The Crusades were disgraceful but formative events in Western history; they were devastating for the Muslims of the Near East, but for the vast majority of Muslims in Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, Malaya, Afghanistan and India, they were remote border incidents. It was only in the twentieth century, when the West had become more powerful and threatening, that Muslim historians would become preoccupied by the medieval Crusades, looking back with nostalgia to the victorious Saladin, and longing for a leader who would be able to contain the neo-Crusade of Western imperialism.