The Crusades

The Crusades were wars that the Catholic Church declared to be holy and meritorious. Men and women who joined took a vow and sewed a cross on their clothing. In return, the Church promised them spiritual rewards — above all the forgiveness of the penalties due for their sins — and protection for their families and property while they were away.

The best-known crusades aimed at Jerusalem and the lands around it, which Christians called the Holy Land. The First Crusade (1096–1099) captured Jerusalem and created four small Latin Christian states on the eastern Mediterranean coast. Over the next two centuries, many more expeditions were sent to defend or recover them, until the last major stronghold, Acre, was taken by the Mamluks in 1291.

The word “crusade” itself was not used by the first crusaders. They spoke of a journey, a pilgrimage or “taking the cross”. Muslim writers of the time usually called the invaders simply “Franks” (al-Ifranj) and did not see these wars as a special category. The name “the Crusades” and the neat numbering (First, Second, Third…) were invented by later historians.

In the eleventh century, Turkish warriors called the Seljuks moved from Central Asia into the Middle East. In 1071 they defeated the army of the Byzantine Empire — the Greek-speaking Christian empire ruled from Constantinople — at the Battle of Manzikert, and soon Turkish groups controlled much of Anatolia. Jerusalem changed hands between the Seljuks and the Fatimids, a Shiʿi dynasty based in Egypt.

The Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos asked the West for soldiers to help him. Pope Urban II turned this request into something much larger. At Clermont in France in November 1095, he called on the knights of Western Europe to help the Christians of the East and to free Jerusalem. The official records of the council have not survived; what we have are several different versions of his speech written down later, which do not agree word for word.

Why did so many people answer? Historians point to several reasons at once: deep religious feeling and fear of sin; the popularity of pilgrimage; the Church’s movement to reform itself and to direct knightly violence toward what it saw as a just cause; the pope’s wish to lead Western Christendom; family networks that pushed brothers and cousins to go together; and, for some, the hope of land, wealth or adventure. Older histories stressed greed and “landless younger sons”; many recent historians argue that crusading was so costly that religious motives must have mattered a great deal.

On the crusading side were knights and lords from France, the German lands, Italy, England, Flanders and later Scandinavia and Hungary, along with large numbers of non-noble pilgrims, clergy and some women. Italian sea cities such as Venice, Genoa and Pisa supplied ships and trade in exchange for privileges. Military religious orders — the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller and later the Teutonic Knights — became permanent defenders of the crusader states.

On the other side there was no single “Muslim world” facing the crusaders. There were rival Turkish princes, the Seljuk sultans, the Fatimid caliphs of Cairo, the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, and local city rulers who sometimes made alliances with the Franks against each other. Over time, leaders such as Zengi, Nur al-Din and Saladin united Syria and Egypt, and the Mamluk sultans finally drove the Franks out.

Many people were caught in between: Eastern Christians such as Armenians, Syriac Christians and Greek Orthodox believers; Jews in Europe and in the Levant; and the peasants of the countryside, most of whom were Muslim or Eastern Christian and continued to farm under Frankish lords. The Byzantine Empire was at first an ally of the crusaders, then a wary neighbour, and in 1204 itself became a victim.

In spring 1096, before the main armies left, popular bands often associated with the preacher Peter the Hermit set out. Some groups, notably those led by Count Emicho, attacked Jewish communities in the Rhineland — at Speyer, Worms, Mainz and elsewhere — killing many and forcing others to convert. Hebrew chronicles describe families who chose death rather than baptism. These popular bands were largely destroyed by the Turks in Anatolia in October 1096.

The main armies of princes gathered at Constantinople in 1096–1097. Together with Byzantine forces they took Nicaea (1097), defeated the Seljuks at Dorylaeum, and endured a terrible siege of Antioch (1097–1098), where hunger and disease killed many. Baldwin of Boulogne seized Edessa, founding the first crusader state. On 15 July 1099 the crusaders stormed Jerusalem. Both Latin and Muslim sources describe a massacre of Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. The number killed is disputed: the thirteenth-century historian Ibn al-Athir gives 70,000, which modern scholars regard as far too high, while other evidence, including letters found in the Cairo Geniza, suggests that some inhabitants were ransomed or survived.

The victors created the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli and the County of Edessa. These states depended on a small Frankish ruling class, Italian merchants, castles and the military orders, and on constant reinforcement from Europe. When the Turkish ruler Zengi captured Edessa in 1144, the Second Crusade (1147–1149) was launched, led by King Louis VII of France and King Conrad III of Germany. It failed badly, ending in an abandoned siege of Damascus in 1148.

Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, known in Europe as Saladin, took power in Egypt in 1169–1171, ended the Fatimid caliphate and gradually extended his rule over Syria. On 4 July 1187 he destroyed the main army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Battle of Hattin and in October took Jerusalem after negotiations. Unlike 1099, the city’s Christian population was mostly allowed to leave on payment of ransom, though many who could not pay were enslaved.

The Third Crusade (1189–1192), led by Richard I of England, Philip II of France and — until he drowned on the way — Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, recaptured Acre and much of the coast but not Jerusalem. After Acre fell in 1191, Richard ordered the execution of some 2,700–3,000 Muslim prisoners when ransom arrangements broke down, a figure given in the chronicles. A truce in 1192 allowed Christian pilgrims to visit Jerusalem.

The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204), deep in debt to Venice, was diverted first to the Christian city of Zara and then to Constantinople, which the crusaders sacked in April 1204. They set up a Latin Empire there; the Byzantines recovered their capital only in 1261. Later expeditions targeted Egypt (the Fifth Crusade, 1217–1221, and the crusade of Louis IX, 1248–1254). Emperor Frederick II regained Jerusalem by treaty in 1229, without a major battle, but it was lost again in 1244. The Mamluk sultans, especially Baybars and later al-Ashraf Khalil, took the remaining Frankish cities one by one; Acre fell in May 1291.

Crusading was also turned against other targets: Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, pagan peoples around the Baltic Sea, the Cathar “heretics” of southern France (the Albigensian Crusade, 1209–1229), and even Christian political enemies of the papacy. Historians debate whether all of these should be counted as “real” crusades.

No reliable total death count exists. Medieval chroniclers, Christian and Muslim alike, used large round numbers for effect, and modern historians treat them with caution. What is clear is that the human cost was very high: whole armies died of hunger and disease; cities such as Jerusalem (1099), Constantinople (1204) and Acre (1291) suffered massacres or mass enslavement; and prisoners were sometimes killed.

Jewish communities suffered in Europe as well as in the East. The Rhineland massacres of 1096 were followed by further attacks during preaching for the Second Crusade and in England around 1189–1190, including at York. For Jews these years became part of a long memory of persecution, recorded in Hebrew chronicles and liturgical poems.

In the crusader states, most of the rural population remained Muslim or Eastern Christian. Their experience is harder to trace, but sources such as the memoirs of the Syrian nobleman Usama ibn Munqidh show daily contacts, trade, medical exchanges and occasional friendships alongside contempt, raids and captivity. Eastern Christians could find themselves suspected by both sides. The Byzantines remembered 1204 as a deep betrayal by fellow Christians.

In the short term, the Crusades created Latin states that lasted almost two hundred years, gave new wealth and power to Venice and Genoa, and helped build the prestige of the papacy. On the Muslim side, the long struggle strengthened the ideology of jihad in Syria and Egypt and helped rulers like Nur al-Din, Saladin and the Mamluks justify their power. The sack of 1204 permanently weakened Byzantium, which later made the Ottoman advance into Europe easier.

In the long term, crusading developed institutions that outlived the Holy Land: indulgences, taxes on the clergy to pay for war, and military orders that later ruled Prussia, Rhodes and Malta. The idea of holy war shaped the Iberian Reconquista and, some historians argue, influenced the language of later European expansion overseas. Relations between Latin and Orthodox Christians were badly damaged.

The Crusades are sometimes credited with bringing Arabic learning and luxury goods to Europe. Historians today are cautious about this claim. Much of the transmission of scholarship happened through Spain and Sicily rather than the crusader states, and trade across the Mediterranean was growing anyway. The Crusades were one channel of contact among several.

In Western Europe the Crusades were long remembered as noble adventures. Poets such as Torquato Tasso in Jerusalem Delivered (1581) turned them into epic. Enlightenment writers such as Voltaire and Edward Gibbon criticised them as fanaticism, while nineteenth-century Romantic and nationalist writers — especially in France and Britain — celebrated crusading kings as national heroes. The word “crusade” also became a general term for any moral campaign, a usage that many people today find insensitive.

In the Arabic- and Turkish-speaking world, medieval writers dealt with the Franks as one enemy among several; the Mongols often loomed larger. Carole Hillenbrand and other scholars note that a distinct Arabic term for “the Crusades” and a strong collective memory of them developed especially from the late nineteenth century, in the age of European colonialism, when writers began to see crusading as an early form of Western aggression. Saladin became a symbol of resistance and unity in Arab nationalist and Islamic political language.

For Greek Orthodox Christians, the memory of 1204 remained painful; in 2001 Pope John Paul II publicly expressed regret for it. For Jewish communities, the Crusades are remembered above all through the Rhineland massacres. Amin Maalouf’s book The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1983) introduced many Western readers to Muslim perspectives. In recent decades extremist groups of different kinds have misused crusading imagery, which is one reason historians stress accurate, balanced teaching.

Latin narratives of the First Crusade include the anonymous Gesta Francorum, Fulcher of Chartres, Raymond of Aguilers and later reworkings by Robert the Monk, Baldric of Dol and Guibert of Nogent — several of which also report versions of Urban II’s speech at Clermont. William of Tyre wrote the major history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the later twelfth century. Crusaders’ letters, charters recording departures and property pledges, papal bulls and legal texts give a different, often more personal view.

Byzantine perspectives come above all from Anna Komnene’s Alexiad, a biography of her father Alexios I, and for 1204 from Niketas Choniates. Arabic sources include Ibn al-Qalanisi’s chronicle of Damascus, Ibn al-Athir’s universal history, biographies of Saladin by his officials Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad and ʿImad al-Din al-Isfahani, and the memoir of Usama ibn Munqidh. Hebrew chronicles narrate the persecutions of 1096. Armenian and Syriac chroniclers, such as Matthew of Edessa and Michael the Syrian, record the experience of Eastern Christians.

Each group of sources has its own purposes: to glorify God’s work, to praise a patron, to lament a disaster or to justify a policy. Historians compare them, read them against archaeological evidence from castles and towns, and treat numbers and speeches especially critically.

One major debate is about definition. So-called “traditionalists” limit the Crusades to expeditions aimed at the East and Jerusalem. “Pluralists”, a view strongly associated with Jonathan Riley-Smith, define a crusade by its legal and spiritual features — papal authorisation, the vow, the cross and the indulgence — and therefore include crusades in Spain, the Baltic and against heretics. Others take a broader “popularist” or “generalist” view emphasising popular enthusiasm or holy war in general.

A second debate concerns motives. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers often explained crusading by economics, population pressure or colonial ambition, and some saw the crusader states as early European colonies. Studies of charters since the 1970s and 1980s, especially by Riley-Smith and his students, emphasised religious devotion and the huge cost to participants. Christopher Tyerman and others stress how organisation, finance and politics shaped each expedition, and warn against a single explanation.

A third area of work is the non-Latin view. Research by scholars such as Carole Hillenbrand, Paul M. Cobb and others has placed the crusades within the wider history of the Islamic Middle East, showing that for many Muslim contemporaries the Franks were a regional problem rather than a clash of civilisations. Historians are also examining gender, the experience of Eastern Christians and Jews, and the modern political uses of crusade memory — including the question of how far the word “crusade” should still be used at all.