Arab chronicles remember the Crusaders as the 'Franj,' not holy warriors

Maalouf builds his account almost entirely from contemporary Arab chroniclers, who consistently referred to the invading Europeans as the Franj (Franks), a term carrying none of the reverence Western tradition later attached to the word "Crusader." In these sources, the Franj appear as a foreign, unfamiliar, often startlingly violent people whose religious framing mattered less to Arab observers than their disruptive military impact.

This naming choice signals a different frame of reference: where European chronicles often described the campaigns in terms of pilgrimage and holy obligation, Arab chroniclers focused more on cataloguing atrocities, assessing military threats, and understanding the customs of an unfamiliar, bewildering enemy.

Maalouf's decision to consistently use the Arab framing throughout is itself an argument: how a historical event gets named already encodes a perspective, and most readers have only ever encountered the Crusades through the invaders' own vocabulary.

Takeaway: even the name we use for a historical event carries a perspective — "Crusade" and "Frankish invasion" describe the same centuries but tell very different stories.