THE CRUSADES

The Crusades, or Wars of the Cross, were a series of campaigns organised by allied forces in Europe to secure pilgrim’s access to the Holy Places of Palestine.
For 300 years after Islam took the region, there was little interference in such pilgrimage but in the 11th century the Turkish Seljuk dynasty subjugated the Abbasids, took most of the area and began interfering with Christian pilgrims. Enraging Europe, an undisciplined mob was sent to capture Jerusalem for Christianity in 1095.

GAINS AND LOSSES

All perished. However, the following year the First Crusade under Godfrey of Bouillon fought its way through Asia Minor and entered Jerusalem in 1099.
Setting up a Christian Kingdom, castles were built in the area and the Knights Templar and Hospitallers created to defend the Kingdom. A Second Crusade was needed in 1147 to regain losses in Mesopotamia, but proved a disaster.
By 1174, the Muslim warrior Saladin had risen in Syria, becoming Sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty, which would survive until destroyed by the Mongols in 1250. Sweeping his forces through Galilee, he engaged a Christian army at the Horns of Hattin, successfully using guerilla tactics to bring victory, retaking Jerusalem in 1187.
Further Crusades were mounted, one jointly led by Richard I of England, but non retook Jerusalem and most ended in disaster, such as the Children’s Crusade of 1212, the children being sold into slavery.

EFFECT ON ISLAM

For Islam, success against the Christians brought another period of empire, beginning in 1290 when Osman I broke from the crippled Seljuks and began expansion. His Ottoman Empire was to finally break the Byzantines, Constantinople being taken in 1453 and renamed Istanbul.
From their native Turkey, the Ottomans took to the sea, taking much of south east Europe and north Africa, reaching their height in the 16th century under Suleiman I. Internal decline in the aristocratic led and corrupt empire began after the 1571 naval Battle of Lepanto when a Venetian alliance crippled the Ottoman navy. However, the decline took until the 1920s when the Ottoman Empire finally collapsed, Turkey becoming a republic under Kemal Ataturk.

EFFECT ON EUROPE

As for Europe, the Crusades proved even more important. For in the creation of an overseas Kingdom, the Europeans first thought about empire. In later centuries it was to lead to a huge period of empire building.
Yet even at the time the Crusades were a success in one way. For they gave Christendom an outer ‘evil’ to fight, cementing them into a single system across the Continent. A system that was the Middle Ages.

© Anthony North, August 2007

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