When the Crusaders descended upon the eastern shores of the Mediterranean at the end of the 11th century, they had to communicate with each other, with traders and with locals.
Many of them spoke different Romance languages: Italian (especially from the then powerful city-states of Venice and Genoa), Provençal, French or their forerunner, Latin.
Most Westerners in southern Europe were French, especially from between Marseilles and Genoa, from where ships and traders sailed towards the Middle East. These Westerners, as a whole, came to be called Franci (Franks, or French) by Arabs and Greeks.
Around the time of the Fourth Crusade (1202–04) – and perhaps earlier – a mixed language gradually emerged in the eastern Mediterranean, and later spread to the west.
This common language used by the “Franks” and those who traded and fought with them was also known as Sabir, Bastard Italian and Bastard Spanish. But you might be most familiar with the term Lingua Franca: literally, Franks’ language.
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