The Crusades

Historic Events - Terra

Crusades were religiously motivated campaigns conducted between the 11th and 16th centuries predominantly but not exclusively against Muslims in the Near East [a] but also against pagans, heretics, and peoples under the ban of excommunication for a mixture of religious, economic, and political reasons.[b] Their emblem was the cross—the term "crusade" is derived from the French term for taking up the cross. Many were from France and called themselves "Franks", which became the common term used by Muslims.[1] Europeans had historically called the occupants of the Holy Land Saracens, and used this in a negative sense throughout the Crusades and often in European history books into the 20th century.

The first crusade was called by Pope Urban II in 1095 with the stated goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem. This led to an intermittent 200-year struggle to reclaim the Holy Land that ended in failure. The background was the Arab–Byzantine Wars, the Seljuq-Byzantine Wars and the defeat of the Byzantine army by Seljuk Turks at Manzikert in 1071. The Norman conqueror Robert Guiscard's conquest of Byzantine territories added to the problems of the Byzantine Empire. In an attempt to curtail both dangers, its Emperor Alexios I sought to align Christian nations against a common enemy, requested western aid, and Urban II in turn enlisted western leaders in the cause.[2] Several hundred thousand soldiers became Crusaders by taking vows;[3] the papacy granted them plenary indulgence. The crusaders were Christians from all over Western Europe under feudal rather than unified command. There were seven major and numerous minor Crusades against Muslim territories. Rivalries among both Christian and Muslim powers also led to alliances between religious factions against their opponents, such as the Christian alliance with the Islamic Sultanate of Rûm during the Fifth Crusade. When the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land fell at Acre in 1291 there was no coherent response.

The Crusades had major political, economic, and social impact on western Europe. It resulted in a substantial weakening of the Christian Byzantine Empire, which fell several centuries later to the Ottoman Empire. The Reconquista, a long period of wars in Spain and Portugal (Iberia), where Christian forces reconquered the peninsula from Muslims, is closely tied to the Crusades.