☩ Did the Crusades Hurt or Help Eastern Christians? ☩

Did the Crusades Help or Harm Eastern Christians?

Today, it is popularly believed that the Crusader States involved a tiny European Christian minority ruling over vast Muslim populations. But this conception springs from our own era’s experience of the Middle East. The territories conquered by the First Crusade were still home to enormous Christian populations. In many parts of the Crusader States, Eastern Christians made up the majority. Back when the Rashiduns originally conquered these territories in the Seventh Century, the inhabitants had been almost entirely Christian. What the crusaders found on their arrival still reflected much of this reality, with considerable indigenous Christian populations ruled over by Seljuk Turks and Egyptian Fatimids. Now, it was a Latin Christian warrior elite that had established itself in the Eastern Levant.

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Sources:

-Arab Historians of the Crusades, trans. Francesco Gabrieli, (Barnes and Noble Books, 1993)
-Barber, Malcolm - The Crusader States, (Yale, 2014)
-Fulcher of Chartres - A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095-1127, trans. Frances Rita Ryan, (University of Tennessee Press, 1973)
-Ralph of Caen - The Gesta Tancredi, trans. Bernard S. Bachrach and David S. Bachrach, (Ashgate, 2010)
-Riley-Smith, Jonathan - The Crusades: A History, (Yale University Press, 2005)
-Riley-Smith, Jonathan - The First Crusaders, 1095-1131, (Cambridge, 2002)
-Runciman, Steven - A History of the Crusades, vol. II: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187
-Schrader, Helena - The Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades: Kingdoms at the Crossroads of Civilizations, 1100-1300, (Pen and Sword, 2022)
-Tibble, Steve - The Crusader Armies, (Yale University, 2018)
-Tyerman, Christopher - God’s War, (Harvard University Press, 2006)

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