Eight Crusades Pros And Cons

Spanning multiple centuries and taking place in a majority of the land of eastern Europe and the Middle East, the Crusades, which began in the year 1096 A.D. and ended in 1291 A.D. were a time of religious warfare that resulted in the deaths of about three million people-- about one percent of the world population at the time. The leading motive for this bloodshed was the claiming of control of the city of Jerusalem, a city with holy sites from all of the religions involved-- Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. The city of Jerusalem contains within it, four quarters representing the three religions. Christianity has two quarters because one of them, the Armenian quarter, is also considered Christian. Judaism and Islam both have 1 quarter to themselves

And that is exactly what happened when a group called the Seljuk Turks took over the city and all of Palestine, the surround area. Fearing the impending aggression by the Seljuk Turks on the Byzantine Christians, emperor Alexios, in the year 1095, decided to call for help from Pope Urban II. This action by emperor Alexios officially would start what would come to be known as the first of eight crusades. While the merits of the first crusade were mostly rooted in religion, its practice and the control of Jerusalem, most of the other crusades were ruthless, brutal, and only vaguely motivated by religion. The crusades should be remembered as a negative time in history because of their brutality against minorities (Jews, Byzantine Christians) and their only marginal motivation by religion which caused the suffering of many innocent people and a lack of overall success for followers of the Christian

Going back to the actions of Pope Urban II guaranteeing entry into heaven for those who joined the crusades, the crusaders were able to attack innocent people for their own needs such as wealth and personal glory. As mentioned before, while the first crusade was mostly motivated by religion, the following seven crusades had some other basis for the suffering of thousands of innocent people. Solomon Bar Simson again writes “[they] destroyed the houses, looting and plundering; and they took the Torah Scroll, trampled it in the mud, and tore and burned it…” (Solomon Bar Simson). The key words within that quotation are “looting and plundering”, both of which represent the fact that there were other motives for the crusades outside of just reclaiming the city of Jerusalem. Being away from their homes and territories, the crusaders were able to get away with more heinous actions because of the fact that the regulations for actions such as looting, pillaging, and plundering were a lot less common and enforced in the middle east by the leaders of the crusaders. In other words, there was no way to fully keep in check the crusaders for their actions against other groups because the amount of people who actually enforced law and order during the war were minimal. Adding on, according to Ibn Al- Athir, “the franks stripped the