ABSTRACT
The power was seized by others, by non-Arabs like the Turks in the east, the Berbers in the west, and European Christians in the north. This chapter explores the crusade as establishing a sharp divide, war between the foreign invaders and the native peoples of Syria and Palestine. In fact, the pattern of war and peace was much more complex than that. Western writers have, of course, not been able to use many Arab sources because of their lack of Arabic. However, there are plenty of orientalists with a knowledge of the appropriate languages, but in general they have not discussed the crusades. The Turkish domination was not passively accepted by the peoples of the Middle East. But other religious forces also caused confusion. Islam was far from united in religious terms. At the heart of the fragmentation in the Islamic world was the city of Aleppo under Ridwan and his successors.
