through the 13th century. Originally, the goal of the Crusaders was the recapture of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Muslims, and the provision of support to the besieged Christian Byzantine Empire which was waging a war against Muslim Seljuq expansion into Asia Minor and Europe proper. Later, Crusades were launched against other targets, either for religious reasons, such as the Albigensian Crusade, the Northern Crusades, or because of political conflicts, such as the Aragonese Crusade. In 1095, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II raised the level of the war from a bellum iustum (a "just war"), to a bellum sacrum (a "holy war"). Hinduism In the Hindu texts, dharma-yuddha refers to a war that is fought while following several rules that make the war fair. In other words, just conduct within a war (jus in bello) is important in Vedic and epic literature such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. However, according to Torkel Berkke, the Mahabharata does not provide a clear discussion on who has the authority to initiate a war (jus ad bellum), nor on what makes a war just (bellum justum). Islam The Muslim conquests were a military expansion on an unprecedented scale, beginning in the lifetime of Muhammad and spanning the centuries, down to the Ottoman wars in Europe. Until the 13th century, the Muslim conquests were those of a more or less coherent empire, the Caliphate, but after the Mongol invasions, expansion continued on all fronts (other than Iberia which was lost in the Reconquista) for another half millennium until the final collapse of the Mughal Empire in the east and the Ottoman Empire in the west with the onset of the modern period. There were also a number of periods of infighting among Muslims; these are known by the term Fitna and mostly concern the early period of Islam, from the 7th to 11th centuries, i.e. before the collapse of the Caliphate and the emergence of the various later Islamic empires. While technically, the millennium of Muslim conquests could be classified as "religious war", the applicability of the term has been questioned. The reason is that the very notion of a "religious war" as opposed to a "secular war" is the result of the Western concept of the separation of Church and State. No such division has ever existed in the Islamic world, and consequently, there cannot be a real