One of the (many) reasons the Muslim world didn’t try to put up a unified resistance to the First Crusade is because nobody but the Franks actually believed they were taking part in anything important. Arab and Turkish sources consistently refer to the crusaders as “the Romans” because everybody made the perfectly reasonable assumption that these were just Some Guys who the Byzantine emperor had dragged out of a hole somewhere to contest the rule of Antioch. It wasn’t until the siege of Jerusalem started that people were like “Oh shit, these clowns are actually gonna try it.”
Middle Eastern accounts of the Crusades are kind of hilarious sometimes because the Christians absolutely believed their own hype whereas the Muslim world was like “Oh, great, it’s these weirdos again.”
After Louis IX was captured at the end of the 7th Crusade, Turan Shah sat him down and demanded to know what the fuck was going on in Europe that made them all want to die so bad.
