Crusades

There were, of course, periods of European counterattack, notably in
the series of wars known—in European historiography—as the Crusades.
In recent years it has become the practice, in both western Europe and
the Middle East, to see and present the Crusades as an early exercise in
Western imperialism—as a wanton and predatory aggression by the European
powers of the time against the Muslim or, as some would now
say, against the Arab lands.
They were not seen in that light at the time, either by Christians or
by Muslims. For contemporary Christians, the Crusades were religious
wars, the purpose of which was to recover the lost lands of Christendom
and in particular the holy land where Christ had lived, taught, and died.
In this connection, it may be recalled that when the Crusaders arrived in
the Levant not much more than four centuries had passed since the Arab
Muslim conquerors had wrested these lands from Christendom—less than
half the time from the Crusades to the present day—and that a substantial
proportion of the population of these lands, perhaps even a majority, was
still Christian. In the Arabic historiography of the period, incomparably
richer than that of the Crusaders, the terms "Crusade" and "Crusader" do
not appear at all, and even the notion that these terms represent appears
to be missing. The battles against these invaders are described in great
detail, but they are usually designated by an ethnic name, the Franks, often
simply as the infidels, with appropriate imprecations, rarely as the Christians




Islam and the West, Bernard Lewis p. 26