When investigating my question, what were the politics that started the first Crusade, I had to utilize a couple methods that historians use when investigating a topic. Those methods used by historians are the heuristic method, which is the identification of a source's relevance to a topic, and criticism; an evaluation of the values and limitations one's resource possesses. I used the heuristic method when searching for relevant material to use in my investigation, leading me to scrutinize resources used in my paper. I, also, used criticism when I evaluated my primary resources in the first portion of this investigation. Personally, I think scrutiny is important because it keeps the investigation honest. That's why historian methods are beneficial to this investigation.
Several limitations surfaced while using the historian's methods. One was the harsh evaluation I had to use when reading a book about the Crusades, because I had to find an unbiased point of view. Rather than openly accepting everything, I had to be selective and closely scrutinize any material. Furthermore, while
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The Crusades was a Christian Holy War, therefore a controversial topic to investigate. Seeing that if you were a Christian that might lead to you viewing the Islamic conquerors as encroaching monsters, one must closely scrutinize books on this historic topic if it was written by a Christian historian. Therefore, it makes it harder to describe history in an unbiased way when most of the sources found on the topic are written from a biased viewpoint. However, I do believe it is possible for a historian to describe history in an unbiased way if they consider other perspectives of the topic at hand. I couldn't outright assume the historian had a biased opinion until I read the work. After reading a work, I had to consider other resources about the topic and see if they aligned in a similar