ABSTRACT
The Crusades and their broader impact (i.e. military, religious, economic and cultural) on the Arab Middle East have occupied a central status in school curriculum and popular imagination in Jordan. As they were referred to in medieval Islamic historiography, contemporary texts in Jordan refer to the Crusades as the 'Frankish Invasions' (hurub al-faranga). The official narratives about the Crusades as expressed in school curricula in Jordan largely focus on the military, economic and geo-strategic features of these campaigns, placing less emphasis on the religious dimensions of the invasions. However, popular narratives about the Crusades have dramatically shifted to religious and ideological viewpoints. Armed with neo-colonial doctrines of American imperial ideology and its divine ‘manifest destiny’, American conflicts in the Middle East seem, according to those narratives, to be a cosmic struggle between Islam and Christianity.
