The Franks’ conquest of a significant area of the eastern Mediterranean around the year 1100 brought, for almost the first time, large numbers of Muslims under Latin Christian control. In the immediate aftermath of these conquests by the First Crusade, Muslims living in the captured territory were subject to different treatment, which was usually dependent on how the area had been taken. In general, those towns captured by being stormed following a siege would be sacked and much of the population killed or enslaved. This happened at Antioch in 1098 and Jerusalem in 1099, for example. The alternative, and which seems to have occurred more or less equally frequently, was that places were captured after the population surrendered. In those circumstances, the people were usually given the option of moving away to Muslim territory or of continuing to live there under Frankish rule. This comparatively tolerant way of treating the populations of those cities captured by surrender contrasts with popular ideas about crusading, even though this was fairly standard practice in medieval warfare, in both the Middle East and Europe. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about this way of treating the inhabitants of the conquered regions.

It is impossible to make precise comments about the numbers of people who chose to leave their homes and move as refugees to lands still under Muslim control because evidence for this is almost wholly lacking. However, it is possible to trace some general patterns. From the chronicle evidence, it seems that, initially, a majority of Muslims chose to leave. Small numbers even travelled as far as Baghdad, where they publicly lamented the Frankish conquests and lambasted the Muslim rulers there for their failure to respond in any meaningful way. Most, however, merely moved to the nearest convenient Muslim settlement. For example, those who escaped from around Antioch moved a few dozen miles east to Aleppo, while those from near Jerusalem moved a similar distance to the area around Damascus, or to Egypt. However, many of those who did so were evidently disappointed with their lot, as help from their co-religionists was much less forthcoming than they may have been expecting. This was in sharp contrast to the Franks, who started offering generous tax conditions to those Muslims who would live and work in their newly conquered lands.