After the Storm

The Tunis Crusade was a fierce war between Christians and Muslims. It brought devastation, disease, and death to many. It was also a negotiation: over money, certainly, but over identity and belonging, too. Out of this potent mix something unexpected emerged: not chaos, not disorder, but new contacts, new relationships, and new alliances, many of them built on a mutual recognition of difference. This chapter argues that the Tunis Crusade was not an unheralded irruption into a Mediterranean world of religious pluralism, many kinds of diversity, and flexible allegiances. It fitted comfortably into that diverse environment and actually helped to produce some of its characteristic cultural expressions. Religious conflict and cultural unity should not be seen as hallmarks of two irreconcilable visions of the medieval Mediterranean world. Both were present in the age of the last European crusader king, coexisting in a dynamic, historically contingent relationship.