The first of the Crusades began in 1095, when armies of Christians from Western Europe responded to Pope Urban II’s plea to go to war against Muslim forces in the Holy Land. After the First Crusade achieved its goal with the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, the invading Christians set up several Latin Christian states, even as Muslims in the region vowed to wage holy war (jihad) to regain control over the region. Deteriorating relations between the Crusaders and their Christian allies in the Byzantine Empire culminated in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Third Crusade. Near the end of the 13th century, the rising Mamluk dynasty in Egypt provided the final reckoning for the Crusaders, toppling the coastal stronghold of Acre and driving the European invaders out of Palestine and Syria in 1291.
THE CRUSADES: BACKGROUND
By the end of the 11th century, Western Europe had emerged as a significant power in its own right, though it still lagged far other Mediterranean civilization such as that of the Byzantine Empire (formerly the eastern half of the Roman Empire) and the Islamic empire of the Middle East and North Africa. Meanwhile, Byzantium was losing considerable territory to the invading Seljuk Turks, who defeated the Byzantine Army at the battle of Manzikirt in 1071 and went on to gain control over much of Anatolia. After years of chaos and civil war, the general Alexius Comnenus seized the Byzantine throne in 1081 and consolidated control over the remaining empire as Emperor Alexius I.
Did You Know?
In a popular movement known as the Children's Crusade (1212), a motley crew including children, adolescents, women, the elderly and the poor marched all the way from the Rhineland to Italy behind a young man named Nicholas, who said he had received divine instruction to march toward the Holy Land.