IMC 2014: Sessions

The crusading movement brought together a bewildering array of peoples. Whether through trade, war, co-operation, migration, diplomacy, slavery, pilgrimage, or missionary activity, the encounters it produced suddenly confronted disparate societies with the challenge of dealing with peoples that had formerly existed on or beyond their knowledge horizon.

On the eve of the crusades, the Islamic world was in a state of turmoil, with newly arrived Turkish conquerors ruling mostly Arab subjects, while in later centuries other steppe peoples, such as the Mongols, would make their presence felt across the Levant. The establishment of the principalities of Outremer meant that Frankish settlers ruled over Armenians, Arabs, Syrians, and Greeks, and became aware that neighbouring territories were inhabited by an amorphous mass of 'Saracens', but polities variously ruled by Turks, Arabs, Turcomans and Kurds. Within the crusading armies themselves, Gascons suddenly found themselves working with Thuringians, while Normans might end up fighting with Provençals, and fleets from Italy, France, Spain, Northern Europe and Scandinavia set sail in company for distant Jerusalem. Relations between Westerners and Greeks ranged from close military co-operation to outright hostility. In the Baltic region, Germans and Danes vied with each other to secure the Christianisation of diverse pagan peoples, whose beliefs and languages they could only poorly understand.

It is this astonishing mix of peoples and their interactions that will be the subject of these sessions. While much research on the crusades has understandably stressed religious and confessional dichotomies, the encounter between ethnicities offers a different perspective on relations between crusaders and their opponents, but also within crusading enterprises themselves.