Title: The Crusades
Headings: The Crusades
The Crusades
Page Contents
Historical background
Historical context
The major crusades
Muslims recapture Jerusalem
Crusades in Baltic and Central Europe
Crusades legacy
The Crusades impact on Muslims, Orthodox Christians, and Jews
References
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Content: Conquest of the Orthodox city of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204 (BNF Arsenal MS 5090, 15th century)
Few contemporary Muslim accounts exist of the Crusades, which were regarded as minor “skirmishes” inflicting “pinpricks on the fringes of the Islamic world” (Fletcher: 84). Crusader principalities were sometimes even regarded as strategically useful, providing a buffer zone between the rival sultanates of Egypt and Damascus. In contrast, the Crusades had profound and lasting effect on medieval Europe. From the Christian perspective until recent times, the Crusades were seen as wars of liberation, not aggression, aimed at restoring Christian sovereignty over the Holy Land. The Crusades initially elevated the authority of the papacy as the authoritative spiritual and temporal power in Europe prior to the emergence of nation-states. Yet with the descent of the Crusades into indiscriminate slaughter of innocents and aggression against fellow Christians, the moral authority of the papacy and unity of Christendom in Europe suffered. The Crusades also engendered an appreciation of advanced Muslim culture among parochial western Christians. Similarly, the Muslim ruler Saladin greatly respected the English king, Richard Cœur de Lion and chivalric conventions were often upheld on the battlefield following victory or defeat. In the twentieth century, the term “crusade” was revived by some Muslims as a description of what they regard as a Christian-Jewish campaign to destroy the Muslim world.