- the Franks
- the name Muslims gave the western Europeans who came east on those campaigns
- the Crusader states
- the four states the Franks founded on the Syrian coast and inland for nearly two centuries
- Acre
- the fortified coastal city whose fall in 1291 ended the last Crusader kingdom
- Hattin
- the 1187 battle where Saladin broke the Crusader army and opened his road to Jerusalem
- the Cross
- the Christian symbol the fighters carried as their emblem and the wars' namesake
- the truce
- the ceasefire agreements that held both sides for long stretches between rounds of war
- Ramla
- a Palestinian town that passed between the sides in repeated truces and came to mark coexistence
- jihad
- the name Muslims gave their resistance to the Frankish invasion, tied to defending the homeland
- the castle
- the stone keeps like Krak des Chevaliers the Crusaders built which still stand today
- the forty years
- the rough span most Frankish states survived before Muslims gradually took them back
- the Arabized Franks
- second-generation Franks who spoke Arabic and lived by the land's ways more than Europe's
- the siege of Acre
- the long siege the Mamluks led in 1291 which brought the Crusader presence to its end
