This project will address the currently compartmentalised academic study of the diverse Frankish- and Islamic-ruled societies from the 12th to the 16th c., by shifting the focus of inquiry from the internal history of separate groups to their areas of contact. It aims to study simultaneously inter-Christian and Christian-Muslim interactions in the face of shifting rulership structures and religious affiliations, on the assumption that these interactions contributed to shaping these communities. Studying the interconnectedness of communities implies a change of perspective with recourse to Connected History, the History of Religious Pluralism, and the History of Urban Religion. Rather than approaching Christian denominations from their respective centres, Constantinople, Rome, or Coptic Cairo, it will look at how they interacted within the urban space of Jerusalem, with their archives and their networks. ChrIs-cross has three main objectives: •To resituate the history of Christianities within the Islamicate world, with a focus on the Middle East. This passes through a scholarly critique of the concept of “minority” and an exploration of the dynamic and differentiated processes that bonded local Christian communities with the larger society; •To historicise these processes by comparing conquest-induced reconfigurations, with and without a change of religious domination (Muslim to Christian and Christian to Muslim, but also Ayyubid to Mamluk and Mamluk to Ottoman); •To spatialise these processes by examining their interplay, with Jerusalem as a specific urban space in tension with the wider regional area, resulting in an interactive map. ChrIs-cross will produce a (long overdue) comprehensive and connected history of Christianities in the Middle East. While engaging broader scholarly debates, it will map out the different modes by which diversity was managed and communities processually constructed. It will thus have a major impact in the field.