The introduction sets the book’s agenda: to offer a novel account of crusade culture from the Mamlūk reconquest of Acre (1291) to the Ottoman siege of Constantinople (1453) drawing on Middle English romances and their contexts in various literary, historical, and legal documents (in English, French, Occitan, German, and Latin). The political culture to which post-1291 crusade romances belonged, I argue, was ambivalent, self-critical, and riddled with anxieties. These anxieties were about issues as fundamental and diverse as God’s endorsement of the crusading enterprise, the conversion of crusaders to Islam, sinfulness and divisions within the Christian community, and the morality of violence. After situating the book’s key claims within debates on Edward Said’s Orientalism and crusade literature, I present its methodology: engaged historicism, attention to how romance writers adapted their sources, and analysis of emotional rhetoric. The book’s contributions to the history of emotions and Middle English studies are discussed, as are the new insights it provides into the historical dimensions of the genre of romance.

This chapter witnesses the Crusades and forced conversions of Jews, disputations and expulsions, as well as blood libel charges. Even though Jews also disparaged Christianity, viewing it as idolatry, there were also periods of relatively easy Jewish–Christian coexistence, such as in Spain.

“Decolonizing the Medieval Literary Curriculum” shows why the critical teaching of the literatures of the deep past – in the form of a critical canon, and a countercanon – is essential today, at a moment when White supremacist and alt-right groups in the West are weaponizing the symbols, cultures, and histories of the European Middle Ages to assemble a spurious, fantasied past of White racial purity and superiority, prelapsarian Christian homogeneity, and religiopolitical supremacy so as to make this fantasied past the basis of authority for transforming today’s world. At the same time, changing population demographics in the West are creating cohorts of students in higher learning who have diversified substantially in terms of their race, class, countries of origin, sexualities, genders, and physical, cultural, and psychosocial composition. Students, even more than faculty, have called for curricular transformations that are responsive to the urgencies of our time. The pedagogical strategies and curricular offerings in this essay are thus an example of the efforts undertaken today by a community of largely premodernists of color who are working to teach a decolonizing curriculum, and who are profoundly engaged in transforming how the deep past is taught and studied in the twenty-first century academy.

Postclassical Muslim just war developments focused upon dealing with the twin challenges of the Crusades and the Mongols, both of which occupied substantial sections of the Muslim world as well as constituting religious challenges to Islam. These challenges were overcome by moving away from the earlier heroic manner of Muslim sacral warfare and adopting a more professional, technology-based military that at least attempted to assimilate standard Sunni Muslim norms (in terms of personal morality) into the military methodology. The expansion of Islam from the 13th to the 17th centuries demonstrated that this formula was a success.

The music in this chapter comes from a large area of what is now Southwest France, in which Occitan (or the langue d‘oc) was the principal vernacular language. From the network of courts and their noble rulers came the culture of the troubadours, poet-composers whose love songs in Occitan constitute the first large body of medieval vernacular literature to be written down. We explore the lives of a range of troubadours, considering the various positions they occupied in courtly society, and examine how the conventions and practicalities of courtly life informed the literary theme of ‘courtly love’ that they cultivated. The contemporary tradition of Latin song and polyphony from monasteries in the same area is then discussed. We look at the changes in Latin poetry that have been described as nova cantica (‘new song’), and the polyphonic techniques of Aquitanian composers. Lastly, the connections between these two traditions are charted, and a range of shared contexts, themes, and approaches are brought to light.

The conquest of Jerusalem in the summer of 1099 marked the founding of a new Latin polity on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean, known as the Kingdom of Jerusalem. This Kingdom, which would continue to exist, with changing borders, till 1291, was the home of a greatly varied population, which included speakers of a very wide range of languages. These circumstances make the Kingdom of Jerusalem a fascinating laboratory for the study of questions related to multilingualism. Against this background, the first part of this paper provides some basic comments concerning the multilingualism which characterized the Kingdom. The second part focuses on one particular issue within this wider theme: the development of an attitude toward the French vernacular which was, at the time, unusual and innovative in comparison to the perceptions of French and Latin that dominated the western Christendom.

With the new millennium, papal power sought to restore Christian rule in the Holy Land through a series of eight crusades, but these campaigns were military and political failures, especially at the expense of the Papacy. However, they did succeed in opening the way for the scholarship of the Islamic world to enter western European intellectual life. With the founding of universities, new scholarship slowly emerged. The pioneering teachings of Pierre Abélard, Roger Bacon, and Albertus Magnus led to a revival of interest in the ancient writers with their emphasis on rational thought to secure human knowledge. This movement, called Scholasticism, reached its pinnacle with the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas who sought a reconciliation of Aristotle’s rationalism and Christian theology. A major implication of Aquinas’ success was the acceptance by scholars within the universities and the Church that both reason and faith serve as sources of human knowledge. William of Ockham extended the Scholastic movement and his predecessor Roger Bacon by presented a law of parsimony in scientific explanation, which in turn laid the foundation of empirical science.

Around 1300 CE, so the legend goes, the king of the Malian empire in West Africa hatched a plan. He believed that the earth was round and wanted to prove it, so he equipped 200 boats full of men and another 200 full of gold, water and victuals, and sent them west. After a long time only one boat returned, reporting that ‘we have navigated for a long time, until we saw in the midst of the ocean as if a big river was flowing violently’.1 Not happy with the answer of the only boat to escape the danger, the king doubled down, and equipped 2,000 boats for a second voyage. This time he travelled with them. Just before he left he put his deputy in charge. The king and his fleet never returned. In 1312 this deputy became the tenth ruler of the Mali empire. His name was Mansa Musa.

This chapter examines antagonism toward Jews and Judaism as expressed by leading Church Fathers in the West. Particular attention is paid to the novel and influential perspective of Augustine.

Research has proliferated on several topics that have invited new methodological approaches: the rural setting, gendered relations between men and women, communal status of minorities (Christians and Jews), and religious diversity among Muslims, in particular among those who identified as Sufi mystics. New sources and revisionist interpretations of them continue to transform the field of Mamluk Studies. Yet in many instances, findings on these subjects are confined to discoveries of information on discrete conditions or isolated events that do not lend themselves to comprehensive analysis. They often depend on a single source or fragmentary data set, and require imaginative speculation to formulate hypotheses that apply to questions about their broader contexts in society. The chapter will outline the state of research on these subjects and their potential to open new lines of inquiry by highlighting examples that have influenced revisionist interpretations.

This chapter addresses how the Crusades spurred a renewed appropriation of Alexander in historiography, literature, images and cartography in late medieval Europe. Alexander’s legend was particularly relevant because it reflected the era’s geopolitical and epistemological complexity. The chapter focuses first on the ancient Alexander legend’s adaptation in Crusade-era texts including Crusade chronicles, epics, antique romances and encyclopedias. These works compare Alexander to Crusaders, present Alexander as a precursor of the Crusaders who fights Asian tyranny, interpolate Alexander into the stories of Crusaders through ekphrasis, and frequently cite the legend of Alexander’s enclosure of Gog and Magog. The chapter’s second part focuses on how manuscripts present Alexander as a proto-Crusader even if texts do not overtly describe him as such. Particular attention is paid to compilations that join Alexander and holy warriors (Judas Maccabeus, Godfrey of Bouillon), and to images that Christianise Alexander or demonise his foes. The final section examines the influence of Alexander’s legend on the apocalyptic geography of late medieval maps, which often depict Gog and Magog and other elements (toponyms, sites, monstrous peoples) of the Alexander tradition.

During the Middle Ages, the iconography of Alexander the Great could be found in religious as well as lay environments. The diversity of illustrated media (mosaics and capitals as well as tapestries and manuscripts) in which his likeness was represented reflects the variety of appraisals assigned to him as a historical figure, from condemnation to admiration. The analysis of various manuscripts and artefacts illustrated with images of the Alexander saga show that the same story, written and illustrated in different contexts, allowed different and nuanced interpretations: historical, political, encyclopaedic, courteous etc. The figure of Alexander the Great was particularly used by medieval rulers to base their political claims and aspirations through an intentional remastering of classical sources and associated iconography.

While captivity was the product of the violent confrontation between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, this essay uses Latin, Arabic, and Romance sources to argue that ransoming was also a phenomenon that intimately linked these communities. Grounded in a shared Roman inheritance, the tradition of ransoming brought Jews, Christians, and Muslims into a dialogic and reciprocal relationship with one another, one that depended on mutual understanding and expectations. It provided a channel to share ideas and institutions. Ransomers also helped pave the paths for commercial and diplomatic relations. Nevertheless, if ransoming drew these communities together, it also tore them apart. The physical and emotional cost of captivity, although shared, became the ground of separation.

The idea of Europe first emerged in ancient Greece, featuring in the work of Hippocrates, Herodotus, and Aristotle, among others. The classical myth of Europa describes the abduction of an Asian princess by the king of the Greek gods, and the classical idea of Europe served to distinguish Hellenic culture from an Asian world viewed highly negatively as an enslaved collective ruled by autocrats. In imperial Rome, the idea of Europe served an important geopolitical purpose, underwriting Roman civilization as European. While the rise of Christianity led to the idea of Europe being elided in favor of that of Christendom as opposed to Islam, following the discovery of the New World the idea of Europe became ever more central to reflections on civilization and what was seen as Europe’s civilizing mission beyond its geographical borders. Chapter 1 focuses on the emergence of the idea of Europe in classical antiquity, before considering its role in late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the early modern period, following the discovery of the Americas and the new sense of the European that arose at that time, as the idea of Europe and European civilization slowly came to displace that of Christendom.

The reign of the caliph al-Qadir signals the rediscovery of Abbasid religious authority on the basis of new terms. The Buyid--Abbasid rivalry with the Fatimids of Egypt provides an opportunity for shared interests between the caliph and the Buyids. The drafting of the Qadiri Creed in Baghdad outlines elements of Sunni belief that become official doctrine and provide a rebuttal of Fatimid ideology. The rise in the caliph's position as a religious arbiter, and the alignment of al-Qadir and al-Qa'im with a prolific class of 'ulama and jurists, such as al-Mawardi, attracts distant support from the newly rising Ghaznavids and the Seljuks. The Seljuk entry to Baghdad in 1055 brings about a new formula of affinity between caliphs and sultans. Continued Abbasid attempts for a reassertion of authority finally succeed in the caliphate of al-Nasir, who is helped by an international situation that ends the last vestiges of Seljuk political influence. The Mongols, under Genghis Khan, dominate the Iranian world but stop short of invading Baghdad. Al-Nasir's interest in Sufism and the Futuwwa movement incorporates a new dimension in Abbasid religious authority, while the rising tide of conquests against the Crusades further strengthens the caliphate's image as a central religious authority in the Islamic world.