ABSTRACT
The role of Fatimid Egypt in the Muslim response to the First Crusade, which is generally considered to be defensive as well as ineffective, is in need of reappraisal. The attempt has been made to distinguish between the reaction of an Islamic society to invasion and conquest and its response in religious terms, beginning with the situation in the Near East on the eve of the Crusades. In the eastern Mediterranean the arrival of the First Crusade nevertheless took the Muslim world by surprise. There was indeed a precedent for this, the First Crusade, in the campaigns of the Byzantine emperor John Tzimisces, which in 975 had reached as far south as Caesarea with the apparent objective of recovering Jerusalem for the Christian empire. A hundred years after the First Crusade, the Biblical figure of Melchizedek became central to Pope Innocent III's conception of himself as the Vicar of Christ.
