In his account of his journey through Frankish territory in the eastern Mediterranean in the early 1180s, the Spanish Muslim Ibn Jubayr relates a story he had been told of a Muslim convert to Christianity. This Muslim was originally from Buna, in modern Algeria, and:

Ibn Jubayr's rather bigoted comments make little sense from the everyday perspective of the eastern Mediterranean in the crusading period, however, because such conversions were a regular occurrence in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They were so regular, in fact, that they elicit barely a comment from most of the other writers who mention them. Muslims could, and did, convert to Christianity, while Christians could, and did, convert to Islam. This chapter will briefly explore some examples of people who changed their religion and why they did so, highlighting that the Frankish presence in the Holy Land actually helped facilitate conversions in both directions and thereby permitted, in some ways, a larger degree of religious freedom than existed at other times in the region.

Religious Conversion during the Crusading Period

The Latin chronicler of the First Crusade Albert of Aachen relates that, as early as August 1099, just a month after the capture of Jerusalem, the ruler of the city—Godfrey of Bouillon— had in his entourage a former Muslim who fought alongside the king at the Battle of Ascalon, in which the crusading army defeated a Muslim relief force from Egypt. Godfrey had persuaded the Muslim to convert to Christianity, and for years afterwards he remained a loyal servant to the rulers of Jerusalem. Albert's report is just one of dozens of instances of conversions by Muslims to Christianity that are mentioned in passing in the sources.