The CrusadesA Brief Look

The Crusades • A series of military campaigns from the 1090s to the 1400s by a variety of European military groups into parts of the Byzantine Empire and Muslim controlled Middle East.

Why did the CRUSADES begin?

Read Pope Urban II’s speech –

List in your notebook the: “The top 5 reasons” that Christians

should go on a crusade.

Categorize your five reasons.

What are the political, economic, social, and religious reasons he gives?

Events that may have led to the Crusades

A Christian Church in Jerusalem was destroyed by the “Caliph” of the region.

Pilgrim routes (to the Holy Land) were closed for a period of time.

The Byzantine Empire was losing territory to Islamic Turks; Byzantine leaders requested assistance from other Christian kingdoms.

And so they fought . . .

THE CRUSADES• The Islamic groups holding the regions

of the Middle East were not unified at the time and were “caught off guard” by these invasions.

• Each crusade was different—rarely unified.

• Massacres were committed by Muslim and Christian armies during the wars.

Crusader KingdomsEventually,

European armies took and held regions in the

Middle East for nearly a century.

RESULTS of the CRUSADESBECAUSE of several hundred years of

“contacts” with the Byzantine & Islamic regions. Western Europe experienced an:

• Increased desire for “eastern” goods • increased trade connections with the

African and Asian markets.• exposure to Byzantine (Greek) and Islamic

learning, innovation, and technological advancements

Late Medieval Trade Routes

RESULTS of the CRUSADES

On the Byzantine Empire• Weakening of the Empire due to the

pillaging of Constantinople and taking of Byzantine lands.

• Severed political and religious connections to Western Europe.

Siege of Constantinople

RESULTS of the CRUSADESOn the Islamic groups of the Middle East• Very little change in politics or culture• The Islamic Leader, Saladin, helped

unify Muslim forces and re-conquered most of the Middle East and Anatolia by the 1200s.

• Though crusades continued, Muslims held the “Holy Land”