Page "Kingdom of Jerusalem" Paragraph 76

Although the crusaders came upon an ancient urban society, Ellenblum argues that they neither completely abandoned their rural European lifestyle, nor was European society completely rural to begin with.

Crusader settlement in the Levant resembled the types of colonization and settlement that were already being practised in Europe, a mixture of urban and rural civilization centred around fortresses.

The crusaders were neither totally integrated with the native population, nor did they segregate themselves in the cities away from the rural natives, but rather that they settled in both urban and rural areas ; specifically, they settled in areas that had traditionally been inhabited by the eastern Christians.

Areas that were traditionally Muslim had very little crusader settlement, just as they already had very few native Christian inhabitants.