Crusader States or Colonies?

 Many people today believe that the crusader states were like early colonies -- alien foreign enclaves, ruled by segregationist elites for the benefit of Europe rather than the local residents. It's not surprising. That's what historians have been telling them for about 150 years. Yet modern scholarship -- particularly archaeology -- has exposed the fallacies in this image and interpretation. Below is a short summary and analysis of the "colonial" interpretation of the crusader states.

The “Colonialist” interpretation of the Crusader States first emerged in the early 19th century — when Colonialism was at its height. It originated in France, which at that time was expanding its sphere of influence in the Middle East. Specifically, in 1860 riots in Jerusalem highlighted the degree to which local Christians were oppressed under the Ottomans. “To the French it seemed that the age-old circumstances which 750 years earlier had led to the oppression of Oriental Christianity by the ‘Turks’, and were the cause of the Crusades, were now being re-enacted before their very eyes.” [1]

Soon French scholars were seeing other parallels as well. The French historian Emmanuel Guillaume Rey, who made multiple trips to the Holy Land and conducted archaeological studies of crusader sites, is credited with “creating the “French colonialist justification of the crusades.” [2] His successors praised what they viewed as a unique French talent for fair administration of local populations and the acclimatization of Western elites in an Oriental setting.

The French were not alone. The contemporary British historian Claude Condor also interpreted the crusader states as proto-Colonial entities in which the more developed Westerners brought enlightenment to the backward Middle East. Condor used this scheme to explain the decline of Palestine since the fall of the crusader states, and to advocate for new waves of settlement by industrious people capable of developing a modern infrastructure. Although Condor died in 1910, his theories clearly provided an additional justification for Zionist immigration.

Soon Arab nationalists were also conflating the crusader states with colonialism — but now with a new twist. The crusader states, after all, had been eradicated by the Mamluks. Thus the crusader states were failed colonies. For the first time in hundreds of years, Arab and Muslim interest in the crusades and crusader states developed, but only because these represented the perfect model and inspiration for the defeat of 20th Century colonial empires. Arab independence movements made generous use of role models from the crusades, particularly Salah al-Din, in order to stress the vulnerability of the West and inevitability of Muslim/Arab victory.

Statue of Saladin in modern Damascus

By the mid-20th century, Colonialism was out of favor in the West as well. In the post-Colonial era, Colonialism had become THE great evil. It was blamed for poverty, injustice, dictatorships, corruption and all other difficulties confronting former colonials states, particularly in Africa. Yet by now, the habit of viewing the crusader states as early or proto-colonial adventures had become so ingrained that no one bothered to question the model or seriously examine the assumption.

The apogee of this trend was reached in the late 20th century when the Israeli historian Joshua Prawer propagated an extreme position which drew parallels between the Franks in Outremer and white elites in South Africa. He did not shy from alleging that the Franks in Outremer engaged in what he called “apartheid.” Frankish society in the Holy Land was depicted as a decadent urban elite, collecting rents from oppressed native farmers. Allegedly, the Franks were afraid to venture into the hostile environment of the countryside, not only because of an “ever-present” Saracen threat but also because they were hated by their own tenants and subjects.

Prawer’s thesis, however, has been almost completely discredited by more recent research, particularly meticulous studies and archaeological surveys conducted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This research revealed that Frankish rural settlement was much more widespread than had been previously assumed ― without evidence. The Franks, the survey proved, built large numbers of smaller towns and villages, often without walls or fortifications of any kind ― a clear indication that they did not feel threatened as historians hypothesized.

In contrast to the assumptions of earlier historians, the backbone of the Frankish army was composed of rural knights, who drew their income from agriculture not urban “money fiefs.” The knights of Outremer, far from being the decadent pro-Colonial, city-dwellers of legend, were countrymen and farmers, just as they were in Western Europe. Equally significant, the Frankish settlers did not displace the local inhabitants, expelling them from their land and houses. They did not deprive them of either their land or their status. On the contrary, the documentary evidence proves that the Franks were punctilious in recording and respecting the rights of the Syrian inhabitants. Rather than displacing the locals, they built villages and towns in previously unsettled areas or, more commonly, built beside existing towns. Far from exploiting the natives as in 19th and 20th-century colonialism, the Franks co-existed in harmony with the native population.

And who were these settlers? Based on nearly complete records for a sampling of settlements it is possible to show that these settlers came from widely separated areas in the West. For example, in the town of Mahomeria 150 Frankish households were identified with heads-of-household originating in Burgundy, Poitiers, Lombardy, the Ile de France, Bourges, Provence, Gascony, Catalonia, the Auvergne, Tournai, Venice and eight other towns no longer clearly identifiable but apparently in France or Italy. The largest number of families coming from any one place was four.

This helps explain why, as Fulcher of Chartres claimed in his History, the settlers rapidly lost their ties to their “old country” and identified with their new residence. (“We who were Occidentals have now become Orientals. He who was a Roman or a Frank has in this land been made into a Galilean or Palestinian.” Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095-1127, Book II.)

It also explains why the settlement of the crusader states cannot legitimately be conflated with colonialism. Colonies are established by a powerful entity (kingdom, state, city) in a distant, foreign environment for the purpose of enriching the metropolitan center. French colonies were exploited for the benefit of France; British colonies were maintained to make England richer, etc. Settlers and administrators in the colonies came from the “home country,” continued to identify with it, and enforced policies that benefited not the local region/community/population but the distant metropolis.

The crusader states, in contrast, had no “metropolis;” the leaders of the crusades came all across Europe. Nor did settlers come predominantly from a single region. More important, however, the crusader states were independent political entities, represented by independent rulers. Not until the mid-13th century, did absentee Western rulers attempt to impose their will upon the crusader states by sending administrators out to the crumbling kingdom of Jerusalem. Yet even then, they made these claims as Kings of Jerusalem, not as kings of some Western nation.

Significantly, taxes did not flow out of the crusader states into the coffers of distant European kingdoms. No one in the crusader states paid a “stamp tax” or any other duty to a European ruler. The taxes on goods passing through the crusader kingdoms, import and export duties, anchorage, salvage and all the various forms of taxation by which governments gain the revenues necessary to maintain borders, order and justice accrued to NO “Colonial Power” — but to crusader states themselves.

Indeed, for the most part, the fabled wealth of Outremer remained in Outremer, enriching the local population and elites — with the possible exception of the trading fortunes made by the Italian maritime cities. Nor were the crusader states viewed by Europeans as “under-developed” or “backward,” as 19th and 20th century colonies were viewed. On the contrary, for nearly two hundred years, crusaders and pilgrims from the West were awed by and envied the superior standards of living enjoyed by the residents of the crusader states.

In short, while the debate continues and some historians cling to the old notion of the crusader states as “colonies,” the case for this paradigm is weak and largely obsolete. Indeed, using the term “colonies” and attempts to find — or refute — parallels undermines objective research. Rather than looking for artificial similarities, we would do better to focus on fundamental research and original analysis.

[1] Ellenblum, Ronnie, Crusader Castles and Modern Histories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 44.

[2] Ellenblum, 44.

The war against Emperor Frederick II was very much about local elites resisting the attempt of a European monarch to turn them into a kind of "colony" governed by alien laws (the laws of the Holy Roman Empire or Sicily). Read more in my novels set in this important conflict:

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Review: "The Crusader States" by Malcolm Barber

Far more has been written about the crusades than the states they established and supported.  Yet it was the threat to the Christian states that justified every crusade after the First. Furthermore, the crusader states were catalysts for a number of key developments in Western Europe from dramatic improvements in shipping to the exchange of goods, technology and ideas with Constantinople and the Arab/Turkish world.  Indeed, historian Claude Reignier Condor wrote at the end of the 19^th Century that: “…the result of the Crusades was the Renaissance.” (The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem 1099 to 1291 AD, The Committee of Palestine Exploration Fund, 1897, p. 163.)

Professor Malcolm Barber is a distinguished scholar who has already produced seminal works about the Templars and Cathers. In this long overdue work Barber provides a comprehensive history of the crusader states rather than the sporadic crusades. It is meticulously researched and documented, as one would expect from a professor of history, and as such is an invaluable reference work for anyone interested in the period and indeed in the West’s presence in the Near East.

Whereas histories of the crusades invariably focus on military campaigns and so on “aggression,” Barber reminds us that the crusader states themselves were builders rather than destroyers. Barber concludes his comprehensive history by noting that: the crusaders “pragmatic approach to the challenge of providing for defense, administration and economic development produced political entities which resist stereotyping…and predetermined models.” He furthermore stresses that their accomplishments cannot be reduced to military conquests but also “entailed the rebuilding and embellishment of the holy shrines” and notes that they “ultimately produced their own independent and vibrant culture.”

Barber draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources in Latin, Arabic, French, and German, and his bibliography alone is a treasure trove for the historian.  However, the very detail of his account tends to slow the pace and complicate the flow of the narrative. This is more a reference or a research resource than a good read. 

Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.

She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.

She is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at: http://crusaderkingdoms.com

Clash of Cultures: Crusaders vs the Crusader States

Acre, the commercial heart of the crusader states, where the clash of culture often occurred.

Last week I described some of the urban architecture in the crusader states that inspired admiration — but also envy — on the part of visitors from the West. Throughout the existence of the crusader states, pilgrims from the West flocked to the Holy Land, some in search of salvation, some simply “sight-seeing,” and some as “armed pilgrims” to offer their sword (or bow or ax) in the defense of the Christian territories. Many of these pilgrims wrote accounts of their travels, and many chroniclers in the West, whether they had personally been there or not, included impressions of the Holy Land obtained second (or third, or fourth) hand from these travelers in their works. From the mid-12^th century on, a hefty strain of critique and censure of the settlers in “Outremer” runs through many of these works. Each defeat, each unsuccessful crusade, was routinely attributed to the sins of those involved: that is the crusaders and the residents of the Holy Land.

Medieval Depiction of a Godfrey de Bouillon, the first pious and devout Ruler of Jerusalem,
often contrasted to the later "degenerate" kings.

By the Third Crusade Westerners clearly viewed the residents of Outremer with suspicion. No previous set-back was comparable to the loss of the entire kingdom, including, obviously, the most sacred site of all, the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Although men flocked to take the cross and the largest armies led by the most prominent rulers of the age set out on the Third Crusade, their objective was to rescue the Holy Land — not the kingdom or people who had occupied the Holy Land since the First Crusade. On the contrary, most of the crusaders appear to have blamed the residents of Outremer collectively (rather than just Guy de Lusignan personally) for losing the Holy Land. These people were at the latest by this time given the derisive name of poulain, which derives from the French for foal and imputed mixed blood. They were viewed as the sinners to blame for the catastrophe, which the (by inference) virtuous men from the West now needed to rectify.

Crusaders

These were the beliefs held before setting out on crusade, but they were reinforced by confrontation with life in Outremer.

The first problem was the widespread use of stone building materials, something that was still pretty much a luxury in the West. The extensive use of stone, therefore, made the cities of Outremer appear exotic to the pilgrim arriving by sea before he or she even set foot on land.  Admittedly, those coming by land would have already adjusted to the use of stone and brick. Still, the physical differences in the architecture and the heat of the summer sun (most pilgrims came in the spring and departed in the fall), undoubtedly created a sense of being in a very different world, and most people are suspicious of things that seem very different from home.

White Limestone and Palms -- so different from Northern Europe

The second problem, of course, was that the majority of the natives (Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims) dressed in “oriental” styles. Although the Latin elites still followed Western fashion for the most part, the climate alone dictated some adaptation of Western clothing. In temperatures approaching 40 degrees Centigrade (100 degrees Fahrenheit), it was unthinkable to wear the heavy furs and wools, or the layers of clothing common in the West. While Latin women never adopted “the veil” in the Arab tradition of black robes completely concealing a woman’s figure including arms and face, Latin women would certainly have protected their faces from the ravages of the Palestinian sun with sheer silks, probably short enough to be thrown back over their head when indoors.  More shocking to the new-comers, however, the very same fashions if worn in gauze and silk rather than wool and linen would have resulted in gowns that clung and revealed more of the female figure. Meanwhile, while neither knights nor sergeants went around in turbans and kaftans (as some modern writers would have you believe), again the fabrics used for shirts, tunics, hose, and surcoats would have been considerably lighter and sheerer than fabrics common in the West. Easy access to some of the more powerful dyes (saffron for yellow, the sea snails (porphyra) for purple, etc.) may have made these clothes brighter and more vivid as well. The result was undoubtedly a somewhat mind-boggling mixture of styles and colors that seemed extravagant and exotic to the newcomer.

Hollywood's Interpretation of Mixed Styles and Opulence in the Crusader States
Sibylla of Jerusalem as depicted in "The Kingdom of Heaven"

The third problem was the discovery that the majority of the population in Outremer, including the Orthodox Christian natives, spoke Arabic. Regardless of religion, this was the lingua-franca of Outremer, used by merchants across the region alongside Greek. The poulains born in Outremer, living side-by-side with Arabic speaking neighbors in the cities, trading with Arabic-speaking shopkeepers, or even lords dealing with Arab-speaking tenants and servants all had to acquire a degree of competency in Arabic just to conduct daily business.  To more recent arrivals this command of the “infidel's” language smacked of treason. The fact that many Latin Christians, who had come out as crusaders, later married Arabic- or Greek-speaking women reinforced the impression of ambiguous loyalty on the part of the poulains. At a minimum, it created suspicion simply because the newcomers could not hope to understand Arabic based on an understanding of Latin, the lingua-franca of the West.

Church Art was particularly influenced by Byzantine traditions and mosaics, for example, were more common.

This suspicion about the loyalty of the residents of the crusader states had been reinforced over the decades leading up to the Third Crusade by a series of truces the Kings of Jerusalem had made with their Muslim counterparts. While the residents in the crusader states recognized the sheer tactical utility of periodic truces and pauses in the fighting, newly arrived crusaders were often appalled to think they had come so far to fight the Saracens, only to be told:  “Oh, well, thanks for coming, but at the moment we have a truce and aren’t fighting the Saracens, we're trading with them instead.” Such armed pilgrims returned home embittered and told stories about how the poulains had “sold out” to the Saracens.

Another source of friction between Western visitors and permanent residents of the crusader states was the apparent “wealth” of the natives. As early as 1125, Fulcher of Chartres, one of the chroniclers of the First Crusade, had written that in the crusader states “he who was poor [at home in the West] attains riches here. He who had no more than a few deniers finds himself here in possession of a fortune. He who owned not so much as one village finds himself, by God’s grace, the lord of a city.” (Cited in Bartlett, Downfall of the Crusader Kingdom, p. 189.) Fulcher was trying to recruit settlers and was doubtless exaggerating, but his claims seemed to match what visitors encountered.

Because the Latin Christians in the crusader states were integrated into the upper and middle levels of society while the very bottom rungs were filled by native Christians or Muslims, travelers to the crusader states from the West were more likely to encounter and interact with men and women from a higher strata of society.  Furthermore, because items that were outrageously expensive in the West were produced in the crusader states (silk, glass, sugar, citrus fruits, pomegranates) these “luxury” items were accessible to people much farther down the social scale than in the West. Visitors were undoubtedly aghast to find common laborers and soldiers enjoying lemons and sugar, or wearing, if not pure silk, some of the mixed textiles that combined silk with cotton or linen.

This glass and enamel cup is believed to originate from the crusader states.

And then there was the issue of bathing. Not that bathing was not an integral part of Western culture in this period; it was. But in the West bathing was considerably more difficult and less convenient, at least during the winter months when a bath could only be enjoyed if the water was first heated up. Furthermore, for the upper classes, bathing was a private affair — a tub carried up to a bedchamber, filled with buckets of water hauled there by servants, and attended upon by a wife, daughter or squire. In the crusader states the public bath-houses of the Greeks and Romans had been taken over, rebuilt and supplemented by those of the Arabs and Turks. Bathing was not only easier and cheaper in a climate where cooler was better most of the time, but bathing was also a public affair with professional bath attendants rather than retainers and family in attendance. The public baths in the tradition of the Greeks, Romans, and Turks included massages with fragrant oils rubbed into the skin. All of this smelled, particularly clerics, like “dins of iniquity” reminiscent of Jezebel, Salome and the Queen of Sheba.

A 19th Century -- equally erroneous - depiction of a Turkish bath that reflects the same misconception about the mixing of sex with cleanliness.

Last but not least, the culture of West Europeans clashed with the culture of the crusader states because the crusader states were heavily urbanized and cosmopolitan at a time when most Western kingdoms were still predominantly agricultural and parochial. The poulains had little choice but to be tolerant of different customs, clothes, foods and even religions because they were surrounded by these things. To survive they traded with Cairo and Damascus, Aleppo and Constantinople. Jews were allowed to live throughout the kingdom except in Jerusalem itself. Muslims likewise lived -- and were allowed to follow their religion -- across the kingdom, again with the exception of Jerusalem itself. Muslims even had the right to the haj in some cities such as Nablus. Although taxed more heavily, neither Muslims nor Jews were subject to persecution, and some enjoyed wealth and administrative power. This was quite simply because poulains, who never made up more than 20% of the population, could not afford bigotry in any regard. Yet that very tolerance struck many newcomers as near-heresy. It was a short step from being scandalized at poulain tolerance and jealous of the poulain wealth to seeing in the poulains the sinners to blame for all the disasters that had befallen the Holy Land — reinforcing all the prejudices which with the crusaders had sailed from the West.

My novels set in the crusader kingdoms show Outremer through the eyes of the poulains rather than the crusaders:

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"The Ibelin Brothers"

In the chronicles that record the history of the Holy Land in the later 12^th century, "the Ibelin brothers" are often named together. This is actually quite odd because Baldwin, the elder brother, was Lord of Ramla and Mirabel, probably from a very early age. Together Baldwin's baronies owned 60 knights to the crown of Jerusalem. Ibelin owed only 10. So Baldwin should have been referred to by contemporaries as "Ramla."

That he is referred as "Ibelin" in the chronicles probably stems from the fact that most chronicles (except William of Tyre) were written in the 13th century when the descendants of his younger brother, Balian Baron d’Ibelin, had become one of the most important families in the Latin East, and had married into both royal families. In short, the fact that Baldwin is referred to as an "Ibelin" is a tribute to the fact that within a generation his younger brother had completely eclipsed him in importance and memory. By the start of the 13h century, Baldwin had disappeared from the pages of history, while Balian had become the revered founder of a dynasty. Baldwin had renounced his titles, gone to Antioch and disappeared without a trace. He left no surviving children in Jerusalem. Balian briefly held his lordships of Ramla and Mirabel, but only from July 1185 until they fell to Saladin in July 1186, so name of Ibelin (also lost in 1187) stuck to Balian, but not Ramla and Mirabel. Ibelin became a family surname, with the various members of the family all calling themselves d’Ibelin regardless of what other titles they held.

The Ibelin Seal from the mid-13th Century

The tombs of Henry II and Richard I lie side-by-side at Fontevrault, yet these two men -- some of England's most colorful and each in their own way attractive kings -- were bitter enemies in life.

Thus, although "the Ibelin" brothers are often lumped together by chroniclers and historians of the era, this is not proof that they were best friends and always of one opinion. On the contrary, William of Tyre claims that Baldwin of Ramla (Ibelin) plotted with Tripoli and Antioch to depose Baldwin IV, and refused to take the oath of fealty to Guy de Lusignan, eventually renouncing his entire inheritance to go to Antioch. Clearly, Baldwin was impulsive and hot tempered, and as a novelist I have chosen to make him flamboyant and arrogant as well – as I believe many older sons were.

Balian, on the other hand, must have been a man of a very different temperament as was demonstrated by the fact that he tried on two occasions to reconcile Tripoli with Lusignan. His loyalty to Baldwin IV and V is never questioned, and indeed he must have had a close relationship with Baldwin IV or he would never have been given the right to marry Maria Comnena or singled out ahead of all the more senior and more powerful noblemen of the realm to carry Baldwin V to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

In their personal lives also, the brothers would appear to have been equally different. Baldwin married very young, and then set this wife of almost two decades and the mother of his daughters aside, apparently for no better reason than he hoped to marry the Princess Sibylla. When that failed (for whatever reason) he married again twice. He had one son, but he either disinherited him when he renounced his own titles and went to Antioch, abandoning the boy to the care of his brother Balian, or his son had already died in obscurity.

In the Hollywood film "The Kingdom of Heaven," Balian is portrayed having an affair with Sibylla of Jerusalem; historically, his brother Baldwin allegedly had the affair.

Balian, in contrast, married only once and the marriage appears to have been not only fruitful (two sons and two daughters), but Balian and his wife Maria Comnena are described even by their detractors as a team.  Certainly, the idea of riding hundreds of miles through enemy held territory – even if it was with a safe-conduct from Saladin – to rescue his wife and children from Jerusalem is almost crazy, and suggests ties of affection unusual in this age.  Tripoli, remember, urged the army not to relieve the siege of Tiberius, although his wife was caught in the fortress and had requested relief.

Even after Balian had been persuaded by the Patriarch and people of Jerusalem to take command of the defense of Jerusalem, he still saw to the safety of his wife and children; they were escorted out of the city by Saladin’s own guard. After the fall of Jerusalem, Balian rejoined his family, now a penniless man and baron of nothing. Yet Maria did not return to Constantinople or join any of her other powerful family members in safe places. Instead she joined Balian at the siege of Acre! That too is a pretty strong act of devotion from a woman born to the purple in the Greek Empire.

In short, I think it is safe to suggest that "the brothers Ibelin," no matter how closely they cooperated with one another in war or how often the chroniclers lumped them together in history, were in fact very different men with different temperaments and character.

Read more about the Ibelin brothers in:

A Biographical Novel of Balian d'Ibelin

Book I

A landless knight,

                  a leper king,

                             and the struggle for Jerusalem.

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