Power was juggled in different areas based on victories and loses of the two competing empires. After the initial wave of crusaders, Europe had regained the area formerly known as the Christian Byzantine Empire, including Jerusalem and other parts of Israel. After fighting off the Islamic nations who held the area, Christianity ruled over Jerusalem until the late eleventh century. This formed a new Christian state within an Islamic context, but only heightened tensions between the two regions. Then in 1187, the Turkish Kingdom ruled by Saladin who ruled over Egypt and Syria, (Lewis, 134). For the next century, several other unsuccessful crusades were launched to once again recapture the Holy Land.

It was not only war which distanced the two regions. It was also a lack of social understanding which occurred through normal and commercial contact between the modern day enemies. Many Islamic traders and the Northern European markets which they traded with did not get a long...

According to Samar Attar in his work "Conflicting Accounts on the Fear of Strangers: Muslim and Arab Perceptions of Europeans in Medieval Geographical Literature," the two regions had a hard time relating to one another's culture through everyday encounters such as trading. Attar speaks about mysterious encounters where traded goods were left alone in "The Land of Darkness" (Attar, 17) for the Northern Europeans to replace with the cover of night. This showed the extreme xenophobia and distrust on the part of the Europeans towards Islamic cultures. The two regions did not understand the accepted social and religious cultures of its rival.
Works Cited

Attar, Samar. "Conflicting Accounts on the Fear of Strangers: Muslim and Arab

Perceptions of Europeans in Medieval Geographical Literature. Arab Studies Quarterly. 27. 2005. pp. 17-35.

Lewis, Bernard. From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East. Oxford University…