The Crusades In medieval Islamic societies, Christians were regarded as the People of the Book ( ahl al-kitab ) since they had their own scripture (the New Testament or Injil ). Christians were granted safe conduct ( aman ) while venturing into Muslim states as merchants, pilgrims, ambassadors and travellers. These territories also included those which were once held by the Byzantine Empire, notably the Holy Land of Palestine. Jerusalem was conquered by the Arabs in but it was ever-present in the Christian imagination as the place of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
This was an important factor in the formation of the image of Muslims in Christian Europe. Hostility towards the Muslim world became more pronounced in the eleventh century. Normans, Hungarians and some Slavs had *An important Perso- Islamic centre of learning and the birthplace of Umar Khayyam. T HE C ENTRAL I SLAMIC L ANDS T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY been converted to Christianity, and the Muslims alone remained as the main enemy.
There was also a change in the social and economic organisation of western Europe in the eleventh century which contributed to the hostility between Christendom and the Islamic world. The clergy and the warrior class (the first two orders – see Theme ) were making efforts to ensure political stability as well as economic growth based on agriculture and trade. The possibilities of military confrontation between competing feudal principalities and a return to economic organisation based on plunder were contained by the Peace of God movement. All military violence was forbidden inside certain areas, near places of worship, during certain periods considered sacred in the Church’s calendar, and against certain vulnerable social groups, such as churchmen and the common people.
The Peace of God deflected the aggressive tendencies of feudal society away from the Christian world and towards the ‘enemies’ of God. It built a climate in which fighting against the infidels (non-believers) became not only permissible but also commendable. The death in of Malik Shah, the Saljuq sultan of Baghdad, was followed by the disintegration of his empire. This