ARABS AND CHRISTIANS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 729, 3 July 1953, Page 12

ARABS AND CHRISTIANS

A HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES, Vol. 'Il, the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187, by Steven Runciman; Che University Press, English price, R. RUNCIMAN’S brilliant first volume (reviewed here in 1951) took the reader to the capture’ of Jerusalem by the Latin Christians. The second volume, not quite so dramatic, but just as high in quality, brings the story to the reconquest of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187. The 11th Century dealt with the great migrations from Western Europe to the Middle East. The 12th Century is concerned with the defence of the Latin states which resulted. . It is a story of cupidity, disunity, treachery, meanness, bungling, hope, courage and calamity. Consider the forces involved. There was a_ small aristocracy living luxuriously but pre-. cariously in the Latin states of Out-remer-the Frankish East; they needed continuous strengthening from the West or complete adaptation to the East, and they had neither. The Italians who brought the pilgrims, soldiers and colonists were concerned with the profits of their shipping and not with the Crusades. Frankish Christian revenue came largely from tolls on the trade conducted by the Moslem merchants; the Crusading Order of Templars were active bankers financing their infidel clients; neither the Templars nor the Hospitallers owed loyalty to the King, a

but only to the Pope. The local Eastern Christians preferred the protection of Orthodox Byzantium, but the Latin (Crusading) Christians felt little brotherly love for the Byzantine Christians. As soon as the forces of Islam composed their differences the principalities of Outremer were doomed. And it would seem that, on balance, the common people of the East preferred it that» way. Says Runciman: "The Jews, with good reason, preferred the rule of the Arabs, who always treated them honestly and kindly. . To the contemporary Western pilgrim Outremer was shocking because of its luxury and licence. To the modern historian it is rather the intolerance and dishonourable barbarity of the Crusades that is to be regretted. . ." And speaking of the recapture of Jerusalem by Saladin: "The victors were correct and humane. Where the Franks, eightyeight years before, had waded through the blood of their victims, not a building now was looted, not a person injured. By Saladin’s orders guards patrolled the streets and the gates, preventing any outrage on the Christians."

W.B.

S.