The Crusades: The Campaign Toward Jerusalem

The Crusades were a series of wars over the holy lands such as Jerusalem between European Christians and the Ottoman Empire between the 11th and 15th centuries. They fought for many reasons such as control over religious sights, access to trade and protection of fellow christians.

The crusades were a series of 4 religious based wars, that took place from 1095-1291, in which Western Christians (most notably from Italy and France) invaded the Mediterranean and Middle East in an attempt to recover the holy city of Jerusalem from the Muslim people, who were seen as the enemy. From the Christian point of view, the crusades were a holy war done to reunite Christian loyalty and faith, and also to recover Jerusalem and to protect the Christian faith and people from the spread of Islam. However, the Christian retelling of this event is the most common, and there is very little showing the Muslim perspective, or for that matter, Middle Eastern perspective, including Jewish and Orthodox Christians, who also suffered greatly at

Because of the response the people had to Pope Urban II call to arms a wave of religious enthusiasm swept across Europe. In 1096 Peter the hermit created an army of peasants and soldiers. They traveled to Constantinople, this movement was called the peoples crusade. The outcome of the people’s crusade was tragic because almost all of them died.

The First Crusade was called in 1095 by Pope Urban II in November. It was here that the Pope made a proposal: “Whoever for devotion alone, but not to gain honour or money, goes to Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God can substitute this journey for all penane” (Phillips, 21). Pope Urban II saw the first crusade as a chance for knights to direct their energy towards a spiritually rewarding experience, namely the recovery of the Holy City of Jerusalem from Islam. Knights were told that in return for their efforts their sins

The Crusades are a big thing the shaped history do to religion. The Christian know that Jerusalem is their holy land. The Muslim also know that jerusalem is their holy land too. There were four different crusades. They were for reclaiming the holy land.

The First Crusades was a military group that was started by Christians in Europe who wanted to gain back the Holy Land that was being occupied by the Muslims. Pope Urban II preached a sermon at Clermont Ferrand on November 1095. Most histories consider this speech to be the spark the fueled a wave of military campaigns to gain back the Holy Land. This speech was meant to unite the Europeans and to gain back what was taken from them. The holy land was a small area on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The First Crusades was a very successful military expedition that was driven by religious faith to reclaim Jerusalem and other holy places that fell under Muslim control. driven by religious faith. They wanted to gain back the Holy Land that was once theirs. Arabs and the Muslim Turks otherwise known as the Seljuk Turks were the Muslims that invaded and conquered land rightfully occupied by the Christian’s. Many European men, women, and children joined the Crusades and fought in the Middle East. Pope Urban II granted forgiveness of all sins to those who died in battle thus assuring them ascendancy into heaven. Which gave those who volunteered to fight assurance. Nobles and peasants responded in great numbers to the call and marched across Europe to the capital of the Byzantine empire. Having the support of the Byzantine emperor helped make them a stronger army. The Crusaders took over many of the cities on the Mediterranean coast and built a large number of fortified castles across the Holy Land to protect their newly established territories. Soon after seizing power the Seljuks face a very different challenge to Islamic civilization. It came from Christian Crusaders. Knights from western Europe who were determined to capture portions of the Islamic world that made up the holy land of biblical times. Muslim political division and element of surprise made the first of the Crusaders assaults, between 1096 and 1099, by far the most successful. Much of

The Crusades were a series of holy wars in Jerusalem among Muslims and European Christians from 1095 to 1291. At the Council of Clermont in 1095, the first Crusade was sanctioned by Pope Urban ll with an influential speech calling upon people to fight and recover the Holy Land (Nicholson .H, 2015). The Catholic Church sent over 37 000 men to fight

6 ancestors; however, some still maintain that the crusade was fought mainly for the acquisition of land. To them, the massacre of Jerusalem (and indeed other massacres, like at Antioch) was committed out of bloodlust and ignorance of Islam in the effort to win lordship and wealth. Others, such as John France, state that massacre was a common part of the medieval siege and that any settlement taken through assault could fully expect to be slaughtered by their captives.

The First Crusade began in the year 1096 and was called for by Urban II in 1095. The Seljuk Turks invaded Asia Minor,and the Crusade began. “ By the 1050s, they had captured Baghdad, subjugated the Abbasid Caliphate, and begun to threaten Byzantium.” (Smith 329) The goal of this first crusade was to gain Christian control of the Holy Land which, at the Furchert 2 time was under Muslim control. They accomplished this goal, and the Holy Land then consisted of many tiny states.

The Crusades of the Holy Land are a very important topic in history for all people and western civilizations today. "The Holy Land" is a sacred place for the Christians, Muslims, as well as the Jews. It is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. In the Holy Land is the city of Jerusalem, which a very important place to Christians and Muslims because Jesus as well as Muhammad had been important people there. The Holy Land lead to the Crusades because the Christians and the Muslims both wanted power and control over

To continue, the crusaders were merciless to the mostly helpless Jews and a statement was declared, “Whosoever kills a Jew will receive pardon for all his sins” (CSC, 38). The Jews had no where to flee too due to the fact that they had no money which is why their neighbors turned them over to be slain. The Chronicles of the First Crusade reads, “…they were slain like oxen, and dragged through the market-places and streets like sheep to be slaughtered, and lay naked in the streets, for the foe stripped them and left them naked” (CSC, 41). Mothers were slitting their own children’s throats so that the Gentiles would not kill their child. Even a young boy was dragged across the muddy streets by a rope around his neck because he refused to believe in anything but his own God. The Jews were so terrified that they sacrificed their children like animals in the Old Testament to show God that they still believe in hope to be saved from their tragic fate, even though most were slaughtered in the end. There was so much death

the Seljuk Turks were able to invade the Holy Land and take it away from Western Europe. Once Pope Urban II heard about what had happen to the Holy Land he was outraged. He immediately called out for an army to win back the holy lands for Christianity. About 4,000 people showed up to fight for the war. They were able to fight and take back the holy lands but were soon able to lose their lands due to the Turks fighting back. This soon turned into a win and lose fight due to both sides being unable to defend the holy lands from their enemy. The reason why this is extensive is because a majority of people would die in every battle because of the crusaders determination into getting the Holy Land back from the “Infidels” also known as the Turks.

In 1095, Pope Urban II called for an army to go to the Holy Land, Jerusalem. This was what was later known as the ‘First Crusade’. A crusade is a religious war or a war mainly motivated by religion. The first crusade consisted of 10’s of thousands of European Christians on a medieval military expedition to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims. This doesn’t mean that the first crusade was just motivated by religion. Throughout this essay, I will be suggesting the main reasons of why people went on crusades and which different people went for specific reasons and why.

The Crusades was a very important moment in human history, it showed the clashes between religions for land that most people considered to be sacred or holy. There isn’t one Crusade but rather a series of them, but we’ll be looking primarily at the First Crusade, Second Crusade, Third Crusade, and a little bit of the Fourth. It all starts in Rome (Nov 27th 1095) where Pope Urban the Second receives an important message from Byzantine Emperor Alexios the First where he pleads for help in supressing the Turkish troops. After receiving the message the Pope (standing in a field outside the city of Clermont) calls for the public to join the military excursion to the Middle East, and swiftly declares a Crusade with the primary objective of securing holy sites [Jaspert, Nikolas. The Crusades]. What followed was a large migration of troops from France and Italy on August and September of 1096. The

During this time period knights and other Nobles began going on quest or also known as Crusades. On these crusades many Christians would go to Palestine or known as the Holy Lands to help free christians from the oppressing Muslim Turks. Thought to help them get to Heaven crusaders set out to fight for Christianity in Palestine. In the first crusade they were able to take the land and called it the Outremer land. After their win they left leaving it unprotected and so the Muslims took back the land.