  The Crusades were a series of wars during the Middle Ages where the Christians of Europe tried to retake control of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Muslims. Jerusalem was important to a number of religions during the Middle Ages. It was important to Jewish people as they believed it was the site of the original temple to God built by King Solomon. It was important to the Muslims because it was where they believed Muhammad ascended to heaven. It was important to Christians because it was where they believed Christ was crucified and rose again. The initial Crusade began when the Seljuk Turks took control of the Holy Land. Prior to this, Arabs had been in control of the land, and had allowed Christians to pilgrimage and visit the city of Jerusalem. But in the year 1070, when the Turks took control, they began to refuse Christian pilgrims entry into the area. Byzantine Emperor Alexius I called for help from the Pope in Europe with defending his empire from the Turks, and to help push them out of the Holy Land. The Pope helped to gather an army, primarily with the help of the Franks and the Holy Roman Empire. There were around 30,000 soldiers from Europe in the first Crusade, battling the Seljuk Turks. This first wave was made up of knights, peasants, and other commoners. Some saw the army as a way to get rich and try out their fighting skills, while others saw it as a way into heaven. There were a number of Crusades that took place over the course of 200 years starting in 1095: Crusading, or the idea of taking a holy vow to engage in military activity in exchange for spiritual reward, was refined over the next century, redirected to apply to whoever the pope decided might be an enemy of the faith. In the Middle East, Jerusalem fell back into Islamic hands with the conquest of the city by the famed sultan Saladin in 1187.   The symbol of the Crusaders was a red cross. Soldiers wore it on their clothing and armor. It was also used on flags and banners. Between the second and the third Crusades, the Teutonic Knights and the Templars were formed. These groups supposedly were created to defend the Holy Land and protect Christian pilgrims traveling to and from the region. The costly, violent and often ruthless conflicts enhanced the status of European Christians, making them major players in the fight for land in the Middle East. By the end of the 11th century, Western Europe had emerged as a significant power in its own right, though it still lagged behind other Mediterranean civilizations, such as the Byzantine Empire (formerly the eastern half of the Roman Empire) and the Islamic Empire of the Middle East and North Africa. Europe held little interest for the Islamic world, who regarded their own culture as more sophisticated and advanced, due to their achievements in science and arts; medieval Muslims felt superiority towards Christianity, since to them it was clear that Christianity was incomplete and imperfect, surpassed by the superior faith of Islam and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Ultimately, both faiths viewed the other as incorrect. Muslims referred to Europeans as 'Franks' and their perception of Europe and its inhabitants was formed from a mixture of travel accounts, oral accounts from prisoners of war, pilgrims, merchants, diplomats, geographical works and popular stories. Islamic scholars did not recognise any religious or military motive for the Crusaders, who instead were simply viewed as arriving from nowhere before wreaking havoc upon Muslims In English, the words 'Crusade' and 'Crusader' didn't appear until around 1700; by the 1800s, the term - defined as a military campaign in defense of one's faith - had become a convenient way for Victorian historians to mark the past as a battle between what they saw as good and evil, represented respectively by Christianity and Islam. These claims worked especially well as supposed historical justification for contemporary European colonialism, which used rhetoric like 'The White Man's Burden' to portray land grabs as civilizing crusades against 'uncivilized' non-Westerners. |