Usamah ibn Munqidh, a 12th century Syrian poet and historian, wrote "All those who are well-informed about the Franj [crusaders] saw them as beasts superior in courage and fighting ardor but in nothing else, just as animals are superior in strength and aggression."

Muslims largely viewed Crusaders as boorish and vulgar. The Arab world had a highly advanced judicial system, and Muslims were horrified by western notions of justice - trail by combat was seen as especially barbaric. Medicine was another point of contention between the cultures – Usamah relates a story about a Christian Syrian doctor who came to a Crusader castle by request of the lord there:

One day, the Franj governor of Munaytra, in the Lebanese mountains, wrote to my uncle the sultan, asking him to send a physician to treat several urgent cases. My uncle selected one of our Christian doctors, a man named Thabit. He was gone for just a few days, and then returned home. We were all very curious to know how he had been able to cure the patients so quickly, and we besieged him with questions. Thabit answered: "They brought before me a knight who had an abscess on his leg and a woman suffering from consumption. I made a plaster for the knight, and the swelling opened and improved. For the woman I prescribed a diet to revive her constitution. But a Frankish doctor then arrived and objected, "This man does not know how to care for them." And, addressing the knight, he asked him, "Which do you prefer, to live with one leg or die with two?" When the patient answered that he preferred to live with just one leg, the physician ordered, "Bring me a strong knight with a wellsharpened battle axe." The knight and the axe soon arrived. The Frankish doctor placed the man's leg on a chopping block, telling the new arrival, "Strike a sharp blow to cut cleanly." Before my very eyes, the man struck an initial blow, but then, since the leg was still attached, he struck a second time. The marrow of the leg spurted out and the wounded man died that very instant. As for the woman, the Frankish doctor examined her and said, "She has a demon in her head who has fallen in love with her. Cut her hair." They cut her hair. The woman then began to eat their food again, with its garlic and mustard, which aggravated the consumption. Their doctor affirmed, "The devil himself must have entered her head." Then, grasping a razor, he cut an incision in the shape of a cross, exposed the bone of the skull, and rubbed it with salt. The woman expired on the spot. I then asked, "Have you any further need of me?" They said "No," and I returned home, having learned much that I had never known about the medicine of the Franj.

Usamah was actually seen as an authority on Western ways in Damascus. He visited Jerusalem on diplomatic visits, and called several Crusaders friends. Interestingly, he made an important distinction between the "cultured" westerners who had been in Outremer for a while and adopted Muslim customs, and "uncultured" new arrivals from Europe.