How come in the popular history of the Crusades, Crusaders get

Ethnocentrism

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The Muslim world was pretty united even before the Crusades, disregarding the occasional civil war. Saladin took over when the Fatamids collapsed.

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>>2811022
Because the history of the Medieval Middle East is too hard for plebs to understand in meme countries. There was no "iraq, jordan, saudi arabia" or whatever at the time.

For starters, nominally all of Islam is supposed to be unified under the Abbasid Caliphate: the big Muslim empire that stretched from Iran to North Africa. However by the 800s and 900s, that Empire declined and the various Sultans (which is an Arab word for "Governor" not king), Emirs, City States, and Tribes became virtually independent.

The first real "Break" from Abbasid rule came with the Samanids of Iran, who broke away and created a Persianate State with them as Shahs. Then came the Fatimid Revolution in Egypt. Basically a bunch of Shias revolted and created a empire in Egypt and North Africa, with Syria, the Levant and the 2 holy cities of Islam, being bones of contention between the Abbasids and the Fatimids passed back and forth between them in wars.

In addition, the Samanids, Abbasids and Fatimids had a habit of buying shitloads of military slaves amongst the Turkics and other Central Asians. These Mamluks as they were called eventually became powerful enough that they carved their own princedoms within the territories held by either Abbasid or Fatimid employers.

Compounding to all this was the great Seljuk Invasion of 1030s. Basically a Muslim Turkic confederacy allied to the Samanids basically thought: "hey, we can rule all of the middle east," and subsequently invaded the whole fucking place and kicking the Byzantines in the nuts at Manzikert to boot. The Seljuk Empire was short lived and the Abbasid and Fatimid Caliphate survived the whole damn thing, but now Seljuk Turkic-descended emirs and sultans carved Sultanates all over the carcass of the Abbasid Caliphate, most prominent being the Seljuk Sultanates of Iraq and Rum in Anatolia.

That was the mess that Crusaders encountered, and what Plebs couldn't understand.

>>2811022
>Muslims are just treated as one amorphous blob
But not really. Seljuks are generally treated separatedly from the levantines, and the levantine/north african world was basically the muslim HRE, so that's pretty much the extent of muslim nationalities on the way from Europe to the holy land.
And you CONSTANTLY hear people harp about Saladin being a kurd.

And let's not forget that when you go read the muslim accounts of the crusades, you invariably meet with one single word to describe ALL crusaders: 'franks'.

>>2811029
fpbp

>>2811106
>that was the mess that Crusaders exploited

FTFY

>>2811022
Because it's more epic when it's adventurer crusaders that fought against the Big Bad of east and managed to come out at top when in reality Muslims were busy fighting each other for last century with no tangible central authority and only lip service paid to the caliph.

>>2811106
>There are three Caliphs
What a mess

>>2811022
>How come in the popular history of the Crusades, Crusaders get to come from specific countries (i.e. France, HRE Germany, England, etc.) while Muslims are just treated as one amorphous blob? Like nobody in pop his takes time to identify where Muslim armies came from.

The same reason that most don't know Salah ad-Din was a Kurd and repeat myths about the Nizari Ismailis started by Europeans of the time.

>>2811050
The Fatamids weren't the only "caliphate", there were also the Abbasids/Seljuks.

>>2811122
>And you CONSTANTLY hear people harp about Saladin being a kurd.

I've literally only heard one person say this. And he's the Kurdish Studies chair at my undergrad. I don't think it's very well known outside of people who actually care about it.

>>2811022
A lot of the early Crusades chronicles go into detail about the various ethnic/regional groups that made up Muslim forces, some realistic and others poetic/Biblical. Popular history is mostly lazy, and there's a lot of latent nationalist undercurrent to it all where details like that are of little concern compared to the stories of regional heroes.

So the Muslim kingdoms are almost always "The Moors" or "The Turks" while every minor duchy and kingdom in Europe is treated as a distinct political and military power with its own history and destiny. Also, they're always drawn on maps as a huge, united landmass with little to no political divisions whatsoever.

>>2811050
>The Muslim world was pretty united even before the Crusades
>before
In the decades before they started the Seljuks reached their zenith and had essentially collapsed. Apart from the Fatimids to the south, everything to the north and east of the Levant (even the Levant itself before it was conquered) was ruled by petty princes who were vassals of the Abbasids/Seljuks in name only. The various cities in Syria and Iraq were in an almost constant state of war against each other, and that didn't stop even after the crusaders took Jerusalem.

>>2811022
Probably the same reason why the Muslims called all crusader Franks.

>>2811106
I feel that you post have informed me while making me feel plebeian at the same time.

>>2811050
Lel the muslamic world was anything but united during the first Crusade. You have kilij arslan running back and forth to fight off danishmeds and the crusaders. You have fatimids taking the city over from seljuks in 1098, a year before crusaders sieged it etc

>>2812953
But weren't most crusaders either german or french so its pretty close.

>>2811050
BEFORE. It was the fractured nature of the area in the 1000s that enabled the first crusade to succeed.

Tbh, most of the crusaders are just referred to as 'Franks' in a lot of literature. It goes both ways.

>>2811050
>The Muslim world was pretty united ev-

That's wrong. The entire reason that the First Crusade succeeded was because the Muslim powers were so hilariously at odds with one another. The emirates of Aleppo, Damascus etc. were all fighting each other constantly.

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>>2811050
>disregarding the occasional civil war.

>>2812361
He probably thought that OP was talking about firsthand accounts of contacts with muslims, not our contemporary popular understanding of the crusades.

>>2811106
This, plus you have to remember Islam itself wasn't unified by this time, Fatimids being Ismaili Shia ruling over mostly Sunni population and sponsoring Shia insurgency deep into the Abbasid territory, that later became Hassasins.

>>2811022
>while Muslims are just treated as one amorphous blob?

Because Muslim's primary identity is their religion.

Islam repudiates any national, ethnic or cultural identities apart from itself, so it's not surprising.

To the extent that you are a believing Muslim, your nationality, race or ethnicity should be irrelevant to you.

>>2814574
1) You can say the same about Christianity at the time.
2) There were a lot of competing branches of Islam in the region at the time.
3) The OP is about political entities Crusaders faced, not nationalities, races or ethnicities.

>>2811022
Because they were de Jure vassals of each other but kept on breaking for independence
Also that for a time the whole Islamic empire was united
Turks fucked over the Byzantines but also fractured the Middle East

>>2811022
Arab Muslims did not think in terms of "countries" or "nations", those are a European construct.

>>2811106
>Basically a Muslim Turkic confederacy allied to the Samanids
>allied

>>2814635
Neither did Europeans tho, these are modern European constructs.