Crusades and Jihad: The Mediterranean Experience, 1095 – 1350
(Globalization Studies)
Instructors:
Cecilia Gaposchkin, History/Asst. Dean of Faculty [M.C.Gaposchkin@Dartmouth.EDU]
Kevin Reinhart, Associate Professor of Religion [A.Kevin.Reinhart@Dartmouth.EDU]
Schedule: Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 1:45 – 3:00pm
X-Hour: Thursday, 1 – 2pm
Location: ?
Description:
The Crusades, launched in 1095 by European Christians who sought to secure military control over Jerusalem and the Holy Land, led to a period of sustained and largely hostile contact between Christian and Muslim cultures. The result engendered important and often unintended changes in religion, politics, economics and cultural life of both Christendom and Islamdom, and this encounter defined Muslim-Christian relations for centuries.Through initial successes and then repeated failures in crusading, Europeans reshaped Western ideas about Christianity, a theology of sacrifice, themselves as Christian Europeans, and Islam as Islamicate culture. For Muslims, the Crusade period witnessed the formation and consolidation of Sunni Islam, its theology, its architecture, its educational institutions, and its political philosophy.The Crusades had important implications for Judaism as well, beginning with the Mainz massacres during the first crusade and marking the beginning of what one scholar has termed the "formation of a persecuting society" in the west.
This course takes a comparative perspective, approaching the crusading experience from the European and Islamic viewpoints. It will also explore the constructive and destructive impact of contact between peoples and the mutual influence of differing cultures, including current reference to the Crusades by contemporary Muslims and Christians.
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