Crusader violence targeted local Jews at home and Muslims abroad from the outset

Evidence

The tone for the treatment of Jews and Muslims by crusaders was set even before the First Crusade reached its destination. The departure of some groups of crusaders to the East in 1096 was preceded in some towns in Normandy and western parts of Germany—Rouen, Worms, Mainz and Cologne especially—by mob violence against settled Jewish communities. The capture of some cities in Syria and Palestine by the crusaders between 1098 and ca. 1110, moreover, was followed by massacres of Muslim (mostly Egyptian) defenders and civilian inhabitants. The most notorious case occurred in Jerusalem in July 1099, when a contemporary Frankish account, citing Apocalypse 14.20, spoke of blood rising as high as the knees of the horsemen and the bridles of their horses. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 187

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ article’s methodology of tracing how medieval Europeans responded to unfamiliar religious groups.