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The Crusades: The Campaign Toward Jerusalem

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The Campaign toward Jerusalem

Did you know that the Muslims who lived in Jerusalem were peaceful? In fact, the Turkish Muslims were the ones who shed the blood of many Christian pilgrims and took any belongings that they owned. The holy wars or the crusades are the name of a war that most people have heard at one point in their lives. The Crusades was a campaign to free Jerusalem, the holy city, which has great significance to Christians due to the city being the place where Jesus’ body was buried.
The Europeans and Christian people strongly believed that having the Muslims in charge of the holy city was wrong due to the bad representation of the Muslims being violent or raised in bloodshed. At first the Christians fought for the glory of …show more content…

So they set off in 1096 to the holy land, unfortunately for them this would not be the first or the last Crusade. This first Crusade was pointless because the Arab Muslims were not against letting Christians visit the site of Jesus’ burial or make other trips within the holy city of Jerusalem. As mentioned before, all kinds of people from nobles to peasants wanted to go fight in Jerusalem, so much so that the church offered to look after people's property while they were off fighting and they would be pardoned from any sins that they committed once they had gone the distance. Before the main line of Christians got to Jerusalem a group of farmers and peasants had assembled a “People’s Crusade” led by a 60 year old man that went by the name Peter the Hermit. Their little experience of the Middle East had them believing that the Turks would turn tail at the sight of their massive numbers. …show more content…

Once they had done this five days had passed and the Crusaders struck with all their might and went berserk killing over 40,000 men including innocent bystanders and burning the Jewish people within their synagogues. This Barbaric-like event was appalling to the Muslim world but in the eyes of the Christians it was met joy. Once the Jerusalem had been taken, the Crusaders rationed the land into states, although one state was the most important and it was the Kingdom of Jerusalem. As time went on the Christians who stayed in the east began to realize how civilized and well-mannered the Muslim people were, the Christians (or franks as the Muslims would call them) were uncomfortable in their western attire due to the environment around them so they adopted robes and turbans. The rest of the crusades were all failed attempts at retaking Jerusalem once more since the Muslim leader Saladin conquered the holy city. The one exception being the children’s crusade being composed of an “army” of children from both France and Germany who adamantly believed that god would part the sea for them to cross to Jerusalem just as Moses did for the Jews. They were given a helping hand by two local merchants and set off toward the holy land. Unfortunately many of the children would not be seen for 20 years as all 7 ships were either captured by bandits or

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