Tolerance and Intolerance: Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades (review)

Abstract

Tolerance and Intolerance: Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades. Edited by Michael Gervers and James M. Powell. (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. 2001. Pp. xx, 191. $39.95 hardbound; $18.95 paperbound.) Religious tolerance is not a characteristic that one tends to associate with medieval Christendom in general and with the era of the crusades in particular. The twelve essays that appear in this volume add some original, and occasionally unexpected nuances to this view. The essays collected here began as papers in a session sponsored by the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East during the Eighteenth International Congress of Historical Sciences, which met at Montreal in 1995. The editors have grouped them in four thematic sections. The opening section, Confrontation, Captivity, and Redemption, contains four papers that deal with the consequences that defeated participants in military engagements might suffer. David Hay cautions in the first of these papers that historians must treat medieval accounts of massacres with considerable caution, since chroniclers whose sympathies lie with either side in the encounter are notoriously prone to exaggerate the numbers of those slain. Crusading chroniclers, he notes, tended to be ideologically driven, which led them to claim that their foes suffered huge, often totally unrealistic, casualties. Noncombatants in general, and women in particular, were less likely than men to be killed in the aftermath of battle. Since they were potentially valuable, women were commonly taken prisoner as part of the spoils of war. The remaining essays in this section, by Yaacov Lev, Giulio Cipollone, and James W. Brodman, deal with what happened to prisoners of war. Lev deals with the treatment of POWs captured during wars between Muslims and Crusaders under Fatimid and Ayyubid rulers. In contrast to the common image of Saladin as a merciful victor, Lev characterizes his treatment of POWs as callous. Giulio Cipollone next provides a brief overview of the religious foundations of intolerance in Islam and Christendom, while James W. Brodman closes this section with a discussion of the rhetoric that surrounded the ransom of captives taken during crusading expeditions in the Iberian peninsula. In the following section, entitled Cooperation, Conflict, and Issues of Identity,James D. Ryan provides an account of the changing relationships between the Latin and Armenian churches during the crusading period. Paul L. Sidelko follows with an essay on the taxation of the Muslim population in the crusader states, while Reuven Amitai examines the unsuccessful attempt of Edward I of England to establish an alliance with the Mongol ruler of Iran, Ilkhan Abagha against the Mamluks. …