Syllabus Vs Crusades

For more than 200 years, two great religions clashed in a fight for the possession of the Holy Land, or Jerusalem. To the Christians, Jerusalem was where Christ was crucified and resurrected. To the Muslims, Jerusalem was the place where their prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven to meet their god, Allah. The series of holy wars that these two religions fought for the possession of the holy land was called the Crusades, and they were one of the bloodiest wars in history. These wars were caused primarily by the desire for political and economic gain, as shown by the desire for personal gain by both the pope and common crusaders, and the Crusaders’ clear violation of Christian teachings on various occasions. The Pope who had called for the First Crusade was Pope Urban II, and his motives to call for a Crusade were not
The pope’s speech specifically gave the crusaders permission to kill Muslims, and only Muslims. However, the crusaders massacred as many as 25,000 Jews on their way to Constantinople, and killed almost all of the Jews in Jerusalem. Furthermore, Pope Urban specifically said in his speech, “carry aid promptly to those Christians and… destroy that vile race from the land of our friends.” The crusaders were supposed to go help the Christians put down the Turks, but many Christians ended up getting killed anyway. After they successfully besieged Antioch, the crusaders began to raid the cities near Antioch, one of which was Ma’arat al-Nu’man. At Ma’arat al Nu’man, the crusaders were driven to eating Muslim bodies, or cannibalism. “After the siege of Ma’arrat an Nu’man (December 1098) Muslim graves were dug up and the bodies slit open to check if any treasure had been swallowed. Acts of a similarly brutal nature were repeated elsewhere”(Phillips 6). This clear violation shows that many crusaders’ motive to go on the Crusade was definitely not religious