num_pages: 125
description: The Crusades were penitential war-pilgrimages fought in the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean as well as in North Africa Spain Portugal Poland the Baltic region Hungary the Balkans and Western Europe. Beginning in the eleventh century and ending as late as the eighteenth these holy wars were waged against Muslims and other enemies of the Church enlisting generations of laymen and laywomen to fight for the sake of Christendom.Crusading features prominently in today's religio-political hostilities yet the perceptions of these wars held by Arab nationalists pan-Islamists and many in the West have been deeply distorted by the language and imagery of nineteenth-century European imperialism. With this book Jonathan Riley-Smith returns to the actual story of the Crusades explaining why and where they were fought and how deeply their narratives and symbolism became embedded in popular Catholic thought and devotional life.From this history Riley-Smith traces the legacy of the Crusades into modern times specifically within the attitudes of European imperialists and colonialists and within the beliefs of twentieth-century Muslims. Europeans fashioned an interpretation of the Crusades from the writings of Walter Scott and a French contemporary Joseph-Franois Michaud. Scott portrayed Islamic societies as forward-thinking while casting Christian crusaders as culturally backward and often morally corrupt. Michaud in contrast glorified crusading and his followers used its imagery to illuminate imperial adventures.These depictions have had a profound influence on contemporary Western opinion as well as on Muslim attitudes toward their past and present. Whether regarded as a valid expression of Christianity's divine enterprise or condemned as a weapon of empire crusading has been a powerful rhetorical tool for centuries. In order to understand the preoccupations of Islamist jihadis and the character of Western discourse on the Middle East Riley-Smith argues we must understand how images of crusading were formed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
language: English
title: The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam
publisher: Columbia University Press