Crusader-Muslim Relationships during the Crusades

ln the late eleventh century, when the first crusade arrived in the Middle East, the region was not predominantly Muslim. The population was divided between Greek and other eastern Christians, Jews, Muslims, and minority religious groups which did not fit precisely into any of the three great religions. 

Muslim-Christian coexistence during the crusading period

"(...) During the Crusades, coexistence manifested itself in another way. Richard the Lionheart (king of England, 1189–1199) attempted to arrange a marriage between his sister and the brother of Saladin (the most famous hero of the Counter-Crusade and founder of the Ayyubid Dynasty). Intermarriage between Christians and Muslims was commonplace in Anatolia, and it was quite frequent between the Seljuk Turkish (who had conquered Byzatium in 1071, TN) and Byzantine elite.

At the same time, recent scholarship (...) has uncovered that many Byzantine women who married into the Seljuk Dynasty maintained their Christian religious practices and passed them onto their children (future Seljuk sultans), many of whom were baptized at the Hagia Sophia, the main cathedral in Constantinople. A consciousness of conversion did develop in the medieval period, but a thirteenth-century Cilician Armenian law code suggests that conversions to Islam were reversible."

This blog quotes from "Diversity in the Medieval Middle East - Inclusions, Exclusions, Supporters, and Discontents" by Rachel Goshgarian, Chapter 9 in Lucia Volk's The Middle East in the World: An Introduction (Foundations in Global Studies) (Routledge, 2015) on www.academia.edu; source illustration the Comnenus mosaics in the Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Public Domain, source Wikipedia

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Medieval Anatolian architectural hybridities

 Until the establishment of Ottoman suzerainty over the region in the mid-fifteenth century, Anatolia was a place of cultural “betweenness.”

The Seljuks were the first Turkish Muslim entity to become established in the region (the Byzantine defeat by the Seljuk Turks took place 1071; TN). They were followed by many other similar Turkish and Persian-speaking principalities, which existed either as subservient to the Seljuks or in direct competition with them.

At the same time, the Armenians established their own principality and, later, kingdom in the region. And after the First Crusade, a Latin Crusader state was established around Antioch. This was followed by the entrance of the Mongols into the region. Those Mongols who had converted to Islam (and were known as the Ilkhanids) extended their territory into Anatolia in the mid-thirteenth century, forming the largest contiguous land empire in the history of humankind.

As all of these political entities established themselves in Anatolia, they supported the construction of churches, mosques, religious schools (medreses, or ma-drassas), dervish lodges ( zaviyes), and caravansaries (inns), completely transforming the physical landscape both of urban areas and the hinterland. These physical structures, in turn, altered the cultural life of the region, by providing spaces within which individuals could gather to pray, study, or participate in the development of mystical religious practices.

The architectural programs funded in Anatolia—by a range of individuals associated with myriad local principalities—altered the urban and rural landscapes of the region. On a purely aesthetic level, these architectural programs are material evidence of the kind of hybridity that was common in late medieval Anatolia. Many of the masons and architects constructing new “Islamic” buildings (e.g., mosques, madrassas, and dervish lodges) were members of indigenous Christian populations. As a result, while many of the buildings and their functions were new, the physical appearance of much of the early Islamic architecture of Anatolia looks very similar to what is traditionally considered the Armenian, Byzantine, and Georgian (i.e., Christian) architecture of the region.

This blog quotes a portion of "Diversity in the Medieval Middle East - Inclusions, Exclusions, Supporters, and Discontents" by  Rachel Oshgarian which can be found here. Illustration: Ruins of the Cathedral of Ani and the church of Redeemer in Ani, an ancient capital of Armenia in the 10th century; photo by Antonio, source Wikipedia Commons

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Arab and Templar alliances, early 13th century.

Following Salladin's great victory at Hattin (July 4, 1187) and his conquest of Jerusalem (October 2, 1187), Arab relations with the Military Orders began to change. How did the relationship between victors and vanquished develop?

 

Saint Francis of Assisi, early missionary to the Muslim world

Saint Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order, was born at Assisi in Umbria, in 1181 or 1182. He died there on 3 October, 1226. Many of the stories that surround the life of St. Francis say that he had a great love for animals and the environment. Therefore October 4, Saint Francis' feast day, is celebrated as World Animal Day. Less known is that Francis visited Egypt and attempted rapprochement with the Muslim world, be it in the way of a missionary. 

Sufism in Muslim Religious Trends during the Middle Ages

The contradictory trends in Islamic civilization - social strife and political divisions versus expanding trading links and intellectual creativity - were strongly reflected in divergent trends in religious development in the later centuries of the caliphate. Trends that were influenced by and in turn influenced medieval Christian Europe.

The Crusades: not anti-Muslim but to stop internal Christian violence?

"A key area where historians focus their attention on the crusades is at the origin of the religious conflict between Islam and Christianity. This is problematic for two key reasons.