The Crusades…

The broad Muslim perception of Europeans was as cross-eyed barbarians. There were clichés that got repeated up until the 19th century—usually about their lack of cleanliness, the fact that they defecate in the street without any sense of privacy. There is a story about crusader medicine, that they blood-let in order to let the demons out. The people who knew the crusaders gave a much more refined understanding, but the positive narratives were not widely disseminated.