Lifestyles: The Crusades

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

Three of the world’s most powerful religions had gone to war during the Crusades, the same war that is responsible for an estimated 1.7 million deaths. The Crusades were a series of Christian military expeditions that lasted through nine Holy Wars. The first crusade, in 1095, was called upon by Pope Urban II in an attempt to stop the Muslim expansion to the Holy City of Jerusalem. Through this, the Christian, Catholic, and Muslim churches will go into a time of warfare as an attempt to both show their religious superiority and have a religious expansion. The western side of Europe was the most significantly impacted by the Crusades because of the 4th Crusade, the foreign influence from the East, and Europe’s economic relations with the world.

The Christian had a weak hold on the holy land for nearly a century when Saladin began uniting the Muslim armies. When the Christians and Muslims met at the battle of Hattin, the Muslims were able to win because of Saladin. This was the turning point for the crusades because three months later the Muslims conquered the city of Jerusalem.

L. The main reason the crusades started was to take Jerusalem from the Turks. Before 1087, Christian pilgrims frequently traveled to Jerusalem, “the holy land”. However, according to document 6, “from 1087 onwards, turks stopped christian pilgrims from entering Jerusalem.” Basically, the Turks claimed Jerusalem as their own, and prevented any pilgrimages. Pope Urban II was not happy about this. He called European Christians to war in 1095 to recapture Jerusalem. According to Document 1, he says, “I, or rather, the Lord, beseech you as christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich….to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends.” Basically, Pope Urban II is urging the people to fight the Turks, and win back Jerusalem.

The Crusades was a very dark time in history. In case you didn’t know, there was a series of nine wars that came to be known as the Crusades. The Crusades were fought mainly for land. The land that was fought for was Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a holy town where Christians, Jews, and Muslims could go to and worship. They all have their own holy shrines at Jerusalem. The Christians have the Western Wall, the Muslims have The Dome of the Rock, and the Jews have the Great Temples of Harad and Solomon. The Crusades destroyed numerous beautiful buildings, and many people were killed or injured in these bloody wars.

The First Crusade was cause by conflicts between the Christians and the Muslims for the Holy Land, Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the holy city for all three groups of different faiths; the Christians, the Jews, and the Muslims. For the Christians, Jerusalem was where Jesus was crucified and resurrected. For the Muslim, Jerusalem was the place where Muhammad had ascended to heaven. For the Jews, it was their God 's city and it was the sit of Solomon 's temple. The main idea of the First Crusade was good against evil, in which the crusaders were on the good side and the Muslims and Jews on the evil side; after all they were the one who killed Jesus. The two main leaders that called for the First Crusade were Alexius I, emperor of the Byzantine

The Crusades were the epic battles for the holy city of Jerusalem, first controlled by Constantinople. In the beginning, everything was at peace with the holy land, when a group of people entered and took over Jerusalem. Soon, in 1095, Pope Urban II called on all the Christians in the land to fight for the city, so that they could take it back. He said that to anyone who fought or were killed in battle, their sins would be pardoned. Therefore, there were many Christians who took themselves and their families to fight for Jerusalem. The first battle must have been very bloody. A man named Raymond d’Aguiliers had accounts of the crusades, having followed the Crusaders and recorded everything he saw. He says it was an extraordinary sight, stating

During the Crusading era, the Franks were not viewed as the sophisticated Europeans we know today. On the contrary, the Muslims viewed them as dirty and unclean. “Disease and filth are associated with the Franks”. Evidence of Muslim propaganda does exist and may have been used as a tactic to round up Muslim armies. But the fact still remains that the Franks were seen as having terrible hygiene and looked down upon for eating pork. The combined propaganda and the generally negative view of the European cultural habits may have helped lead to later feelings of xenophobia towards these outsiders.

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

Crusades, military expeditions, beginning in the late 11th century, that were organized by western European Christians in response to centuries of Muslim wars of expansion. The Crusaders attacked non-Christians in Northern and Eastern Europe, and they led bloody massacres against the Jews and heretical Christians in their own territories, and tried to move Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula and out of North Africa. There were also campaigns towards the heretics, pagans and Muslims of Europe as Crusades. As well as taking Palestine, ruling the Holy Land from the citadels. The crusades were seen as a means of redemption for participants sins.

A major turning point in Medieval history were the Crusades. The Crusades were a series of wars fought between the Christian Europeans and the Muslim Turks, which occurred between the years of 1096 to 1272. In this Holy War the Christians goal was to obtain the Holy Land from the Turks, in which they did not succeed. Although the Christians did not meet their goal, many positives did come out of their attempt. Due to the reason that they did not meet their goal, yet numerous positives came out of their effort, many refer to this as a successful failure.

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.

There were eight significant Crusades, which were sparked for many different reasons by many different people that left a lasting effect to the world. These years of bloodshed were led by men of power in order to gain control over Jerusalem at the expenses of others. Throughout the 11th to 13th century, nine significant crusades occurred. There were many other small crusades throughout this period, which continued into the 16th century, until the Renaissance and Reformation when political and religious climate of Europe was drastically different than that of the middle ages (CBN). The most successful of the rebellion was that of the First Crusade. After taking Nicea, the Anatolian capital of the Seljuks, the Crusaders captured Antoich in Syria and Jerusalem in 1099 (history bits). The success of these missions allowed Crusaders to establish permanent settlements

The Crusades of the High Middle Ages (a.d. 1050-1300) was a period of conquest or rather, reconquest, of Christian lands taken from Muslims in the early Middle Ages. It is an era romanticized by fervent Christians as the time when Christianity secured its honorable status as the true religion of the world. The affect of the Crusades is still with us today. It sailed from Spain and Portugal to the Americas in the fifthteenth century aboard sailing ships carrying conquistadors who sought new territory and rich resources. They used the shield and sword of Christianity to justify a swift conquest of mass territory and the subjugation of the indigenous peoples; a mentality learned, indeed,