The Crusades: christian fervour and Muslim disunity
How and why did the Second and Third Crusades fail to match the enthusiasm and success of the First?
When Pope Urban II received a petition from the Byzantine Emperor Alexius for military aid to repel the threat of Islam, particularly the Muslim Turks, he saw an opportunity to repair the Great Schism of forty years and unite the church under papal primacy.1 Europe at this time was not only fervently Christian, but its knights, although they regarded bloodshed as inherently sinful, consistently delved into violence and killing.2 It is therefore clear to see, when Pope Urban insisted that fighting in what would be known as the First Crusade would be a penitential act at the Council of Clermont in 1095, why there was so much enthusiasm and widespread support. Alexius probably expected no more than a token force, but the extent of support rendered the Byzantine Empire to be ‘overrun by Humankind’ according to Asbridge.3 The First Crusade was an undoubted success; creating four Crusader States in Outremer against the odds. However roughly one hundred years later a unified Muslim force under Saladin took Jerusalem and the following two crusades were comparatively utter failures. It is thus important to analyse and compare the both the continually fluctuating levels of Muslim unity and the changing mentality of the Franks to determine why and how the First Crusade achieved so much more than the two that followed.
Although, as mentioned, the Franks were driven by fervent religious conviction, they were ‘enormously assisted by the divisions of Islam’, according to Ibn al Athir4. The Seljuk domination in Asia Minor, if it had not collapsed 10 years before the Franks arrived in Constantinople, would’ve been enough to ‘eradicate the Crusader threat’, accruing to Carole Hillenbrand.5 Indeed the Muslim world was bereft of major leaders by the time of the First Crusade with 1092 becoming known as the ‘year of death’ creating a power vacuum in the Muslim world6. Leaders such
When Pope Urban II received a petition from the Byzantine Emperor Alexius for military aid to repel the threat of Islam, particularly the Muslim Turks, he saw an opportunity to repair the Great Schism of forty years and unite the church under papal primacy.1 Europe at this time was not only fervently Christian, but its knights, although they regarded bloodshed as inherently sinful, consistently delved into violence and killing.2 It is therefore clear to see, when Pope Urban insisted that fighting in what would be known as the First Crusade would be a penitential act at the Council of Clermont in 1095, why there was so much enthusiasm and widespread support. Alexius probably expected no more than a token force, but the extent of support rendered the Byzantine Empire to be ‘overrun by Humankind’ according to Asbridge.3 The First Crusade was an undoubted success; creating four Crusader States in Outremer against the odds. However roughly one hundred years later a unified Muslim force under Saladin took Jerusalem and the following two crusades were comparatively utter failures. It is thus important to analyse and compare the both the continually fluctuating levels of Muslim unity and the changing mentality of the Franks to determine why and how the First Crusade achieved so much more than the two that followed.
Although, as mentioned, the Franks were driven by fervent religious conviction, they were ‘enormously assisted by the divisions of Islam’, according to Ibn al Athir4. The Seljuk domination in Asia Minor, if it had not collapsed 10 years before the Franks arrived in Constantinople, would’ve been enough to ‘eradicate the Crusader threat’, accruing to Carole Hillenbrand.5 Indeed the Muslim world was bereft of major leaders by the time of the First Crusade with 1092 becoming known as the ‘year of death’ creating a power vacuum in the Muslim world6. Leaders such
Bibliography: Primary Sources Primary Sources are taken from ‘Crusading and the Crusader States- 1095-1192’, edited by P.D King (University of Cambridge Press 1997) Secondary Sources Thomas Asbridge, ‘The Crusades’- The War for the Holy Land, Simon and Schuster, (2010) Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood, Cambridge University Press, (1994) Hans Eberhard Mayer, The Crusades, 2nd edition Oxford University Press, (1988) John France, Victory in the East- a military history of the First Crusade, Cambridge University Press, (1994) Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades- Islamic perspectives, Edinburgh University Press, (2009) Andrew Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States, Pearson, (2004) Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘The Crusades- A History’, Continuum (2009) Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A new history of the Crusades, Penguin, (2007)