World of the Crusades

What were the Crusades? This seemingly straightforward question is not so easily answered. In fact, there are few historical subjects that are at once so superficially recognizable and yet so inadequately understood. The Crusades have been called armed pilgrimages and penitential holy wars; but also framed as an apocalyptic movement; or a proto-colonial one. Against whom were the Crusades directed? Certainly, they often entailed assaults against Muslims in the Middle East. But they also touched off anti-Jewish pogroms in Europe and were declared and fought against pagans in Livonia; perceived heretics in the south of France; Mongols in Poland and Hungary; and Christian political enemies of the papacy in Italy and elsewhere. This course has three principal aims. The first is to interrogate the origin, evolution, and consequences of the crusading movement in western Europe. The second is to examine and understand the various impacts on, and experiences of, those who were the target of crusading—Muslims, pagans, heretics, political enemies, etc.—in both the Middle East and other regions. Finally, we will conclude by considering the long “afterlife” and complicated reception of the Crusades—both how their study has been institutionalized in scholarship and universities, as well as the various ways they have been remembered, romanticized, appropriated, popularized, and vilified in the West and the Islamic world from the Middle Ages until the present day.