muslim interactions also increased dramatically. The increasing interactions caused many communities of Crusaders and Muslims living together in peace. Most of the communities were farming communities and the Crusaders and the Muslims that lived there would interact regularly. The Crusaders learned about the different crops and growing methods while they were in these communities, helping them start their own farms in the area. The Muslims that lived in these communities would usually give half of their crops to the Crusaders as a tax while the houses owned by Muslims were not touched by the Crusaders. The farming communities forming in the Holy Land are what made many Crusaders decide to stay there and not return to their homelands in Europe. It was merely a beginning of Crusader plantations and rural cultural exchange.9
         When the Crusaders first came to the Holy Land they did not know many things about living in its countryside. They did not know how to carry water far distances, what crops were being grown, how to care for the crops, and what new kinds of medicine could be made from what was around them. Usa?mah Ibn-Munqidh wrote in an account about how a Frankish doctor treated two patients so brutally that both of the patients died while the native doctor could have easily helped both patients get to perfect health. In the account, he does credit some of the Frank doctors with knowing a great deal about some ointments that helped local villagers but the Europeans had a lot to learn about what to do in the area when it comes to medicine.10
         With the majority of Crusaders being of the lower class and peasants, many of them were looking for ways to enhance their social standings. They were most likely craftsmen and simple farmers that did not earn enough profit to be considered rich. These people wanted to see the world and find ways to make their life better. They did this in the Holy Land, a land unknown to them. The Holy Land was very different from Europe. Instead of rolling valleys with green grass and heavy forests they saw exotic trees, rolling dunes, and at some points they witnessed what seemed like endless desert. They saw traveling merchants greet them in unknown languages and selling products that they had never seen before but there was one product that changed their everyday life, sugar.
         Sugar was unknown to Europeans before the Crusade. The nobility would sweeten their food with mostly honey and fruit juice but because the price of honey was high, because of its rarity, the lower classes usually did not sweeten their food. However, sugar had a lower price due to how plentiful it was in the Holy Land. Once the Crusaders had Jerusalem they held power over most sugar plantations. They used a part of the profits to fund expenses in Christian cities and also gave an indirect profit to the king of Jerusalem as a sort of tax. The European Christians mostly let farming communities live their normal lives but would take a percentage of the crops from every harvest as payment for protecting the roads. Sugar needs a great deal of water to grow so the communities that grew it lived near coastal regions. The coastal regions where sugar refineries were near Acre, Tyre, and around the Jordan Valley. The Crusaders did not alter these refineries a great deal but they did make more sugarcane farms with the help of local farmers. With the added sugarcane farms the Crusaders needed a way to increase the production of sugar so they built more sugar refineries, mostly on Cyprus so that it would be easier to send on ships to Europe.11
         With the success of sugar, many Crusaders decided to build plantations and sell the product to Europe. They demand for sugar rose at a steady rate because of people showing it to others throughout Europe. With so much sugar being produced the price of it was cheap allowing more people to buy it. The peasants and lower class of Europe could finally sweeten their food because of the trade coming from the Holy Land. This new product completely changed the European way of life because it allowed the lower class to feel somewhat like the nobility due to the fact that they could finally sweeten their food without using all of their money on honey and fruit juice.12
         The Crusaders that were lower class and peasants saw a way to escape their low status in European society by settling with Muslim farming communities and building farms for themselves and their families. The Crusaders that settled down in these communities protected the roads of the area in exchange for half of the crops of each harvest along with some money. They followed the European lordship model where the lord protects the community in exchange for taxes only difference is that this time the European lower class became the lords. Besides the taxes that were given to them from the Muslim farmers, the Europeans that settled with them did not interfere with their everyday life. They would let the locals of the community live out their lives normally in exchange for taxes.13
         The European lower class and peasants were not the only ones to settle in the Holy Land. Many of the knights and nobility that were leaders of the Crusaders also settled down throughout the Holy Land. These upper class Europeans built castles near existing towns and sometimes even built whole towns around the castles they built. The more noble Europeans that came to the Holy Land on Crusade, the more they built. They modeled their "lordship" after the European lordship system like how the lower class was doing to the communities they lived in. Some of the castles can still be seen today either in fairly good condition or in ruins. These castles were used as meeting centers for trade and political purposes while also standing as a stronghold for the area.14
         An example of European castles in the Holy Land is a castle nicknamed the Red Tower. The castle was called Turris Rubea to the Crusaders and al-Burj al-Ahmar to the Mamluk Muslims. The Red Tower is in the Sharon plain near Nathanya. The nickname "Red Tower" really comes from the color of the ground around it and not the actual color of the castle. A great deal of mystery surrounds the Red Tower because there is not that many records of its origin and it has multiple names throughout the centuries. Today it is called the Red Tower but in the 12th century it was called the Turris Latinae or "Tower of Latina." The date of the Knights Templars' occupation of the Red Tower is unknown but there are records detailing when they lost the Tower. Between 1187 and 1191, the Red Tower was given away in a politically based trade deal but the Tower was officially handed off in 1248 to the Hospital. An analysis of the plant remains, done by R. N. L. B. Hubbard of North East London Polytechnic and J. McKay of London University, found that there was plenty of well-preserved evidence of what a great deal of the crops were near the Red Tower. The plant remains consist of broad beans, chick peas, lentil, grass peas, two-row hulled barley, and bread wheat. While darnel weeds have also been found in the fields. These would have been common crops that the Europeans that settled in the Holy Land would have grew. The Europeans would have learned to adapt to the new environment when it comes to local irrigation methods and what type of crops grow in the area.15
The majority of European settlement in the Holy Land was on the island of Cyprus. One of the most preserved sugar refineries is on Cyprus in a place called Kolossi. It was discovered by a German university and dated to the time of the Crusades. The refinery was excavated in late 2011 to investigate the southern part of the site. The team of archeologists found many broken containers that would have held sugar along with some pottery and iron nails. The walls in the area were made of stone and not plaster, which led to the walls being well preserved. With how well preserved the site is, it shows what a European version of a sugar refinery would have looked like in the Holy Land. It also gives an idea about how the lower class Crusaders would form their refineries once they had the right amount of resources.16
Once the lower class and peasant Crusaders saw how many doors were open to them when it came to enhancing their social standing, many of them took their chances to settle down in the Holy Land as farmers and merchants. When they were living in Europe they were probably only making a fraction of the money that they could be making in the Holy Land. The Holy Land to the poor and lower class Crusaders was most likely seen as an escape from the European class system. They could sell their crops to travelling merchants or ship them to Europe. They could produce sugar and eventually start a plantation or they could protect a road to a community and become a makeshift lord of the area.
The Crusaders had many choices of occupations in the Holy Land. For the poor and low class Crusaders the Holy Land was a way to raise their social standing and a way to make more money compared to Europe. Some of the Crusaders lived in Muslim communities because they either enjoyed the culture or because they felt obligated to protect the people they were sworn to protect, the pilgrims. One must be able to see that these two cultures were able to work together even in times where they were technically at war with each other and to see that many Crusaders decided to settle down in the Holy Land instead of returning to Europe is astounding.
Cultural exchange between Christians and Muslims during the Crusades led to many European Christians to adopt agricultural techniques and methods while staying in the Mediterranean to become farmers and merchants because it helped better their social standing. For the purpose of this paper the focus has been on the 11th century to the 13th century. In the Crusades Christians and Muslims were fighting throughout the Holy Land, the leaders on both sides would sometimes encourage interactions with each other to better understand each other; not just to find a way for peace but to also learn from each other to improve both sides' way of life. Many people would say that Christians and Muslims have been constantly fighting for hundreds of years. However, there have been countless times where both cultures have come together in peace and interacted by exchanging parts of their cultures. They did this by learning about carrying water through the desert, trading with each other, and eventually living with each other peacefully in communities. They did this not just to benefit themselves but also to better support their families and the people around them.
         1          Trumpbour,          John . "Crusades." In The          Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World.          Oxford          Islamic Studies Online,          http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t236/e0875 (accessed          04-Oct-2017).
         
         2          "Christianity          and Islam." In The          Islamic World: Past and Present.          , edited by John L. Esposito. Oxford          Islamic Studies Online,          http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t243/e70 (accessed          04-Oct-2017).
         
         3          Wickham, Chris. 2017. Medieval          Europe. New          Haven: Yale University Press. 54.
         
         4          Kimball,          Charles A. and Joseph A. Khichian. "Muslim-Christian          Relations." In The          Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics.          Oxford          Islamic Studies Online,          http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t342/e0342 (accessed          04-Oct-2017).
         
         5          Hillenbrand,          Carole. 1999. The          Crusades: Islamic perspectives.          Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.
         
         6          Robert the Monk, Historia,          in Robert          the Monk's History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana,          trans. Carol Sweetenham (Ashgate, 2006). Latin edition: The          Historia Iherosolimitana of Robert the Monk,          ed. D. Kempf and M. G. Bull (Boydell, 2013) 103.
         
         7          Robert the Monk, Historia,          in Robert          the Monk's History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana,          trans. Carol Sweetenham (Ashgate, 2006). Latin edition: The          Historia Iherosolimitana of Robert the Monk,          ed. D. Kempf and M. G. Bull (Boydell, 2013) 114-115.
         
         8          Ibn          Jubayr, Muh?ammad ibn Ah?mad, and R. J. C. Broadhurst. 1952. The          travels of Ibn Jubayr, being the chronicle of a mediaeval Spanish          Moor concerning his journey to the Egypt of Saladin, the holy cities          of Arabia, Baghdad the city of the caliphs, the Latin kingdom of          Jerusalem, and the Norman kingdom of Sicily.          London: J. Cape. 300.
         
         9          Ibn          Jubayr, Muh?ammad ibn Ah?mad, and R. J. C. Broadhurst. 1952. The          travels of Ibn Jubayr, being the chronicle of a mediaeval Spanish          Moor concerning his journey to the Egypt of Saladin, the holy cities          of Arabia, Baghdad the city of the caliphs, the Latin kingdom of          Jerusalem, and the Norman kingdom of Sicily.          London: J. Cape. 316-317.
         
         10          Usa?mah ibn Munqidh, and Philip Khuri Hitti. 2000. An          Arab-Syrian gentleman and warrior in the period of the Crusades:          memoirs of Usa?mah ibn-Munqidh (Kita?b al-I?tiba?r).          New York: Columbia University Press. 162-163.                    
         
         11          Philips, W.D. "Sugar Production and trade in the Mediterranean at          the Time of the Crusades." In The Meeting of Two Worlds, Cultural          Exchange between East and West during the Period of the Crusades,          ed. By V.P. Gross, pp. 393-406. Studies in Medieval Culture. Vol.          21.
         
         12          Philips, W.D. "Sugar Production and trade in the Mediterranean at          the Time of the Crusades."
         
         13          Ibn          Jubayr,          The travels of Ibn Jubayr. 316-317.
         
         14          Pringle,          Denys. 1986. The          red tower (al-Burj al-Ahmar): settlement in the plain of Sharon at          the time of the crusaders and Mamluks A.D.1099-1516.          London: British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. 12-14.
         
         15          Pringle,          Denys. 1986. The          red tower (al-Burj al-Ahmar). 187-191.
         
         16          Cyprus Expat, "Excavations at the Kolossi Sugar Mill",          https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2012/01/excavations-at-kolossi-sugar-mill.html#x97IgS5uWjS4JqxD.97          (accessed          23-Nov-2017).