The Crusader period is defined in scholarly research as one of the most brutal and bloody chapters of Christian–Muslim relations in the Middle Ages. No doubt, the period witnessed a heightened level of religious militancy and propaganda between Muslims and European Christians in the medieval period. However, this was not the only reality at the time. There were countless instances of tolerance (religious and social), alliances (political and military) and exchange (commercial, cultural and scientific) between Muslims and Crusaders. Scholars have acknowledged some of them, but only as cases of marginal historical curiosity or opportunism and realpolitik. In their totality, such instances have not been studied or conceptualised as possibly shaped and informed by other factors including religion, or as forming a pattern that reflected the different agendas of the various actors during the Crusader period.

There is another problematic aspect of the Crusader period, namely the way it is often perceived as an epoch stretching from 1095 to 1291. When the Crusader period is treated as such, it exacerbates a tendency – that many have already challenged and criticised (for example, by Housley) to think of it as separate from what came before 1095 and what came after 1291.

The argument of this chapter is that the dominant discourse of the clash between the worlds of Christendom and Islamdom has determined the contours of scholarly conventions on the Crusades in the Middle East. Thus, it has undermined the scholars’ ability to understand the period as involving many actors on each side with conflicting agendas, and a complex web of exposures, cooperation and animosities that not only unfolded during the Crusader period, but also preceded it and endured after it. When the Crusader period is re-examined with an awareness to these problematic issues, the exceptions to the dominant outlook of warfare – such as trade, political and military cooperation, religious tolerance, scientific exchange, and so on – cease to be isolated cases and become patterns, and the military clash ceases to be the dominant discourse and is reduced to another pattern.

The Problem with the Emphasis on al-Sulami and his Book of Jihad

In two separate articles, which he later incorporated into his book L’Islam et la croisade, Emmanuel Sivan advanced two theories that have had tremendous impact on the fields of Jerusalem studies and Crusader studies.