Knowing the Enemy: Western Understanding of Islam at the Time of the Crusades

Abstract

In 1076, some twenty years before the First Crusade was launched, Pope Gregory VII wrote to al-Nāşir, Sultan of Bougie in what is now Algeria:For there is nothing which Almighty God, who wishes that all men should be saved and that no man should perish, more approves in our conduct, than that a man should first love God and then his fellow men … Most certainly you and we ought to love each other in this way more than other races of men, because we believe and confess one God, albeit in different ways, whom each day we praise and reverence as the creator of all ages and the governor of this world. For, as the Apostle says: “He is our peace, who hath made both one”.This enlightened view of Islam was not widely shared in Latin Christendom at that time, nor was it rooted in any very profound knowledge of the Muslim religion. B. Z. Kedar is, I think, correct in his view that a good deal of information about Islam was available in the West before the crusades, both in written and oral sources, but because there was a general lack of interest in the subject, no attempt had been made to coordinate this knowledge.