A Reassessment of Some Medieval and Modern Perceptions of the Counter-Crusade

By Hadia Dajani-Shakeel

The Jihad and its Times: Dedicated to Andrew Stefan Ehrenkreutz, edited by Hadia Dajani-Shakeel and Ronald A. Messier (1991)

In an article entitled, “The Use by Muslim Historians of Non-Muslim Sources”, Bernard Lewis remarked: “For two centuries, the Muslims of the Middle East were in intimate contact with groups of the Franks established among them – yet, at no time do they seem to have developed the least interest in them.” In support of his remarks, Lewis referred to similar conclusions by Francesco Gabrieli about Muslims understanding the nature of the First Crusade in which he (Gabrieli) says: “Muslims never reached the point, one would say,  of regarding the Christian attack in the West as anything fundamentally different from the other wars against the infidels, whether they were the Franks or Byzantines: in Syria itself in the course of the tenth century and before, in al-Andalus throughout the Spanish Reconquista, and in Sicily against the Normans.

This collection of papers was published by the Center for Near Eastern and North African Studies, of the University of Michigan, in 1991.  We thank the Center for their permission to republish two of the articles.