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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A Home in the Holy Land

The Bishop of Oldenburg, travelling to the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1212, was stunned by the luxury of the residences of the elite. According to Sir Steven Runciman in his "Families of Outremer," Oldenburg was particularly impressed by the Ibelin palace in Beirut: 

Its windows opened some on the sea, some on to delicious gardens. Its walls were panelled with plaques of polychrome marble; the vaulted ceiling [of the salon] was painted to resemble the sky with its stars; in the centre of the [salon] was a fountain, and round it mosaics depicting the waves of the sea edged with sands so lifelike that [the bishop] feared to tread on them lest he should leave a footmark.

Unfortunately, nothing of this palace remains today and, indeed, only scattered fragments of urban secular architecture from the crusader period have survived into the present. Even these remains have largely been obscured by the changing styles and functions that have altered the appearance of crusader structures almost beyond recognition in subsequent centuries. However, descriptions such as the one cited above as well as systematic analysis of the archeological evidence enables us to imagine a great deal. As a novelist writing about the crusader kingdoms, I am compelled to utilize all existing sources, both written and archaeological — and then add a hefty dose of imagination. What follows is a short survey of the key elements that would have defined an urban dwelling in the crusader kingdoms.

Due to a general scarcity of wood, the basic building material of the Middle East in the period was stone and/or brick. The latter, and often the former, was ususally plastered over and whitewashed. Most buildings were rectangular, two to three stories high, and crowned by flat roofs that might be decoratively crenellated and/or often provided additional living space in the form of a roof-top terrace that could be shaded from the sun bycanvas awnings. Whether used in this way or not, rooftops almost always collected rain water in a cistern. This house located on Kythera is much younger (17^th century Venetian), but it has many of the features of crusader urban architecture.

Most dwellings would have been built around one or a series of courtyards. These in turn would have contained fountains, wells, kitchen and formal gardens, or working space, depending on the wealth of the occupant.  The courtyard below in Jerusalem has many medieval elements and does not look so very different from what it could have looked like in the 12^th century.

The courtyard below from the Hospitaller headquarters in Acre is an example of a more spectacular, 13^th century courtyard and only relevant for public buildings, but it is indicative of style, taste and crusader capabilities.

The surrounding enclosed spaces would have been either vaulted, with a wide, slightly pointed arch being the dominant, indeed iconic shape of crusader architecture, or topped by a flat roof supported by beams. A combination of these forms, with vaulted chambers on the ground floor and rooms with flat roofs above was common, but in more expensive structures double vaulted chambers at right angles to the chambers below could be stacked upon one another. A good example of this is the Hospitaller Castle of Kolossi. Below are three images of a vaulted chambers, one an upstairs chamber from the Hospitaller castle at Kolossi, one a cellar from the Byzantine/Crusader castle of St. Hilarion, and the third showing a wine or oil press in the chamber, something very common in the crusader kingdoms.

Doors and windows could be either arched or square, with the Romanesque forms of “double-” or “triple-light” windows presumably as common in the Holy Land as in the countries of the crusaders’ origin. Below is a lovely example of a medieval portal in Jerusalem, and two examples of windows form St. Hilarion and Krak de Chevaliers respectively.

Because there were major glass producing centers in the crusader states (notably Tyre and Beirut), window glazing was more common in the crusader states than in the West, a fact supported by both archaeological finds and descriptions. Below is an example of crusader glass manufacture, while the context is different, again this glass demonstrates the very high quality of the industry generally.

Archaeological evidence suggests windows in the crusader kingdoms used both plate glass and round glass set in plaster (the latter being presumably much cheaper and more common). To the left is an example of the round glass technique used here in the Templar Church in Famagusta, Cyprus.

As the description at the start of this essay indicated, interior décor could include polychrome marble, but mosaics and glazed tiles were also common. A wide variety of crusader glazed pottery has been found, using cream colors, yellows, greens and blues. The pottery gives us some indication of what colors and motifs may have been used on floor and wall tiles. Here is one example of crusader pottery:

However, we also know that the Turks and Saracens were very fond of brilliant blues and turquoise tiles in later centuries, and these may also have been available to the crusaders. At least I like to imagine it so! To the left is an example of modern tile work just to hint at the possibilities.

As for mosaics, the description at the start of the article is perhaps the best indication of quality and the fact that life-like motifs were possible in the crusader era.  However, we should not forget that mosaics floors were very common in the Roman and Byzantine periods, and the many crusader residences in fact dated from earlier periods and retained these older tiles. Below is a picture of tiles that date back the 4^th century AD and were allegedly commission by St. Helena. Particularly under the influence of the Byzantine brides of Baldwin III and Amalric I, Byzantine styles and artists were welcomed and employed in the crusader kingdoms. They would easily have produced tiles similar to this example from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Last but not least, no description of urban architecture in the crusader states (at least for the “upper crust”) would be complete without reference to gardens. As the opening description stressed, crusader elites oriented their houses so that their (glazed) windows looked out at either views (such as the ocean) or gardens. The Holy Land offered a variety of beautiful vegetation from trees such a palms and olives, lemons and pomegranates, to flowers such as hibiscus and oleander. Crusader gardens would have been beautiful indeed.  So to conclude, here is a picture of the garden in the crusader church of St. Anne in Jerusalem today.


Note: All photos except the glass and pottery were taken by the author.

Life in the crusader kingdoms is described in my three part biography of Balian d’Ibelin:

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Richard I by John Gillingham: A Review

John Gillingham describes his book on King Richard I, one in a series of biographies of English Monarchs by Yale University Press, as a political biography. In his preface to the book he stresses that he is not attempting to analyze Richard Plantagenet the man, but rather the political legacy of King Richard I, and he explicitly excludes from his discussion Richard’s “inner life.” He does not look at him as a son, husband or brother, but only in the context of his effectiveness as a ruler — first as a deputy for his mother and/or father and later in his own right as Duke of Aquitaine and King of England. Essentially, Gillingham sets out to determine whether Richard was a “good” or a “bad” king.

The focus is justified by the fact that King Richard has been both lionized and vilified by historians over the centuries. As Gillingham catalogues, medieval historians saw in him a hero on the scale of King Arthur, Roland and Charlemagne. Later Plantagenet kings were judged in comparison with him — the highest praise being to come near to equaling him. Yet during the Reformation and the later Tudor era Richard started to fall into disrepute as a result of Protestant condemnation of the crusades. By the 19th century it was commonplace to dismiss his achievements as paltry because they did not promote Victorian values such as empire building, trade and sound fiscal policy. In the 20th century RIchard was condemned for spending too little time in England and “oppressing the masses” with his taxes for “worthless” ventures such as the Third Crusade — and his ransom, of course.

Gillingham points out that, long before the historical debate, Richard inspired extreme opinions in his lifetime. Adulated and adored by some of his subjects and supporters, he was demonized by his political enemies, particularly Philip II of France. He is credited with abusing noblewomen and maidens, with hounding his father to his grave, murdering his political opponents, and with betraying the cause of Christ while in the Holy Land. The ironic result, Gillingham suggests, is that the most objective contemporary commentary on Richard probably come from Muslim sources. Unfortunately for us, these only describe his actions during the less than two years in which he was active in the Holy Land.

Given the treacherous nature of his sources, Gillingham does an admirable job of depicting Richard Plantagenet based on what he actually did rather than on what people said about him. In doing so, he convincingly builds the case that Richard was a remarkably effective monarch — judged by the standards and values of his day. In doing so, he highlights the absurdity of expecting a mercantilist monarch in a feudal kingdom, much less a mild and tolerant ruler in a brutal and violent age.

What emerges is a complex but on the whole admirable and competent leader, a statesman as well as a general. As Gillingham documents, Richard was not just a dashing knight and outstanding commander, nor merely a brilliant tactician, strategist and logistician. He was a sound financial manager, who alone among the leaders of the Third Crusade was consistently in a financial position to recruit and provision troops. He managed to raise a truly enormous ransom without, in fact, beggaring his subjects. He was, to be sure, creative in his methods of raising funds — from selling offices to selling conquests (Cyprus). Rather than wrinkling our noses at these allegedly distasteful practices, however, we should consider that the alternative would indeed have been to tax the innocent poor rather than milk the grasping rich. He was also an astonishingly effective diplomat, not only in his complicated negotiations with Saladin, but in turning his erstwhile German enemies into allies, and in his tedious but eventually effective efforts to pry the Counts of Flanders and Toulouse out of the French camp and into his own.

Last but not least, despite his reluctance to discuss the private side of Richard, Gillingham does offer insight into Richard’s personality. We get glimpses of a man who was very well educated, loved music and was more than superficially pious. We learn that he had a fine and subtle sense of humor and often spoke half in jest, and was man adept at using a light-hearted tone to deliver serious messages. While he clearly inherited the infamous Plantagenet temper, it did not dominate him, and he was rarely irrational even when angry. Most important, Gillingham’s Richard is a man of many parts far removed from the buffoon-like Richard found in so many films and novels that reduce him to a brutal idiot or a jovial but empty-headed figurehead.

This biography is well-worth reading and is a must for anyone interested in the period. 

Richard plays a key role in the third book of my Balian d'Ibelin biography as Balian -- after some initial disagreements and conflicts -- was eventually chosen by the Lionheart to negotiate the truce with Saladin that ended the Third Crusade.

Read the first two books in the series:

Knight of Jerusalem: A Biographical Novel of Balian d'Ibelin

Book I

A landless knight,

                A leper King

                                And the struggle for Jerusalem.

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Defender of Jerusalem: A Biographical Novel of Balian d'Ibelin

Book II

A divided kingdom,

                         A united enemy,

                                                  And the struggle for Jerusalem.

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Slavery in the Crusader Kingdoms

The surrender of Jerusalem in 1187 resulted in between twelve and fifteen thousand Christians being taken into slavery. The entire Christian population of Jaffa and many lesser places had already been enslaved. Some historians claim that as many as 100,000 Christians were subjected to slavery as a result of Saladin's conquest of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, although I think a figure of forty to fifty thousand is a more reasonable estimate. Even the lower figure would have represented between 6 and 9 % of the total population. It is important to put this devastating development into perspective. 

Slavery has tragically been part of the human condition for as long as we have recorded history. The Ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians — and Ancient Greeks and Romans — were all slave-owning societies. Slavery persists even today in places like Morocco and other parts of the Sahel but is — to my knowledge — no longer legal anywhere on earth.

However, the infamous black slave trade of the 18^th and 19^th centuries and the appalling emergence of slave societies in the New World have largely obscured the fact that for nearly a thousand years Christianity had a strong inhibiting effect on slavery in the Western World. From about 600 onwards, Western Europe became increasingly slave-free as the Vikings converted to Christianity and the Reconquista gradually pushed back the Moors in Spain. By about 1,000 AD, across Western Europe from Norway to the frontiers of Christianity in Spain and Prussia it was no longer acceptable to hold Christians as slaves. In Western Europe, slavery was replaced by the far more progressive institution of serfdom that accorded even the lowest strata of society rights and dignity unthinkable for chattel slaves.

The attitude of the Orthodox Church was less rigorous than the Roman Catholic Church, however.  In the Byzantine Empire slaves were common. Although the majority of these slaves were non-Christians, being Slavs and Muslims captured in warfare or purchased from traders who imported them from non-Christian territories, there are records of poor Christians selling their children. This suggests that in a society that tolerated slaves, the possession of Christian slaves was either not wholly prohibited or the prohibition was not enforced. Meanwhile, throughout the Muslim world slavery was widespread and perfectly acceptable without any scruples about the enslavement of fellow Muslims.

The establishment of Western/Latin kingdoms in the Levant, therefore, brought an immediate collision between Western and Eastern practices with respect to slavery -- as well as with respect to the treatment of women. As with women, the crusader kingdoms remained largely true to Western (Latin) traditions, and the enslavement of Christians is not documented among the Latin elite. However, the majority of the inhabitants of the crusader kingdoms had previously been subject to Roman, Arab and Turkish rule — all of which condoned slavery, and thus the Latin settlers found themselves surrounded by slave-owning societies. More important, they soon learned that if they fell into enemy hands and could not raise a ransom, they too would become slaves.

Imad ad-Din’s description of what became of Christian prisoners is eloquent:

…men … had to accustom themselves to an unaccustomed humiliation, and …well-guarded women were profaned, … nubile girls married, and noble women given away, and miserly women forced to yield themselves, and women who had been kept hidden stripped of their modesty, and serious women made ridiculous, and women kept in private now set in public, and free women occupied, and precious ones used for hard work and pretty things put to the test, and virgins dishonored and proud women deflowered, … and untamed ones tamed, and happy ones made to weep!

A 19th Century Western Depiction of Women being Sold in an Arab Slave Market - Victorian Pornography that "cleanses" the reality and disguises the brutality, horror, and misery.

The Arab custom of enslaving captive Christians explains why captured Muslim prisoners were in return often subjected to slavery by their Christian captors.  Thus, as was typical for the crusader kingdoms, a kind of hybrid society in which Western and Eastern customs lived side-by-side emerged.

The custom of keeping captured enemies as slaves, however, had another purpose as well. It provided the Christian kingdoms with a bargaining chip for the release of their own captives. Balian d’Ibelin threatened to kill the five thousand Muslim captives held in Jerusalem if Saladin would not give him terms. Even more famously, the terms of the surrender agreed to between the Muslim defenders of Acre and Richard the Lionheart in 1191 included (depending on source) either the release of all enslaved Christians or the same number of Christians as Muslims who surrendered at Acre (ca. 1,500). It was, according to the old French continuation of William of Tyre, Saladin’s failure to comply with this condition that caused Richard to slaughter the garrison of Acre. Far too many modern historians ignore this factor — the rage and desperation on the part of the relatives of Christian captives that Richard (as commander) was responding to when he ordered the execution of the garrison -- when they judge Richard’s action at Acre.

However, unlike the antebellum South in the U.S., agriculture in the crusader states was carried out predominantly by native peasants and Latin settlers. The former enjoyed a status similar to serfs, which meant they were tied to the land but by no means chattel slaves, while the latter enjoyed even higher status as freemen. Slaves may have provided the labor on sugar plantations, and may also have been used for large building projects, but they did not provide the skilled labor needed in the urban economies that dominated the Latin East. Thus, despite the undeniable existence of Muslim slaves within the crusader kingdoms, the crusader states cannot be considered “slave states” — in sharp contrast to their opponents in Egypt, Syria and the Turkish states.

 

A 13th Century Arab Manuscript that clearly depicts a slave market.

Shamefully, however, the slave trade was a significant component of the trade carried out by the Italian maritime powers operating in the Levant. It was the Italian city-states that dominated the lucrative slave trade, supplying the insatiable demand of Muslim markets for slaves from captives taken in (not yet Christianized) Eastern Europe. Indeed, slaves were one of the three most important imports to the Muslim Middle East along with iron and timber. This trade deserves double condemnation. On the one hand for its inherent inhumanity and, on the other, for contributing directly and significantly to the ability of the Muslim states to wage warfare against the crusader states; Muslim armies of this time relied heavily on Mamluks or slave soldiers.

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

Crusader society is described in award-winning:

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