Richard Fletcher - The Cross and The Crescent: The Dramatic Story of the Earliest Encounters Between Christians and Muslims

1 The Mediterranean and the Middle East in the first
Islamic century, c. 630730

3 The Mediterranean and the Middle East in the early
Crusading era, c. 1140

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?

James Joyce, Ulysses

This book was first suggested to me in the course of a conversation in October 1998, commissioned in June 2000, pondered during the following months, and written between May and December 2001. Its publication has been delayed for reasons beyond the authors control. It is intended as a neutral introduction to the story of a large and complicated, intricate and controversial set of relationships, which has assisted in shaping the world for many millions of people of diverse cultural attachments living today: no more, no less.

The origins of the book go back a good deal further than the dates just indicated. For many years I taught undergraduate courses on various aspects of the relations between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages at the University of York where I was until recently employed. Well before that, however, a formative experience in my own undergraduate career at Oxford had implanted the seeds of an interest in this cultural encounter. In my first long vacation in 1963 I visited Spain with friends and for the first time in my life gazed with wonder upon the mosque of Crdoba and the Alhambra of Granada: I returned from my holiday intent upon learning more about the culture which had produced these marvels. In the immediately following Michaelmas term I attended what were called classes they were actually informal discussion groups on the theme of Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages. These classes were presided over by a triumvirate consisting of Richard Southern (then Chichele Professor of Medieval History), Samuel Stern and Richard Walzer. These three were sometimes joined by Albert Hourani or Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, occasionally both. Simply to rehearse the names of these immensely distinguished scholars is to be sharply reminded how very privileged we pupils were. I cannot speak for other members of the group, but I am pretty sure that in a callow, nineteen-year-old way I had no idea how fortunate I was to be among the audience for their wise, lucid and thought-provoking reflections. The classes took place at All Souls College, if I recall correctly in Dr Sterns rooms. There were not enough chairs to go round, so we sat on the floor quite literally at the feet of these scholars and just listened to them talking, sometimes joining in to ask a question or even venture an observation. It was a mode of teaching which perhaps could not have been encountered in any other university in the Western world at that time and which would be altogether unthinkable in the conditions that govern academic life today. I still possess the yellowing pages of notes, random and scrappy though they are, which I jotted down in the course of that term, as a reminder of one of the most valuable pedagogic experiences of my life.

In the nearer past, I record my grateful thanks to Craig Taylor, for guiding my purchase and assisting my early operation of a new computer; also for directing my attention to Honorat Bouvet (see and comment constructively upon it from a Muslims perspective. In the light of her criticisms I have introduced many changes into my text; where I have neglected her advice it has never been without anxious hesitation. I am indebted once again to the editorial skills of Stuart Proffitt, exercised on this occasion on a text which he had not commissioned.

Dates are given in their AD form (sometimes today more neutrally expressed as CE or Common Era): plenty of reference books exist which furnish parallel lists of Islamic Hegira and Christian AD/CE dates. In my nomenclature I am aware that the coupling of the terms Christendom and Islam is in a strict sense inaccurate: Islam is a faith which may thereby be linked to Christianity; Christendom is a territory or culture or society which may thereby be linked to the Dr al-Islm or Abode of Peace, that portion of the world in which the faith and law of Islam prevail. If I have overlooked instances in which I have slipped into this error I ask the forgiveness of those readers who might find it offensive. Readers attention is drawn to the Chronology, the suggestions for further reading and the notes identifying quotations in the text which are to be found towards the back of the book.

In writing this book I have not infrequently regretted that I could not have included some consideration of Judaism, as the third (but earliest) of the monotheisms of the medieval world, whose fortunes were inextricably intertwined with those of the other two. But that would have made a very different and much longer book.