The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Christian Latin Church in the Middle Ages. The best known is the military expedition to the Holy Land that took place between 1095 and 1291with the goal of retaking Jerusalem and the surrounding area from Muslim rule; beginning with the First Crusade that conquered Jerusalem in 1099, dozens of military expeditions we reorganized, and over the centuries It became the center of European history. The Crusades declined rapidly after the 15th century.
Before the Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem in July1099 and slaughtered some 40,000 Jewish and Muslim residents, Jews, Christians, and Muslims had lived together in relative harmony under Islamic rule for 460 years, nearly half a century. Saladin reconquered Jerusalem for Islam in 1187, but relations between the three Abrahamic religions were never again good in Jerusalem. Since then, adherents of each religion have been on the lookout for one another, always fearing raids and the expropriation of their shrines and homes.
The Crusades brought tragic upheaval to Jerusalem, and the former coexistence was now an impossible piped ream. In the West, too, the Crusades were decisive. The Crusades made hatred of Jews incurable in Europe, and Islam was henceforth regarded as the irreconcilable enemy of Western civilization. This Western prejudice has certainly played a role in today’s conflicts and has a very complex impact on the way Westerners view the Middle East today.
About the Book
In 1095, Pope Urban II called on Christian warriors to take up their crosses and retake the Holy Land. Thus began a holy war that concentrated the power of Europe against a common enemy and became a romantic legend. In reality, the Crusades were a series of frantic and barbaric battles waged in the name of piety. And as Armstrong demonstrates in this fascinating book, the legacy of religious violence continues today in the Middle East, where the age-old conflict between Christians, Jews, and Muslims continues.