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Acast Acast d. com slash advertise Hello everyone, and welcome to the History of Byzantium Episode three hundred and fifty two Crusader storm with Nicholas Mort Professor Nicholas Morton, one of our favorite guests on the show, has written A New History of the Crusades Since this is our last chance to talk crusading on this podcast, I asked for listener questions to put to Professor Morton So thank you for the dozens of questions that came in Of course there were lots about Byzantium, but since we have covered much of that ground, I decided to focus instead on all the questions that I have never answered questions about life on the ground in Utrreir And Professor Morton gives really good thorough answers to all of these Dr. Morton is Associate prorofessor in Middle Eastern and Global History at Nottingham Trent University in the UK His research focuses on the history of the Crusades and the medieval Middle East between the tenth and fourteenth centuries He's written four other books on Crusading and the Crusader States, as well as the Mongol Storm making and breaking empires in the medieval near East His new book, The Crusader Storm A global history of the wars for the Middle East offers a multicultural narrative of that first century of Cusader history showing the incredible number of different peoples affected by the movement which Alexiis Cominos called into being Crusader Storm is available from all good booksellers Now. Professor Nicholas Morton, welcome back to the podcast. Iope it's great to be back on the show. It's great to have you here. It's probably our last chance to talk about the crrusades on the history of Byzantium and it's an evergreen topic for the listeners. So it's good to have you. Your new book is coming out on the fourth of June, Crusader storm A global history of the wars for the Middle East And you're covering a specific period from the calling of the firstirst Crusade to Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem b a century later U What inspired you to write this particular book and to focus on that particular period Yeah, so this is sort of one of the really core periods in the history of the Cusades What I wanted to bring to the book is P it this way. When you read a history of the Crusades, often it's told from the European perspective, sometimes it's told from the Islamic perspective, and sometimes it's told from the Byzantine perspective And sometimes historians say that they are incorporating two or three of those perspectives I wanted to do something fundamentally different because the Middle East is complicated And even if we were just to take the Christian perspective on the crusades are we talking about Franks and with the Italians, the French, the Spanish, etcer. or are we talking about the Syriac Christians or the Armenian Christians or the Coptic Christians or indeed the Byzantine Christians or the Melk Christians or from a Muslim perspective are we talking about the Kurdish perspective or the Bedouin perspective or the Arab perspective or the Turkish perspective or various different groups within Islams So an Isari perspective, the twel There's so many and that's just Christians and Muslims. you could also bring into that Jewish perspectives or the Zoroastrian perspectives, there's so many different cultures and communities and of course, even within a specific ethnic group or religious group, there'll be a diversity of opinions between different states and territories So I wanted to draw out that this isn't simple. It's not a sort of a map where you can draw a line down the middle and have Christian territory on one side, Muslim territory on another. I really wanted to draw out the multifaceted nature of the Middle East at the time of the crusades, lots of different factions, leaders rulers all competing with each other, making alliances, fighting battles rivalries, etcer and how that works out. And with the Crusades, yeah, it's a book about the Crusades, but it's also acknowledging that the Middle East is shaped by a great deal more than just the cr crusades in this period. in fact The crusades are, if anything relatively small piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the broader geopolitics of the region. So it's trying to sort of offer a multi perspective view of the crusates in a wider landscape. that's what it's bringing to the table and It's the complexity of the region I wanted to bring out and beforefore listeners start thinking well that sounds incredibly complicated What I'm trying to do with this is We follow the history of multiple different cultures I've picked in about ten we explore in the book And there are particular individuals we follow through the history of this period They reoccur in many cases inst setad across several different sections. And so that helps to sort of provide guides through the events of the eras, you follow their lives and careers through the events shaping the region So that's really the main sort of idea of the book. And of course it fits with my previous book Mongol Storm And in some ways, this is sort of a sort of prequel to it. and the Mongols storm covever the thirteenth century, this one. covers the twelfth Very good. Just as a teaser for the listeners, do you want to highlight couple of characters whose stories we follow in the book Yeah, sure. so there's a very wide range. We look at, for example, the leader of a Turkman dynasty, it a nomadic dynasty recently arrived from the Central Asian steepe into the Middle East as part of the Seljuk conquests We look at Antioquin, so a Western European Frankish princess And she rules one of the crusader states by herself for a fairly long period of time So we look at her experiences and her involvement in the politics of this era We look at the aristocrats from the town of Chizar Arab Muslim warrior called Uami Iibin Munkit We look at his very complex career from his hometown to Damascus to Egypt And within that he's interacting with many of the major figures of this era We're looking at a Byzantine individual. We're looking at Andronicus Comnanus who's a very colourful individual. differentiffere points commander. Regional leader Rebel to a Byzantani traitor and then later on emperor himself. Sos he's got a lot to talk about It's through individuals like the people who have really got who are really stuck into the events of this period and whose perspectives highlight broad the changes that are taking place Fantastic. that's perfect. Uh As I refer to him, filthy old Andronicus once he becomes emperor. So people will be very familiar with him and for most of his exploits I did wonder if he could be rehabilitated and I reached a conclusion I don't really see how to do that. so no I'm afraid Androonica' remains fairly toxic That's what I wanted to hear. Okay, excellent. Well, as some listeners know, I put out the call for listener questions to try and see where the listeners' interests lay. And of course, there were lots of questions about. the military campaigns of the First Crusade and Byzantine involvement. but since we've covered those on the podcast, I decided to focus on the questions that came in about life in the Crusader states. the territories had been conquered because of course I didn't cover this on the podcast So let's see what insights you can offer to these listener questions And obviously people will have to check out the book for the full full answers. but Lots of people were interested in kind of what you've already previewed, what was the demography of the Crustader states like, you know after the conquest? Wh's actually living there? and how many actual Latin crusaders and other Migrants from Western Europe actually settled there Okay, so and this is one of the things that Um, Really rew attracted me to the study of the Middle East in this era decades ago when I began studying it which is just the sheer complexity of the region from a demographic perspective We don't have census data. so any estimate we make for population numbers is going to be a guess. Instinct tells me that we're talking about a region pre crrusade that is something around maybe forty five percent Muslim, forty five percent Christian and ten percent other minority groups. And of course within each of those forty five percent, we're talking about lots and lots of different communities and sects and different expressions both of Christianity and Islam. This is an enormously complex region before crusaders arrive And then in ten ninety seven, ten ninety nine, the armies the first crusade advance into the Middle East from the north And in the later years, there is a very large movement of people to the Middle East I suspect mostly, but not solely by ship. and they're probably arriving the tens of thousands every year Now How how many at the high point that population ultimately reached isn't clear. People have made estimates So for the kingdom of Jerusalem Maybe maybe may maybe around one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty thousand. Those are estimates that have been made, but actually I'm a bit skeptical I think that sounds a bit low. Of course, these are purely guessimates. they're working on nothing more than their intuition and sort of familiarity with the period and the sources I might be tempted to go up a bit higher maybe into sort the two hundred thousands, maybe up as high as three hundred thousand. We do know that the largest army the Kingdom of Jerusalem ever raised was about twenty thousand troops And so whatever we're talking about, we're talking about a population base big enough to support an army of that size, although the broader population is made up of many different groups, not just Western Europeans or Franks, as they were known The other interesting factor here though is that The crucid estates were small The conquests of the Cusades but geographical pimpericks, really You've got forquisited estates Odessa Antiok. Tripoli and Jerusalem and the largest Of those was the kingdom of Jerusalem But as a French commentator said in the thirteenth century that In Western Europe, the territories covered by the kingdom of Jerusalem would be little more than a barony in comparison. So Territories are small, but I think we are probably talking about a fairly large population density by medieval standards notot least because the population is primarily urban or a great deal more urban than say in Western Europe. So ese are sort of the components of my thinking when I think about the overall size of the population in the Middle East at this time or the crusive states. Are you saying total population in the kingdom of Jerusalem is three hundred thousand? Or you talking about migrants? I'm talking about Frankish population. The overall population so incorporating all other groups would have been substantially larger And so a kind of related question to that is How many non Western Europeans end up serving in the armies of say, the King of Jerusalem. See, it's a great question. The armies of this era whether they're raised by Turkish rulers or by byzantine rulers or indeed crusaders or Fanks, They're incredibly diverse. In the kingdom of Jerusalem, the armies are formed, well the elite, the mounted knights and the commanders all come from the aristocracy so the central hub of the army and in their largest in the largest field armies, we're probably talking about maybe one thousand two hundred to one thousand three hundred knights or aristocrats in the army. They're the sort of central hub Those will have been overwhelmingly Western European in their ranks, particularly among the knights, but not many Beyond that, you've got a range of other contingents. You've got what are called sergeants who will fight either as lighter cavalry or infantry. They'll be mostly Franks, Western Europeans, although again, they may include some Eastern Christians in their ranks Then you've got mercenaries, militias and other sort of associated troops, and that's where things get a lot more diverse Wester Europe Western European armies or indeed s Crisider states armies, I should say Their commanders hire large numbers of local light cavalry archers And they become known as Turkco poles. and various historians have debated where the Turkco poles came from and their ethnic background was The bottom line is it seems to me that most of them are from Turkish communities, although there are some Eastern Christians and indeed Franks in their ranks as well. But essentially it's they mark an attempt to make use of the effectiveness of light cavalry archers from local or neighbouring powers and then to draw that into the armies raised by the Cusited states. But they would have been very mixed in terms of their composition Um You've also got lots of occasions where the kingdom of Jerusalem or the otherristus states ally with other neighboring powers and so they may well be marching alongside the forces from the Emirate of Damascus or Aleppo or indeed Turkman communities along their margins. So When we imagine the armies raised by the Cuc of States We should definitely be thinking about a complex and mixed formation. it's again, not as nearly as simple as Christians and Muslims fighting and that's about it Yeah, absolutely. that term Tucker Paul has come up in in Byzantine sources as well and seems to reflect you know, communities who have mixed heritage. And so this is yeah, so there may be parents from different sides and so on. U So it's interesting because then the question becomes as several listeners sent in? how segregated or integrated was daily life in Utramir in terms of did the Latins live apart from everyone else or did they mix in with the local population Yeah, and that's That's a very natural question to asker I think. And again, as with so many of these questions, the answer is a bit of a mixture For example, we have We have I mentioned briefly before Arab u aristocrat called Uzabma Ib Bunket He travels extensively across the Ku' headed States And he tells all sorts of stories about his experiences And he has no difficulty at all explaining that he has friends among the Frankish aristocracy. He talks about one Frankish knight who he knew very well and the Frankish knnight offered to take Uammer's son to Western Europe to be trained as a knight Well Zama thought the proposal was Asurd and he said no to it, but the mere fact the proposal was made at all implies a degree of friendship. He talks with other people he knows who go to dinner parties with Frankish knights or have or ride horses against them in sort of sport sporting terms. either hear about a degree of justice being carried out across cultural boundaries Lazama himself is sent to court of the Kingdom of Jerusalem with a complaint about some sheep that had been rustled on the border territory He brings his case to the king, The king looks into it, finds out thatama's case is legitimate. so he arranges a recompense So there is quite a lot of integration in that sense. and they've also got quite a lot in common too They all like Falconry. Falconerry is the big pastime of this era But also the things like chess an Indian game originally, but a game that's played extensively among all Middle EternQeen Eies at East those that I'm aware of. thenen you've also got things like the cities and the marketplaces where I mean places like the Port of Acre, for example biggest pas in the kingdom of Jerusalem, at least by trade volume or I think it probably is And there you will live, you will live. you would have encountered Pilgrims from Russia traders from Central Asia merchants bringing porcelain from China peopleeople bringing spices and other sort ofood food flavourings or additives from Southeast Asia and India You'll be talking to merchants from Damascus and Aleppo, you'll be eating food from all sorts of different regions and the language mix would have been astonishing So there always a huge amount of mixing in that sort of trading context. In terms of the population within the Crusad of states It's difficult to tell including there was there there was some integration and some sort of sharing of ideas or working together in various different industries But there also seems to be in some cases, populations that kept themselves to themselves. And I think in those cases, It's a situation almost of sort of, well, if you don't bother us, we won't bother you bothoth communities wanton' to be left alone, but also from the Frankish perspective, as long as they pay their taxes fine, that's not a problem But on the other hand, you also have examples of hostile landlords who are much more aggressive towards people under their control You also have migration into the Crusader states not just by neighbor and Christian communities. you would also have Muslim migration in some cases into the crusid states For example, the Nizaris who are also known as the Asassins Well they're intensively persecuted in the Turkish territories further east And so we hear several accounts of them migrating to Perrusine states as a safe haven So as with all these things, the answer is very often, it's complicated And I don't want to paint too rosy a picture too, because Although All religions are protected under the law in the kingdom of Jerusalem whether you're Etern Christian Muslim or indeed Frankish The laws are also unequal So you have greater rights if you are Fank as opposed to say if you're a Muslim farming family in the kingdom of Jerusalem Yeah. it's a really complicated one, isn't it? And You know, people have to read the book to learn more, but it's geographically very different from say Western Europe where farmland will run for hundreds and hundreds of miles and you can sort of spread out. whereereas in the Levantine coast, you are keeping people in towards the sea from the desert where if settled farmers can't really flourish so you're sort of on top of each other and you can imagine that People are often forced to live alongside very different people just by limited amount of land available and um I think one of the ways I teach the crusades with my students is not a perfect way of doing it, but I show them a rainfall diagram of the Levantne region And I basically say, Okay, run your finger along the fifteen hundred milliliter line. That's what the crusaders are interested in conquering becausecause farmland is fairly scarce. and so where there is farm land it does tend to be reasonably intensively farmed but I think so anyway. There's a bit of debate on that one at the moment But it would certainly make sense And that of course raises the wonderful issue of food because there's lots of foods being exchanged in this context, you have a wonderful example of onene Frankish writer trying to describe a banana to someone in Western Europe. Well How do you describe the flavor of a banana Without say, it tastes like a banana Um I think he actually does quite well. Okay. tastes like a mixture of u Cream and butter So know honeycomb and butter If you're going to describe a banana's taste, I don't think that's too bad if you can't say it tastes like a banana But you've got all sorts of otherood food stuff. I mean, for example, we've got a cookbook from a member of Saladin's family And it includes recipes from Georgia, Central Asia, Armenia, there's even a Western European or Frankish roast in the mix Um Sugar is produced in very large quantities in the Crusader States and the Arabic word sukar will then obviously go on to create sugar in Western Europe and just to take sort another example In the north of the Crucid states and the Principality of Antioch, there's a huge lake or there was a huge lake. It's all gone now called Lake Armk and in that lake there were massive eels and Frank's love eels And they they're so popular. that people actually begin to pay for stuff with eels. so I'll rent this house from you and in return, you'll get this number of eels, but the Latin word for eel Anglo is one of the few words to go into the Arabic And so you have these examples of different recipes and foodstuffs being shared and exchanged And it's also interesting to see what isn't exchanged. For example although the Franks Crusaders adopt a lot of local food items and they do sort of blend their cuisine with local cuisines. They like bread the way they have it in Western Europe. It's something I've noticed actually in lots of contexts. peopleeople will take on all sorts of different food items and try different recipes and menus, but often they want bread in the way that they've been sort of raised to eat it. So Yeah, it's interesting That's really interesting because there's There's a Byzantine exile who's sent to Cherson in the Crimea and he writes home saying, They talk about bread, but I haven't seen any By which we assume he means they're not baking it the way I'm used to it. This is not real bread I guess that's such a daily staple. want you want it, you know, how you're used to it I suppose that also links into the whole question of you by the use of leavened or unleavened bread in When receiving comedions, certain releligious context. so yeah Fantastic. That's great. There will definitely be people who are interesterested in the food angle because you get a real insight into human behaviour and that sort of leads us into kind of the last question on this topic, which is about how many Latins Um eleven timed over time You know, did they learn local languages Did they you know, adapt Middle Eastern norms in a way that you know, would have been perceived as having changed them from people, you know, arriving in Western Europe. and sort of a tangent from that is did born and bred in the Crusader states, but from Frankish parents see themselves as different to those in Western Europe Yeah. now this is this is a complex one again It's There are so in so many ways the Crusades is all they p know as Eastern Franks in this region. they've taken on a lot of We've mentioned diet already, but they' at a lot of other aspects of culture in the way that they live, in the way that they dress. For example, clothing knit, they'll often wear lighter fabrics than they would in Western Europe, where of course it's predominantly will in the Middle East, it's much more sort of copious and linen for the more elite and for more sort of highigh profile events, it wouldd be more like things like silk even in things like jewelry or makeup There are differences too. So Frankish women for are known to have used coal sticks So I make up in a way they wouldn't have in Western Europe. And the actual nature of the jewelry is different. So in Western Europe, it'd be much more sort of brooches. Whereas in the Middle East it's more bracelets so the nature and that's borrowing a lot from Byzantium in terms of art as well There's a very, very strong Etern Christian by antine influence on the art produced. in the Cusader States, you can really see that in the items that are produced and of course in the architecture too Even things like the Crusader castles, yes, they borrow a lot from or they draw a lot on Western European architectural designs, but there's also a great deal of Eastern Christ, I think particularly Armenian influences and indeed influences from Islamic traditions as well. So so many of these ideas get merged and and shared as well as, of course reflecting the Middle East status as a sort of crossroads of Asia and Africa with all sorts of goods coming from outside the Middle East that also influence culture in the crruser States. I mentioned the Chinese porcelain, althready it's thought the Kight's Hospitaler might have had a big service of Chinese porcelain. among other things. So there's lots of this going on, but there's Um There's also obviously a very strong association with Western Europe. And because the population in the Crusadade States is constantly receiving thousands of thousands more people arriving from Western Europe U every year There willll always be various people who have got stronger associations with West New York Civityving very recently arrived. So that brings a degree of complexity as well. One of the more curious ways of showing this is in intestinal worms There's been some very interesting bioarchchaeology done on the train pits because you can still see once you've Um, choppped up some of the poo you find in these little dam pits. You can see what worms you had in their bellies And those worms in some cases can be regionalized. you can see where they came from. And I remember distinctly being shown a picture of one from Scandinavia, I think it's a fish tape worm So there too, that indicates that it's not just the people who are traveling, it's also their parasites. And a similar thing can be said in terms of illnesses and equine illnesses as well, of course horses at all brought to the region or being shared within the region. So it is tremendously complex. Now in terms of how they were viewed and viewed themselves So there's a ritical forer of sharks who came originally from France and then settled in the crrusade estates And he makes this point explicitly. he said we who were occidentals have become orientals or we who were westerners have become easasterners would be a way of perhaps translating that. So for him at least for many people, they take on the sense that they are now inhabitants of the Middle East. they do make that that movement. But from a Western European eye the Etern Eastern Franks, they start to look a bit different and they begin to be labeled with a pejority of a hostile term which is pulani, which means cults or A very crude and hostile way to put it be half breeds, essentially. neeither one thing nor the other somewhere between different cultures, not quite entirely us And that would be perhaps what they're trying to characterize in saying that. So there is that sense of growing difference that emerges and you really get a flavour for that when an embassy is sent back to Western Europe in the eleven eighties under for leading churchmen from the kingdom of Jerusalem called Patriarch Caraclius And when he arrives in Western Europe, people treat him with a fair degree of hostility Be there he is wearing perfume and silken robes, totally normal in the kingdom of Jerusalem, but not at all normal in Western Europe and It rubs people up the wrong way. They don't know quite how to respond to him and they often respond to him in a quite hostile fashion, partarticularly as he's asking for help, he's wearing these gorgeous robpes. So yeah, there can can be there can be those sorts Western Europe and indeed the Eastern Franks Yeah, interesteresting. And there's an echoe there of how Byzantines were viewed in in Western Europe U N then The next question is about the role women played in Inrmir, which obviously is a big question So Perhaps you can justust hint at some of the things you cover in the book Um One of the questions is specifically about women in the ruling class of Utromir. So Western women, did they have a different role in the Crusader states than they would back in Western Europe No, what with anyone of any gender in any part of the Middle East at this time, it has to be said as a sort of first thing that we are so much better provided with sources on men than we are for women. it's just the nature of the sources, unfortunately It would be particularly nice to get a clearer sense of the experience of women from non noble backgrounds, so people who are further down the social spectrum Unfortunately, we just don't have that evidence What I do in the book is Frankish women in particular, I look at some Turkish women and women from other cultures as well, including by anntim women, but The two Frankish women I focus on are Queen Melisand of Jerusalem and Princess Constance of Antioch And one of the things that will come across very quickly, twenty one, reading the book is that these are women who could exert considerable amount of power. They both ruled states for long periods on their own independently. off course they had their aristocracies around them as indeed any ruler would at the time. But they're still the ones making the decisions, calling down the shots So I've always seen Pusad the states as being Be they're they're frontier zones because there's so much more because there's so much conflict and upheaval I've always seen these as areas where the strongest personalities come to the top In that kind of environment where things are so uncertain People who can command allegiance, who can come up with new ideas, who are strong, who can lead, who can withstand the pressure. I suspect they will wise to the top irrespective of gender. That's not to say there aren't creater barriers to women the environment is still conducive for the stronger of any gender to acquire prominence because of the uncertainties of the situation. There is a flip side to that, which is that of course Women aren't trained to fight typically in among the aristocracy of this era And so The men will be doing most of the fighting and that does have an effect on the experience of women And just to give it examples, there's a law And that law is about the remarriage of widows And so if a woman who has an estate and if that estate owes knights So there is a feudal obligation for that estate to provide knights for the Royal Arm If she is widowed then it is an obligation for her to remarry within a year And the point being that there has to be a knight being supported by that estate. otherwise that estate is not performing its military function and the Kusid States are fighting all the time So an estate which isn't supporting knights can't be tolerated so the woman has to remarry in order to provide those troops. That's sort of the flip side to this in that the military context applying a great deal of pressure on female landowners who have been widowed to remarry very quickly. and of course Many women will be widowed fairly frequently in some cases, they marry over and over again because their men are dying in battle or from disease fairly quickly, offten women live a lot longer in the Middle Eastter and their men folk And the rule is that if she doesn't remarry by the end of that year. sh then her Lord whoever the local counties that count is allowed to say, okay, well here are three choices pick baskball of three so it that she's forced to remarry. And that carries on all the way through to sort of late middle age really, so only then that she's allowed not to remarry And it has to be said as the corrolerator to that that it's not entirely clear that the three male candidates are given much choice in this either The basic point is that the Catholic Church does emphasize the theoretical principle, however much may be bent in practice That marriage has to be about consent in this period, you have to consent to the marriage for it to be licit Well here we have an example where consent, well, I dare say they prefer the woman to consent, but if she doesn't, she still expects to get married Yeah, really interesting These are the opportunities and constraints of a frontier society Um An Another topic the listeners were very interested in, which I haven't covered at all are the Knights templar So one of the religious orders who served in the Crusader states How much do you touch on them in this a bit. I I talked more about the night's hospitler actually But yeah, we I talk the military orders Templus hospital is a fair amount in the book. and they' arere a fascinating phenomenon because We're looking at something which in some wayays seems like a contradiction in total. and it'd be like crusading as a whole becausecause we're talking about Christianity, right? So we're talking about the religion of Do good to those that hate you, love your enemies, turn the other cheek And yet in the Kights Templar, we have a Christian institution devoted to the conduct of warfare And so I think people have perennially been interested in the templars for many reasons, but one of them being What did they think they were doing And how did they at least in their own minds, try to justify it. and there are some very interesting justifications that are offered by their advocates. So There's the head of the Cisertion Oder who writes a very long pamphlet, essentially on why he supports the templars And he cites the example from the Bible by different people from different vacations come and ask Jesus Well, what do I need to do to be saved given my vacation and Some soldiers ask Jesus What should I do to be saved? And Jesus says, Well, don't steal from the por or that steal from those who are who are who who can effectively bully, I suppose And he's saying that I'm guessing because these are Roman soldiers and the areas under Roman occupation. And so this is a very real threat at the time, but to a medieval eye Bern and said, Uha What he didn't say is don't kill people Therefore it's okay to kill people, therefore this is a viable vocation. theological logic there is a little bit forced if you ask me you can see that they're trying to find ways of justifying it. within the context of Christian theology, although there are even from the ear early days of the Tem of the Templar, there are some at least, not many, but some who basically say, Well, I've read the Bible, I've heard what Jesus and the apostles say, and I've seen what the templar is doing I'm not seeing the match quite honestly. So There is a diversity of opinion although it has to be said that critics are fairly few in numbers Yeah, really interesting. So lets let's broaden this out to the hospitalers as well then, were these knights from military orders, genuinely elite soldiers and Was there anything that made them different to yourour average knight serving in the Crusader states. Yeah. So most Young aristocratic men. are raised to fight as heavy cavalry from their very early years So they'll be expected to condition their body to bear the weight of not just the chained mail but also the leather and the padded jacket and the weapons strapped over the top of that and to function as normally as possible whilst wearing many kilograms of additional weight and indeed to be sitting on top of a big, sweaty warhorse Um and then to be able to work with that warhorse using only their legs to guide it because of course both their hands are committed for the weapons and armour So They're trained for this from a very early age and they won't normally join the templars until maybe late teens, early twenties. So their initial training will already have taken place. So at that point at least, there's not much difference between them and Western European knights because they've been raised the same way. What the templars and hospitalers do, which is different is that they bring a monastic ethos. to war of warfare And of course, The monastic ethos is around hard work Bpot and living strict discipline and working together as a community. Well, all these things work in a monastic sense, but in fact They also have military applications every single one of them. So where secular knights or just knights who aren't from the Tempers and hospital is where they were often criticized by medieval commanders for doing their own thing, you know, chasing after loot. or not reforming in their units after they've broken an enemy contingent. or because they want to go on chivalric escapades and offer single combat to enemy commanders. thingsings that might make them feel like heroes but nonetheless don't work if you're a commander trying to sort of heard them as cats quite honestly Military field is different totally focused on discipline trains to fight in units, they will charge, break an enemy formation, reform turn charge again and carry on doing that. So that enhanced discipline. not to mention the fact that they're not spending their time traveling from Fasting hall to tournament circuit to all that sort of side of a night's life. They're just not doing. They're training all the time. and they're training and they're eating food which is is much more sort of geared towards a healthiest T your a healthy diet is a little bit of a sort of modern anachronism. but they're not stuffing themselves with sugar and luxuries. They're eating a diet which is much more conducive to Physical fitness and they're rigidly organized So in that sense, yes, the military orders were elite in a way other knights weren't, but often it was the application of those monastic qualities that did that and It's notable that there's an Islamic chronicler called Ibn Wazil It was a It was talking about how a Mamluk Sultan was reviewing a Cany of Muslim cavalry And he wished to pay them a compliment, so he described them as the templars of Islam which just goes to make the point that the templars do set a standard. for military quality although at the same time there is a balance to all of this which is that people before people get too sort of far, M Templar, the best warriors in the world. We need to focus on the fact that as a military machine Western Europe is substantially less effective than other powers in the Middle East. Let me explain what I mean the first crusade viewed solely as a military endeavor is about the most effective and successful military campaign Wed by Western Europe in the medieval period as a single campaign. and it conquered Four big cities, half a dozen towns And then it struggled to hold on to them. It sort of clung onto bits of those territories for the next two centuries and then lost them Well, in the decades preceding the first crusade the Seljuk Turks from Central Asia conquered the entirety of almost the entirety of the Middle East. from the Mediterranean coast through to Afghanistan, and then two centuries later the Mongols conquered the greater part of Eurasia And so here's my point that yes, the Kights Templar were very effective. Crus said Kights were very effective, but as a military machine This is the era of the nomadic mounted archer. They're the ones who make the big big empires. they're the ones who can achieve massive conquests and hold down vast areas of territory Compared to nomadic cultures, agricultural societies like Western Europe are far less effective. Yeah, very good point. and takes us back to the Mongol storm U So just in passing, how important were the religious orders to the survival of the crrusader states militarily Okay, so The Kight's Templar and Kights hospital at their height probablyroably had a total of maybe six hundred brother Knights in the Middle East each of whom for a large battle They might supply a contingent of about three hundred each At the largest field armies created by the Kingdom of Jerusalem reached about oneteen hundred knights So we're talking about templor and hospitalers for the nightly contingent at least, providing about a little under half at full stretch Now in terms of everyone else, so for the Kingdom of Jerusalem's largest armies might be of eighteen thousand infantry and other forces Would it have numbers that are quite so clear if the temple was in hospital as I would have thought a contingent of maybe two to three thousand each would be about right So we're talking possibly about a fifth or a sixth of all infantry per order for the Kingdom of Jerusalem's main field army and then maybe for each order, maybe a quarter of its nightly contingent or little under half these the two together So we are talking about a significant slab of the military personnel. deployed by the Crusited States But their military significance is greater than that, partly because they are very, very wealthy What makes the military ordder so distinctive in financial terms is that they have hundreds of estates in Western Europe Of course Germany and France and Scandinavia and Italy British Iss are places. And those estates will provide one third of their income and send it to the Middle East every year which means the military orders can dispose of huge sums of money, which they can then use to construct or at least to maintain massive castles too has a military application. They also run their own fleets of ships which act as conduits between Western Europe and the crucciifited States are not the only people with ships, but they provide additional shipping, which has again, military connotations. Furthermore, even even for the bigger crusades with the templers and hospitlers are minority players, they're so experienced at fighting wars in the Middle East. Often commanders lean on them very heavily for advice because if you've been fighting wars in northern France all your career then suddenly you fight this fights our fighting a war in Egypt any commander who's even who's reasonably smart is going to realise they're going to need local expertise and the milit fulds can provide that. So often the advisory capacity. becomes crucial role they play for the larger crusades Very good U Well I hope that points people in the direction they need to go to learn more Let's do one final question. It's another massive question, but maybe you can just give people a hint towards the answer. which is did the crusaders and The Muslims actually understand each other better over time during this century or so, or did hostility prevent much meaningful exchange Yeah And again, this is a question I'm afraid I'm going to give a fairly familiar kind of answer to, which is a bit of it's a mixture. And the first point to make is that the first crusade is not the first time Western Europe and the Muslim world have encountered each other. They've got a history running back hundreds of years before the first Cusade But in terms of the changes brought about during the era of the Crusadeer state, so that would be sort of ten ninety seven through to twelve ninety one There does seem to be a very strong case to make the various Muslim U states neighboring the crusader states and the crusaders or Franks themselves. did acquire a substantially better understanding Ohf say how their neighbors Authority structures work how their societies are structured and how they function. What different communities are they within those territories and what do those communities believe? What's their lifestyle like? So in terms of knowledge about neighboring territories, it does seem to have improved substantially. and we have We have various texts in Arabic from Muslim intellectuals describing Western Europe and they describe it in a much greater level of detail And they're able again to talk about authorities and structures, kings, princessces, cities, etcetera in Western Europe in a much more detailed way than they had done previously. So it does seem as if Level of knowledge improved. And but the crusades also or the era of the crusades because there's lots of processes at work that drive this There does seem to have been a commercial boom in the Middle East brings together merchants from Sub Saharan Africa, the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, China, India, the s of north of the Black Sea sort of region and indeed from the Middle East itself not to mention merchants, particularly Italians from Western Europe And so that too brings about a great deal of sharing and mixing of information which then gets brought back to each of those respective cultures. So Knowledge and interaction seems to have increased But it's also the crusates And the memory of the crusades, particularly the recollection of the cruise states And you can see this today. The way people think about it, people remember the crusades does to have a much more conflictual dimension to it because the crusades today in many cultures are remembered almost solely As examples of interfaith warfare And of course, that does trace back the era itself And so again, it's a question that has various dimensions to it Absolutely. I mean you know, one thing you've already talked about is the way that Christian aristocrats and Muslim aristocrats might actually become friends and have shared interests and so on, which is obviously what the Byzantines were used to having had Muslim neighbours for centuries att the same time If you're trying to attract new You're not going to emphasize how you have friendly relations with your neighboring Muslim Eir. you're going to have to remain in a state of we are in peril. we need people to come and serve against the enemy. So it's There's a tension there always I think that I think one of the ways that one of the sort underlying themes that comes across in many of the sources I read is that whether you're Christian writer or a Muslim writer or within that whether you're a Byzantine writer or you you at a Turkish court or Arab c or whether you're writing from an Italian merchants perspective, there are common themes and models that come across, which is that no one really seems to well most people, there are always a few, but most people don't seem to have a problem with the idea of friendship Friendship across religious boundaries doesn't seem to cause much tension for anyone, including religious authorities And the same thing about conducting trade. Now there are a few who say, well you should never trade with Christians or you've never trade with the Muslims. There are always a few people like that But there's lot of people who do And again, that doesn't seem to be a problem and seem there are mercantile relationships that just run and run and run But they do it generation after generation So there's always interaction like that. I think where the pressure comes on, where people start to get really worried and aware that the tensions begin to rise. anything that threatens an individual's underlying identity So if there is a danger that they may cease to be part of their faith community and become a member of another faith community and your efforts to win converts going in lots of different directions That's when people start to get very concerned. So friendship is fine. Often things like intermarriage is viewed with a great deal more concern because that represents well What does that mean for the religeriency of the two people involved And perhaps of equal importance, what does that mean for the resinolility of their children Yeah, really interesting Um I think I might spring a final question on you and I can I can cut out this if we need to. but it worked well with your previous book, which is obbviously you've been studying the Crusades for a very long time You've been teaching it, you've been writing about it didid anything Stam out to you or occur to you Afresh By writing this book, by narrowing your focus to a particular period, did anything kind of jump out to you that hadn't before There's two things One of the themes I keep coming back to in my book is innovation I think a history of the cr crusades Dam explores within the context of the history of technology and technological change. I mean There are people who have looked at the Crusades. There's been a very good book recently on the culture of the Crusadade states, looking at innovation there, but a lot of stuff is getting invented and whether you talk about it for just to give an example The ships Now we tend to think about ships, Western European ships at least I was always raised with a sort of evolutionary diagram where on one side you have, I don't know, someone sitting on a log floating down a river And on the other hand, you might have say a supertanker or an aircraft carrier or something like that, and then a slow evolution in the meantime Well, this is appearing it's not really been acknowledged enough in the history of sort of maritime of maritime archeology or architecture. At the start of the crusading period, the really big ships Western Europe could deploy for transporting people could carry about a couple of hundred people perhaps But within sixty or seventy years, we have both Islamic and Western European sources saying that the bigger crusade transports could carry up to about fifteen hundred in one case even two thousand people. So the ships are getting a lot bigger. And of course, that's responding to challenges The Crusad E States viewed as a practical project That basically means propping up four territories almost a thousand miles from Christendam's nearest outpost If you're want to make that happen There's going to be a lot of innovations to facilitate that because the technology doesn't exist to make that work. And so maritime architecture is one example of that There's lots of other examples of technologies and ideas and innovations either being devised or being shared So in Antioch, there's a very lively conversation between, say doctors and medical practitioners And there's a great copying of Islamic medical texts in Antiootics because Western European intellectuals want to find out more and they've got a lot in common because Islamic whitest They view the human body in the same way as Western European authors which is based on hippocrates, the idea of the b body being controlled by humours. so yellow bile, black, bile, flemine blood And so that knowledge can translate very easily. And so there's a great deal of exchange taking place in those contexts as people share ideas. And of course, when you share ideas often that's when innovation takes place because you're putting things together. Crusader castles would be another example I've already mentioned that there's lots of different influences in their constructions and that forms hybrids and the way that I think about professionals and artisans and professional life in the Middle East It goes a bit like this because in the modern day, If you invent something that's new then you're probably going to be in sayay a research facility, maybe a university or a government lab or you're being a large peration And as soon as that invention takes place, you protect it and then you bury under four hundred meters of concrete and then surround it with lasers and zombies because well, why wouldn't you But we're used to the idea that once you've designed something, you protect it and you hide it At the very least, you're going to charge someone to use it totally different in the medieval period. because because rulers are poor If you're the Emir of Damascus and you want to build a palace, well fine, you might be able to afford it. But once you've paid for that You're not going to keep all the various artisans that were required to make that palace on the books permanently Once you've paid them off, that's it. you've run out of money So they're going to have to go somewhere else and they may go from Emirate of Damascus to the kingdom of Jerusalem and build a church And then it might go from the kingdom of Jerusalem to the Anatolian Seljuks in I don't know, say say Konya build some city walls and then they might go to Siles and Armenia and build a harbour. The point is the workforce is mobile than it has to be because it has to follow the work, but of course in the process People from different cultures are coming together and building sites and they're sharing ideas. So a lot's getting exchanged. Another great example of this is the siege Catapult. So People have totally heard of the trebuchche But you have a sort of the throwing arm is a sort of counterweight where the counterweight comes down and that throws up the throwing arm Well the original trebuchchets were called traction trebouchets and they were designed in China And rather than having a counterweight, you had a team of workers pulling on ropes to hurl up for throwing on And that technology came to the Middle East and went from there into the Mediterranean, reaching Western Europe among other places. And then in the wars between Saladin and the Crusad of States, I can't clim credit for this idea because it's been done by some very good work by Michael Fultson somewhere in that mix, in that conflict between Saladin and the kingdom of Jerusalem That's when they develop counterweight trebuchchets which then get spread out and they're used across various different territories including China, because the Mongols bring them back to China and use them to help suppress what's left of Song Dynasty China. And so the Catapult technology just goes full circle, but The Middle East is important