The ways in which crusade participants perceived and interacted with their Muslim adversaries have long occupied the attention of historians. Given the crusaders’ willingness to negotiate with their Muslim counterparts, and to engage in a variety of other non-violent modes of contact, it now seems likely that at least some participants possessed a pragmatic attitude towards their opponents, rather than an immutable hatred. Tied to this, there is an ongoing debate regarding whether crusading and the fervour of holy war manifested a distinctive or heightened breed of brutality, one which surpassed the normative standards of contemporary internecine warfare in Europe and elsewhere.

Analysing western caricatures of Muslims in medieval literature has proved equally fruitful, with a growing corpus of scholarship devoted to this topic in a crusading context. In 1982, Paul Bancourt offered piecemeal observations regarding their portrayal in chansons de croisade and crusade chronicles, while more recently his work has been supplemented – and extended – by John Tolan, Carol Sweetenham, and Armelle Leclercq, amongst others. Collectively, these scholars have elucidated a plethora of tropes that western writers applied to the crusaders’ enemies, including accusations of paganism, polytheism, and idolatry, as well as the emphasis on their demonic, bestial, and lustful qualities. Notwithstanding this barrage of derogatory stereotypes, it has long been recognized that crusade sources proffer far more than a monolithic blanket of antagonism. Moments of praise for Muslim martial capabilities, and the emergence of the ‘noble Saracen’ tradition in western literature – typified by Saladin's transformation into an epitome of chivalry – attest that European attitudes towards Muslims were complex and multifaceted.

Focusing on the Latin narratives of crusading expeditions to the Holy Land between 1095 and 1192, this chapter considers a facet that has hitherto received only minimal attention: emotional characterizations of Muslim protagonists. Other scholars have demonstrated that, despite modulations over time and variations between the texts, the crusades were commonly perceived in Manichean terms as a contest between the good, just Christians and the evil, unjust Muslims – a sentiment famously echoed in the Chanson de Roland. It is the central argument of this chapter that emotional descriptors participated in, and helped to reinforce, this fundamental binary opposition within Latin crusade chronicles. A holistic analysis of the emotional rhetoric associated with Muslims is beyond the scope of this study; instead, it scrutinizes two interlocking narrative functions of emotions.