The Crusades (1095–1291)

The Crusades (1095–1291)

I – Causes

The Crusades were the climax of medieval events and perhaps the most fascinating episode that occurred in the history of Europe and the Near East. Now the two great religions of the world, Islam and Christianity, after centuries of debate, finally submitted their dispute to the ultimate human arbitration—that is, to the battlefield. All medieval progress, the entire commercial arena of the Christian world, all religious fervor, and the full power of feudalism and the allure of chivalry reached their peak and zenith during two hundred years of war fought for the human spirit and commercial interests.

The first direct cause of the Crusades was the advance of the Seljuk Turks. The world had come to terms with Muslim domination of the Near East; the Fatimid caliphs of Egypt had followed a policy of tolerance in governing Palestine, and, apart from a few exceptional incidents, the Christian sects in that region enjoyed considerable freedom in practicing their religious teachings. The mad caliph of Cairo, Al-Hakim, had destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (1010), but the Muslims themselves had spent considerable sums to repair it again. In 1047 the Iranian traveler and poet Nasir Khusraw described this church as follows: “It is a vast place that can accommodate eight thousand people; it is built with great skill from colored marble and paintings and images, and the interior of the church is adorned and decorated with Roman silks and many gold and silver have been used there, and the image of Jesus—peace be upon him—has been made in several places, seated on a donkey.” This was only one of the many churches in Jerusalem. Christian pilgrims had the right to freely visit the holy places; for many years the pilgrimage to Palestine was considered a form of worship or atonement; everywhere in Europe one saw people adorning their garments with palm leaves from Palestine in the shape of a cross as a sign of pilgrimage to the holy places.

In 1070 the Turks wrested Jerusalem from the Fatimids, and Christian pilgrims thereafter brought back accounts of Turkish oppression and desecration of the holy places. According to an old tradition whose authenticity is not certain, one pilgrim named Peter the Hermit brought a letter from Simon, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to Pope Urban II in Rome, in which the persecution and oppression of the Christians of Palestine was described in detail, and the Pope was humbly begged for help (1088).

The second direct cause of the Crusades was the dangerous weakening of the Byzantine Empire. This empire had stood for seven centuries at the crossroads of the great highways of Europe and Asia and had prevented Asian armies and hordes of nomadic tribes from the steppes from invading Europe. Now this empire, weakened by internal divisions, destructive innovations, and the schism of 1054 that had separated it from the West, was no longer able to perform this great historical task. While the Bulgarians, Pechenegs, Cumans, and Russians attacked its European gates, the Turks were busy dismembering its Asian provinces. In 1071 the Byzantine armies were almost annihilated at Manzikert.

The Seljuk Turks captured Edessa, Antioch (1085), Tarsus, and even Nicaea, and cast their eyes across the Bosphorus toward Constantinople itself. Emperor Alexius I (1081–1118) saved part of Asia Minor by signing a humiliating treaty, but he lacked military forces to counter further attacks. If Constantinople fell to the Turks, all of Eastern Europe would lie open to their armies and the victory at Tours (732) would have been in vain. Alexius set aside religious pride and sent envoys to Pope Urban II and the Council of Piacenza, urging Latin Europe to help him drive the Turks from Europe.

Alexius argued that fighting these infidels in Asia was wiser than waiting for their flood to pour through the Balkans toward the European capitals. The third direct cause of the Crusades was the ambitious spirit of Italian cities such as Pisa, Genoa, Venice, and Amalfi that wanted to expand the scope of their growing commercial power. When the Normans wrested Sicily from the Muslims (1060–1091) and Christian armies reduced the domain of Muslim rule in Spain (from 1085 onward), the western Mediterranean opened to Christian merchants. The Italian cities became richer and stronger through exporting local goods and Alpine manufactures from their ports and sought to end Muslim supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean and open the markets of the Near East to the goods of Western Europe. We do not know to what extent these Italian merchants had access to the Pope himself.

The final decision came from Urban II himself. This idea had also occurred to other popes. For example, Gerbert, who held the papal office as Sylvester II, called upon Christendom to liberate Jerusalem, and at his insistence a group of Christian warriors set foot in Syria without success (around 1001). Gregory VII, in the heat of his destructive struggle with Henry IV, had said: “To lay down one’s life for the liberation of the holy places seems to me far better than to rule the world.” When Urban II presided over the Council of Piacenza in March 1095, the fire of that struggle had not yet cooled. At this council Urban spoke in support of the request of Alexius’s envoys, but he advised that no hasty decision be taken until a greater assembly representing all Christendom had been formed to declare war on Islam. His knowledge of the situation was too great for him to imagine that Christian victory in such a great matter, in a distant land, would be certain. Undoubtedly Urban foresaw that he could turn the unruly warlike barons and Norman pirates into a holy struggle and save Europe and the Byzantine Empire from the Muslim danger. Urban’s wish was to bring the Eastern Church again under papal rule, to turn the Christian world into a powerful realm under the command of the popes, and once again make the city of Rome the capital of the world. This mental concept stemmed from the height of statesmanship.

From March to October 1095 Urban traveled through northern Italy and southern France and sought the necessary help from princes and nobles for this path. In Clermont, in Auvergne, a historic ecclesiastical council convened; although it was a cold day in November, thousands of people from various regions and communities pitched their tents in the open field, and such a great assembly gathered that no hall could accommodate all the people; when their compatriot Urban II was raised upon a high platform and delivered one of the most effective speeches in medieval history in their own language, every heart throbbed with intense emotion. The Pope addressed the audience as follows:

“O race of the Franks! Beloved and chosen race of God! ... News of sorrow has been brought from the borders of Jerusalem and from Constantinople that a cursed people, completely ignorant of God, have unjustly attacked the lands of these Christians and driven the people from their homelands with destruction and fire. They have taken some of them captive to their own kingdom and killed part of them under merciless tortures. These people defile the altars with their polluted presence and then destroy them. The realm of the Greeks has now been dismembered by them and the Greeks have been deprived of those vast lands whose traversal takes more than two months.

Now if you do not take upon yourselves the suffering of avenging these unjust acts and recovering these lands, from whose hand can this great task be accomplished? It is you whom God has endowed, among His favors, with greater splendor in warfare, great courage, and strength to grind the heads of those who rise against you into the dust. Let the deeds of your ancestors—the glory and greatness of Charlemagne and the other rulers of this land—be an incentive to you.

Let the holy sepulchre of our Savior and Lord, now in the possession of unclean peoples, and the holy places now polluted, stir you ... . Let no anxiety about family affairs or any possession prevent you from this great matter. For the land in which you now dwell, surrounded on all sides by sea and mountain peaks, is very narrow for your great numbers. The food that comes from it scarcely suffices for the needs of the people engaged in cultivation. That is why you kill and tear one another, resort to war, and many of you perish in these internal conflicts. Therefore, let hatred depart from among you; let your quarrels end. Set foot on the path to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the hands of a wicked people and take possession of it yourselves; Jerusalem is a heavenly city filled with delights and blessings, a land far more fruitful than all other lands. That royal city, which lies at the center of the world, entreats you to hasten to its aid. Willingly accept the hardship of this journey for the remission of your sins, and in return be assured of the imperishable glory of the kingdom of heaven.”

From the crowd a cry of intense excitement rose to the heavens: “God wills it!” Urban joined them and asked them to make this phrase their battle cry, and instructed those who were ready to participate in the Crusade to mark the sign of the cross on their breast or forehead. William of Malmesbury writes: “Immediately some of the nobles fell to their knees before the Pope and dedicated their lives and property to the service of God.” Thousands of common people also took the same vow. Monks and hermits came out of their seclusion to become, in reality and in the full sense of the word, soldiers of Christ’s army. The energetic Pope set out from that place toward other cities, including Tours, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, and Nîmes ... and for nine months encouraged the people to participate in the Crusade. When he returned to Rome after two years’ absence, the people of that city, who were less pious than other Christian cities, welcomed him with great enthusiasm. Urban, without facing serious opposition, obtained the necessary authority to free the Crusaders from commitments that prevented the start of the Crusade, and for the duration of this war released serfs and vassals from their obligations to their lords. He granted all Crusaders the privilege of being tried thereafter in ecclesiastical courts rather than in manorial courts; and he guaranteed that in their absence the bishops of each locality would protect their property. By a decree—although it did not have complete executive guarantee—he prohibited all wars among Christians and, above the laws of feudal obedience and allegiance, established a new principle of obedience. Now Europe was more united than before and Urban II saw himself, at least theoretically, as the worthy and acceptable sovereign of the kings of Europe. The entire Christian world was stirred in an unprecedented way and with great enthusiasm prepared itself for the holy war against the world of Islam.

II – The First Crusade: 1095–1099

Extraordinary motives gathered a vast multitude under the banner of the Crusader armies. It was decreed that whoever was killed in the war would be freed from any punishment incurred because of sin committed.

Serfs, who were bound to specific lands, were allowed to move; subjects of kings were exempted from taxes; debtors were freed for a time from paying interest; prisoners were released; and the Pope, with boldness, extended his powers and commuted the punishment of those condemned to death to lifelong service in Palestine. Thousands of vagabonds joined the followers of this holy caravan. People who had grown weary of inevitable poverty, adventurers willing to face dangers, younger sons who cherished the hope of preparing fiefs in the East, merchants seeking new markets for their goods, knights who found themselves alone when their serfs departed for war, timid men who avoided the taunts of those around them and the accusation of cowardice—all joined a group of true believers to liberate the land where Jesus Christ was born and died. According to the kind of propaganda that was current, every path of exaggeration and hyperbole was opened regarding the restrictions and weaknesses of the Christians residing in Palestine, the atrocities of the Muslims, and the blasphemies of the religion of Muhammad (peace be upon him). The Muslims were accused of worshiping an idol of the Prophet of Islam and even, according to baseless rumors that circulated among Christian believers, irrelevant things were said about the Prophet of Islam. Strange legends were recounted in gatherings about the immense wealth of the East and the fairy-like beauties who awaited brave men.

It was obvious that all these diverse motives could not gather around similar crowds of people qualified to form a military organization. In many cases women and children insistently accompanied their husbands, fathers, and mothers on the journey. Perhaps such insistence was not without reason, for soon prostitutes were also gathered to serve the warriors. Urban had set August 1096 as the date for the departure of the Crusader army, but impatient peasants, who were the first group of volunteers, could not wait. Such a fighting group, numbering about twelve thousand (of whom only eight were knights), set out from France in March under the leadership of Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless or Gautier the Penniless; another group, probably consisting of five thousand, set out from Germany under the supervision of the priest Gottschalk; and a third group under the leadership of Emicho, Count of Leiningen, moved from the Rhineland in Germany. It was these disorderly and undisciplined groups that often attacked the Jews of Germany and Bohemia, paid no attention to the demands of the local people and priests, and hid their bloodthirstiness under the cloak of piety and for some time turned into predatory animals. Those who had recently joined the ranks of the Crusaders had brought little money and scant food with them, and their inexperienced leaders also lacked sufficient provisions to feed the men. Many of them had underestimated the distance, and as they traveled along the banks of the Rhine and Danube, their children constantly asked at every bend whether they had reached Jerusalem. When their purses were emptied and they suffered from hunger, they resorted out of necessity to plundering the fields and houses that lay in their path. It was not long before rape was added to the plunder of property. The people resisted them fiercely. Some cities closed their gates to them, and others immediately begged God for their failure. Finally this completely destitute army, many of whose members had perished from famine, plague, leprosy, fever, and struggles along the way, reached the gates of Constantinople. Alexius welcomed them, but did not satisfy the hungry stomachs of that crowd as they wished; so the Crusaders poured into the suburbs of the city and plundered palaces, houses, and churches. To save his capital from these devout locusts, Alexius provided them with ships to cross the Bosphorus, sent them supplies, and ordered them to stop on the other side of the Bosphorus until stronger armed forces arrived from behind. The Crusaders, out of hunger or impatience, paid no attention to Alexius’s orders and rushed toward Nicaea. A regular and disciplined force of Turks, all skilled archers, came out of the city and almost completely destroyed this first army of the First Crusade. Walter the Penniless was among those killed, but Peter the Hermit, who had become disgusted with his unruly army, had returned to Constantinople before the battle began and lived in good health until 1115.

Meanwhile, each of the princes and feudal lords who had answered the Pope’s call to participate in the Crusade had gathered their forces in their own domains. Among these princes and lords there was none of the kings of Europe, and in fact when Urban called the people to the Crusade, Philip I king of France, William II king of England, and Henry IV emperor of Germany were all excommunicated by the Pope. But many counts and dukes were willing to participate in such a jihad—and almost all of them were of the Frankish or French race. The First Crusade was a great undertaking carried out mostly by the French, and to this day the peoples of the Near East still call the peoples of Western Europe Franks (Franks). Godfrey of Bouillon (Bouillon was a small town in Belgium) combined the qualities of a monk with the merits of a soldier in his person; in other words, he was brave and capable in managing government affairs and conducting war, and his piety reached the point of fanaticism. Bohemond, prince of Taranto, was the son of Robert Guiscard. He had inherited all his father’s courage and skill and cherished the hope of creating a realm for himself and his Norman soldiers from the former possessions of the Byzantine Empire in the Near East. With him was his nephew Tancred of Hauteville, who later became the hero of the famous epic “Jerusalem Delivered” by the Italian poet Tasso. He was a handsome, fearless, brave, generous man, and lover of glory and wealth, whom people generally admired as the ideal Christian knight. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, who had previously participated in battles against the Muslims in Spain, now in old age dedicated his life and immense wealth to a much greater jihad. But his fiery temperament tainted his nobility and his greed tarnished his piety. These groups set out for Constantinople by various routes. Bohemond suggested to Godfrey that they capture that city. Godfrey refused to accept such a matter on the grounds that he had only traveled to fight the infidels, but this idea did not completely disappear. The half-savage and powerful knights of the West looked with contempt upon the educated and refined men of the East and considered them innovators immersed in pleasures and lusts. The treasures and valuables piled up in the churches, palaces, and markets of the capital of the Byzantine Empire astonished and envied them, for they believed that wealth should belong to the brave man.

Alexius perhaps had caught wind of the kind of thoughts that occurred to his saviors, and perhaps what he had seen from his encounter with the unruly crowd of peasants (whom the West itself had reproached him for defeating) inclined him to caution and perhaps to deceit. He had asked for help against the Turks, but had not expected the united forces of Europe to gather behind the gates of his capital. Alexius could never be sure that these warriors’ love of conquering Constantinople was less than opening Jerusalem, or that if they wrested the former lands of the empire from the Turks, they would return those possessions to Byzantium. Therefore he proposed that he was willing to provide all kinds of provisions, financial aid, means of transport, and military help to the Crusaders and to offer suitable bribes to their leaders, and that every land they conquered in war should be held as a fief of his by the obligations of commitment. The nobles of the West, who had softened before silver and gold, agreed to this matter. In early 1097 the Crusader armies, which altogether numbered about thirty thousand and were still under the command of various commanders, crossed the Bosphorus. Fortune favored the Crusaders, for the discord among the Muslims was far greater than the divisions among the Christians. Not only had Muslim power in Spain declined and become entangled in religious disputes in North Africa, but in the East the Fatimid caliphs of Egypt held sway over the southern regions of Syria, while northern Syria and most of Asia Minor were in the hands of their enemies, the Seljuk Turks. Armenia rose in rebellion against the conquerors and allied with the Franks. In this way the European armies advanced and besieged Nicaea, and when Alexius promised that no one would be harmed if they surrendered, the Turkish garrison of Nicaea surrendered (19 June 1097). The Greek emperor raised his flag over the fortress of the city, saved that region from the indiscriminate plunder of the Christian warriors, and with great gifts secured the satisfaction of the feudal commanders; but the Christian soldiers complained that Alexius had allied with the Turks. After a week of rest the Crusaders set out for Antioch and near Dorylaeum (present-day Eskişehir) encountered an army of Turks under the command of Kilij Arslan. In the bloody battle that took place (1 July 1097) the Crusaders were victorious. Then, without the probability of facing an enemy except for the lack of water and food and the heat that Western blood was naturally not accustomed to, they began to advance in Asia Minor. During that eight-hundred-kilometer difficult march, a group of men and women and a number of horses and dogs perished from thirst. When they crossed the Taurus Mountains, some of the nobles separated their soldiers from the main forces to pursue private conquests, so that Raymond, Bohemond, and Godfrey set out for Armenia and Tancred and Baldwin I (brother of Godfrey) turned toward Edessa; in that region Baldwin, by military tricks and stratagems, founded the first Latin kingdom of the East (Jerusalem) (1098). The vast majority of the Crusaders complained that such delays were ominous, but the nobles returned and progress toward Antioch continued. The chronicler and author of the book “The Deeds of the Franks” described Antioch as “a city exceedingly beautiful, striking, and delightful.” This city was besieged for eight months. During this time many of the Crusaders perished from hunger or the cold winter rain. Some found a new kind of food by chewing “sweet reeds called zucchero” (sugar). This was the first time the Franks tasted sugarcane. Gradually they learned the method of pressing and extracting its juice from the plant grown for this purpose. Prostitutes were far more dangerous sweets; one high-ranking beloved priest who had embraced his Syrian concubine in a garden was killed by the Turks. In May 1098 news arrived that a great army of Muslims under the command of Kerbogha, emir of Mosul, would soon arrive; a few days before the arrival of this army, Antioch was opened (3 June 1098); many of the Crusaders who feared they could not withstand Kerbogha boarded ships on the Orontes and fled.

Alexius, who was advancing with a Greek army, was deceived by the defeat of the fleeing soldiers and imagined that the Crusaders had been defeated; therefore he returned to perhaps guard Asia Minor against the Turks. This was a sin for which Alexius was never forgiven. Peter Bartholomew, a priest from Marseille, to give courage to the Crusader soldiers, took a spear in his hand and claimed that this was the same spear with which the side of Jesus had been pierced. When the Christians set out for the battlefield, they carried this spear like a holy standard above their heads, and three white-clad knights suddenly appeared from behind the hills at the signal of Adhemar, the Pope’s representative, and the Pope’s representative claimed that these three were Saint Maurice, Saint Theodore, and Saint George, martyrs of the faith. The Crusaders, inspired by the sight of these supernatural signs, achieved a decisive victory under the unified command of Bohemond. Peter Bartholomew, who was accused of committing religious fraud, offered to pass through fire to prove the truth of his words. He endured the hardship of passing through a pile of burning firewood; apparently he came out of the fire unharmed, but the next day he died from burns and heart pressure. After this event the holy spear was removed from among the standards of the Crusader soldiers. To thank Bohemond for his efforts, with general consent he was made prince of Antioch. He officially seized that region as a fief of his overlord Alexius, but in reality he ruled as an independent king. The Crusader commanders claimed that Alexius had broken his commitments by failing to send help to them and had released them from their obligations. After spending six months renewing their strength and re-equipping their exhausted armies, the Crusader commanders moved their soldiers toward Jerusalem. Finally on 7 June 1099, after a three-year war that had reduced the Crusader forces to twelve thousand fighters, they arrived before the walls of Jerusalem with happy hearts and weary bodies. It was one of history’s ironies that the Fatimids, the opponents of these warriors, had driven their rivals, the Turks, out of the city a year before this event. The Fatimid caliph proposed that if the Crusaders agreed to a peace treaty, he was willing to guarantee the safety of life and property of all Christian pilgrims and believers residing in Jerusalem. But Bohemond and Godfrey demanded unconditional surrender. The Fatimid caliph’s garrison, consisting of a thousand men, resisted for forty days. On 15 July Godfrey and Tancred at the head of their soldiers crossed the city wall, and at this moment the Crusaders, who had endured years of hardship and suffering with courage, were beside themselves with joy at reaching their high goal. A priest named Raymond of Aguilers, who was himself a witness to this event, writes:

“Strange things were seen from every side. Some of the Muslims had their heads cut off ... others were killed with arrows or forced to throw themselves from the towers, some were tortured for several days and then burned in fire. In the streets piles of heads, hands, and feet of the slain were seen. Wherever you drove a horse you were among the bodies of the slain and the carcasses of horses.”

Other contemporaries also wrote in detail about this event and relate how women were killed with daggers, how the legs of suckling infants were seized and they were torn from their mothers’ breasts and thrown over the walls, or how their necks were broken by smashing them against pillars; and how seventy thousand Muslims who had remained in the city were killed. The Jews who had survived were gathered in a synagogue and burned alive. The conquerors all turned toward the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which in their opinion had once been the resting place of the crucified Jesus in its crypt. There they embraced one another and wept from excessive joy and relief and praised the merciful God for their victory.

III – The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: 1099–1143

Godfrey of Bouillon, whose honesty and integrity were finally acknowledged by all, was chosen to rule Jerusalem and its surroundings, and out of humility he took the title “Defender of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” Here, in a land where Byzantine rule had ended 465 years earlier, there was no show of obedience to Alexius; the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem immediately became an independent country. The official religion of this region, which had been under the Greek Church, became subject to the Latin Church, the Patriarch of Jerusalem fled to Cyprus, and the ecclesiastical dioceses of the new kingdom submitted to the performance of public worship in Latin, having an Italian bishop, and the supremacy of the Pope. The price of sovereignty is the ability to defend oneself. Two weeks after the great liberation, an Egyptian army went toward Ascalon to liberate a city that was holy to followers of multiple faiths. Godfrey defeated that army, but died a year later (1100). His brother, Baldwin I (1100–1118), who did not have Godfrey’s merit, succeeded him and took the higher title of king. During the reign of Fulk, Count of Anjou (1131–1143), the new country included most of the land of Palestine and Syria, but the Muslims still held Aleppo, Damascus, and Homs (Emesa).

This kingdom was divided into four feudal principalities whose centers were respectively Jerusalem, Antioch, Edessa, and Tripoli. Each of these four principalities was itself divided into several almost independent fiefs whose jealous rulers fought one another, minted coins in their own name, and in various ways considered themselves independent of others. The king was elected by the vote of the barons and a hierarchy of clergy who were subject only to the commands of the Pope himself supervised his affairs. Another factor that weakened the king’s powers was the granting of several ports including Jaffa, Tyre, Acre, Beirut, and Ascalon to Venice, Pisa, or Genoa in exchange for naval help and obtaining supplies by sea. The state organization and laws were determined in the court of the judges of Jerusalem, and this system was one of the most logical and precise collections of laws of the feudal state. The barons unjustly claimed all land ownership rights, turned the former owners of the lands, whether Christian or Muslim, into their serfs and forced them to accept obligations far more severe than those common in contemporary feudal Europe.

The newly founded Kingdom of Jerusalem had many elements of weakness; but it enjoyed the unparalleled support of new groups composed of fighting monks. Long before these events, from 1048, merchants of Amalfi with the permission of the Muslims had built a hospital for needy or sick Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem. Around 1120 Raymond du Puy turned the servants of this institution into a religious order whose members were bound by oath to observe chastity, poverty, obedience, and the protection of Christians in Palestine. This order, whose members became known as the Knights of St. John the Apostle, became one of the highest charitable societies of the Christian world. Almost at the same time (1119) Hugh de Payens and eight other Crusader knights dedicated themselves to discipline, monasticism, and wielding the sword for the exaltation of Christianity. This group received a residence near the site of Solomon’s Temple from Baldwin II, and for this reason they soon became known as the Knights Templar. Saint Bernard established strict rules for them that were not long observed. This Christian ascetic, in praise, called the Templars “the most skilled individuals in the art of war” and instructed them to “bathe rarely” and to shave their heads completely. Bernard wrote to the Templars: “The Christian who kills an infidel in jihad will certainly attain his reward, and if he himself is killed, attaining such a reward will be even more certain. The Christian takes pride in the death of the infidel, for it is through this that Jesus can be praised.” The beginning of this letter contained a sentence that seemed to echo the commands of the Prophet of Islam to the Muslims. Bernard believed that if people wanted to triumph over their enemy, they must be taught to kill the enemy with a peaceful conscience. A hospitable knight wore a black robe with a white cross on his left sleeve; a Templar wore a white robe, and on his cloak had the sign of a red cross. From a religious point of view, members of each order hated members of the other order. Followers of both orders gradually turned from the duty of protecting and improving the condition of pilgrims to attacking the castles and positions of the Muslims; although the number of followers of the Templars was only three hundred, and the total number of the other order was about six hundred, nevertheless in 1180 both played a significant role in the Crusades and gained great fame as warriors. Both orders tried to attract financial help and took money from the Church and governments, and from poor and rich. In the thirteenth century each order possessed immense wealth in Europe including monasteries, villages, and cities. Both astonished Christians and Muslims by building great castles in Syria, and while each individual of these warriors had made poverty their motto, all of them enjoyed great luxury amid the pains and hardships of war. In 1190 the Germans residing in Palestine, with the help of a few of their supporters in the homeland, established the order of the Teutonic Knights and founded a hospital near Acre. After the liberation of Jerusalem most of the Crusaders returned to Europe and dangerously reduced the power of the government that was under attack. Many pilgrims came to Jerusalem, but the number of those who wished to stay and fight was few. In the north, the Greeks sought the opportunity to regain control of Antioch, Edessa, and other cities that according to their claim belonged to the Byzantine Empire. In the east, in the face of Christian encroachments and Muslim aid, the Arabs gradually stirred and united. The Muslim refugees of Jerusalem recounted the tragic story of the city’s fall to the Crusaders. This group gathered in the great mosque of Baghdad and demanded that the Islamic world liberate Jerusalem and wrest the sacred building of the Dome of the Rock from the hands of the unclean infidels. The Caliph did not have sufficient power for such an action, but a young slave-born man named Zengi, emir of Mosul, answered the call of the refugees. In 1144 his small army, which was skillfully led, wrested Edessa, the forward position of the eastern flank of the Christians, from their hands, and a few months later recaptured the life of Edessa for the world of Islam. He himself was killed, but his son Nur al-Din (Mahmud Zengi) succeeded him, who had no less courage than his father and was far superior to him in skill. News of these events stirred Europe to prepare for the Second Crusade.

IV – The Second Crusade: 1146–1148

Saint Bernard appealed to Pope Eugenius III to once again gather the Christians under the Crusader banner.

But Eugenius, who at that time was entangled in a dispute with the pagan people of Rome, asked Bernard to take this important task upon himself. The Pope’s proposal was wise, for Bernard, the saint who had facilitated his rise to the papal office, was a far greater man than himself.

When Bernard came out of his cell in Clairvaux intending to encourage the French to the Crusade, that skepticism hidden in the hearts of believers was silenced, and the fears that had grown among the people from hearing the adventures of the First Crusade were removed. Bernard went directly to the King of France, Louis VII, and encouraged him to place himself at the head of the Crusader army. Then, while the King of France stood beside him, he delivered a speech to the crowd in Vézelay (1146). When his speech ended, the entire crowd was ready to serve. The crosses that had been prepared were not sufficient for the crowd, so Bernard tore his own robe into pieces so that the present could each take a piece as a sign of joining the Crusader army. Then he wrote to the Pope: “Cities and castles have all been emptied, even one man remains for every seven women, and everywhere is full of widows whose husbands are still alive.” After Bernard had prepared France for the Crusade, he turned to Germany. There, by his passionate eloquence, he convinced Emperor Conrad III that the Crusade was the only sacred matter that could cause the unity of the Guelphs and Hohenstaufens—two groups that had divided the emperor’s realm. Many nobles followed Conrad, including Frederick, Duke of Swabia, who later became known as Barbarossa (Red Beard) and died in the Third Crusade. At Easter 1147 Conrad and the German armies set out for Jerusalem. At the feast of Pentecost Louis and the French set out. Their delay in departure was for the sake of caution, for they were not sure whether the Germans were their blood enemies or the Turks. The Germans in turn had the same doubt about the Turks and the Greeks. On their path so many Byzantine cities were plundered that many closed their gates to the Crusader warriors and threw meager rations to the German soldiers in baskets from over the city walls. Manuel Comnenus, who was emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire at that time, mildly proposed that those noble armies would do better to cross the Hellespont at the place of Sestos instead of going by way of Constantinople; but Conrad and Louis refused to accept such a proposal. A group of Louis’s advisers encouraged him to capture Constantinople for France; Louis did not agree to such a matter, perhaps the Greeks were also aware of his temptation. In any case, the people of the Eastern Empire were terrified by the sight of the arms and armor of the Western knights, and seeing the relatives and women who accompanied them became a source of amusement for them. Accompanying Louis, King of France, was Eleanor that troublesome queen, and a group of singers and lyric poets followed her. Both the Count of Toulouse and the Count of Flanders had their countesses with them and part of the baggage that followed the French caravan consisted of suitcases and chests full of clothes and makeup tools that were necessary to preserve the beauty of these ladies against any changes and alterations of weather, war, and the passage of time. Manuel with great haste provided the means for the movement of the German and French armies across the Bosphorus and put some counterfeit coins at the disposal of the Greeks for trade with the Crusaders. In Asia, because of the scarcity of provisions and the exorbitant prices demanded by the Greeks, many clashes occurred between the saviors and the saved, and Frederick Barbarossa regretted that in order to attain the privilege of confronting the infidels he was forced to shed Christian blood with his own blade.

Despite Manuel’s advice, Conrad insisted on following the same route that the first Crusader armies had taken. With Greek guides, or perhaps with their presence, the German soldiers repeatedly fell into waterless deserts and traps that the Muslims had laid, and suffered discouraging losses. At the place of Dorylaeum (present-day Eskişehir), the same point where the armies of the First Crusade had defeated Kilij Arslan, Conrad’s army encountered the main Muslim forces and was so shattered that only one out of every ten Christians survived. The French soldiers, who were a great distance from the front line, were deceived by the false news of the German victory and advanced recklessly and, because of Muslim attacks and hunger, suffered heavy losses. When the remnants of the French reached Attalia, Louis asked the captains of the Greek ships to transport his soldiers by sea to the Christian city of Tarsus or Antioch. The captains demanded an exorbitant fare for each passenger. Louis, together with a few nobles, along with Eleanor and a few ladies, boarded a ship and set out for Antioch and left the French army in Attalia. The Muslim armies attacked that city and almost all the French were put to the sword (1148).

Louis reached Jerusalem together with the ladies, but he had no army with him, and Conrad, who had set out from Regensburg with great armies, now had only a few men left. From this number who had survived, and from the soldiers who were in Jerusalem itself, an army was prepared that under the command of three different commanders—Conrad, Louis, and Baldwin III (1143–1162)—moved toward Damascus. When Damascus was under siege, a dispute arose among the nobles as to which one would rule when the city was opened. In this confusion, Muslim spies infiltrated the Christian army and by means of bribes induced some commanders to deliberately stop the attack or retreat. When news arrived that the emirs of Aleppo and Mosul were moving with a great army to save Damascus, those who advised retreat prevailed, and as a result the Christian soldiers were divided into several groups and fled toward Antioch, Acre, or Jerusalem. Conrad, sick and defeated, returned to Germany in humiliation. Eleanor and most of the French knights returned to their homeland.

Louis remained in Palestine for another year and during this time visited the holy places. The defeat of the Christians in the Second Crusade astonished Europe. Everywhere people asked how the Almighty had allowed the defenders of His path to be so humiliated and degraded. Opponents attacked Saint Bernard and called him a shameless preacher of fantasy who had caused the death of many people. Here and there bold skeptics doubted the most important principles and foundations of the faith. In response to the opponents Bernard claimed that the will of the Almighty is beyond human understanding and that this disaster was certainly a punishment for the sins of the Christians. But from then on the seeds of philosophical doubts that Abelard (d. 1142) had scattered bore fruit in the minds of even ordinary people. The enthusiasm and eagerness that had previously existed for the Crusades quickly declined and the Age of Faith prepared itself to rise in defense with fire and sword against the attack of foreign beliefs or pure unbeliefs.

V – Saladin

Meanwhile, in Christian Palestine and Syria a strange new civilization spread. The Europeans who had settled in these lands from 1099 gradually, following the custom of the people of the Near East, put turbans on their heads and wore wide robes, for they saw these types of clothes as suitable for the local climate and for confronting the burning sun and shifting sand. The more the Christian communities became familiar with the Muslims residing in this realm, the more unfamiliarity and mutual enmity decreased. Muslim merchants freely entered Christian settlements and sold their goods. Christian patients preferred Muslim and Jewish physicians. Christian priests allowed Muslims to worship in their mosques, and in the Christian cities of Antioch and Tripoli the teaching of the Quran in Muslim schools was permitted. Agreements were made between Muslim and Christian kingdoms for the protection of the life and property of travelers and merchants on both sides. Since only a few Christian women had come to Palestine with the Crusaders, many resident Christians married Syrian women, and soon the children of the two tribes formed a large part of the population of the kingdom. Arabic became the everyday language of ordinary people.

Christian kings made pacts with Muslim emirs against their fellow Christian rivals, and Muslim emirs sometimes extended a helping hand to these “polytheist” kings for diplomacy or war. Private friendships developed between Christian and Muslim individuals. Ibn Jubayr, who in 1183 visited various points of Christian Syria, saw his fellow countrymen as prosperous people whom the Franks treated well. He complained that Acre was “filled with pigs and crosses,” and everywhere was polluted with the stench of the Europeans, but he was also somewhat hopeful that these infidels would gradually become civilized by the blessing of a higher civilization to which they had turned.

During the forty years of calm that followed the Second Crusade, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem continued to suffer from internal disputes, while its Muslim enemies tended toward unity. Nur al-Din expanded the scope of his rule from Aleppo to Damascus (1164), and when he died, Saladin united Muslim Egypt and Syria under a single banner (1175). The merchants of Genoa, Venice, and Pisa disrupted the order of the eastern ports with their deadly competition. The knights fought among themselves over the throne of Jerusalem, and when Guy de Lusignan seized the throne by cunning (1186), resentment increased among the noble class. Guy’s brother, Geoffrey, said with pride: “If this Guy is a king, I deserve to become God.” Reginald de Châtillon in the great castle of Kerak, beyond the Jordan and near the border of Arabia, called himself king and repeatedly violated the truce agreement that had been made between Saladin and the Latin king. He declared that his goal was to attack Arabia and destroy the tombs of Medina and raze the Kaaba in Mecca to the ground. His small army, composed of knightly adventurers, set out southward by ship from the Red Sea, landed at al-Hawra, and moved toward Medina. These warriors had not traveled far when they suddenly found themselves facing an Egyptian army. In the battle that took place all the Christians were killed, except for a few who fled with Reginald himself. The Arabs captured some of them and took them to Mecca and in the year of the sacrifice that year beheaded them instead of a goat (1183).

Until this date Saladin had contented himself with minor skirmishes against the Kingdom of Palestine; but now that the axe of this new desecration had struck the root of his piety and godliness, he prepared an army that in the shadow of the warfare of its men made the conquest of Damascus certain for him, and then (1183) confronted the armies of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in a war that was inconclusive for both sides. A few months later Saladin attacked Reginald at Kerak, but failed to breach the city’s fortress. In 1185 he made a four-year truce with the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

But in 1186 Reginald violated the peace, lay in ambush for a Muslim caravan and surprised it and took much booty and several prisoners, one of whom was Saladin’s sister. Reginald said: “Now that these people have trusted in Muhammad, let Muhammad come and save them.” Muhammad (peace be upon him) did not come to save them, but Saladin, whose pot of anger had boiled over, called the Muslims to jihad against the Christians and swore that he would kill Reginald with his own hand. The most important battle of the Crusades took place at Hattin, near Tiberias, on 4 July 1187. Saladin, who was familiar with the geography of the place, placed his soldiers in positions that gave them control of all the water wells. The Christian warriors, heavily laden with armor, who had crossed the plain under the burning midsummer sun, entered the field of battle with a deadly thirst. The Muslim soldiers took advantage of the wind blowing toward their enemies and set fire to bushes, and the smoke from these bushes distressed the Christians even more. In the astonishing chaos that occurred, a separation fell between the infantry and cavalry of the Franks, and the infantry was destroyed. The knights, who had reached the bone with the enemy’s weapons, thirst, and smoke, finally fell exhausted to the ground and were killed or captured. Apparently by Saladin’s command no mercy was shown to the Hospitaller or Templar knights. Saladin had given strict orders that Guy, King of Jerusalem, and Reginald be brought before him; when both were presented to him, Saladin gave Guy a vessel of drink as a sign of pardon, but left Reginald free to either recognize Muhammad (peace be upon him) as the sent Prophet or submit to death. When Reginald refused to accept the first option, Saladin killed him. One of the spoils the conquerors took from the Crusaders was the “True Cross,” which a priest carried like a standard during the battles, and Saladin sent it to the Caliph in Baghdad. Then, since Saladin saw no opponent in his path, he set out with the intention of conquering Acre, freed four thousand Muslim prisoners, and distributed the immense wealth of that crowded port among his soldiers. A few months later almost all the land of Palestine was in his possession. When Saladin approached Jerusalem, the nobles of the city came out to meet him to demand peace.

Saladin addressed them and said: “In my view Jerusalem is the house of God, just as you believe. For this reason I myself will deliberately refrain from besieging it and will not attack it.” He proposed that he was willing to grant Jerusalem freedom so that they could strengthen its fortresses; they could cultivate the surrounding lands up to twenty-five kilometers without any aggression; and he promised that until the feast of Pentecost he would compensate for any shortage of food and necessary funds; and if by that time necessary help arrived and there was hope of salvation, the Christians could preserve the city and honorably defend it, otherwise they would surrender Jerusalem to him without bloodshed; he also promised that in such a case the life and property of the Christian residents of Jerusalem would remain safe and protected.

The representatives of the city refused to accept Saladin’s proposal and said that they would never agree to surrender a city where their Savior had sacrificed himself for the sons of man. The siege of the city lasted only twelve days. When Jerusalem surrendered, Saladin demanded a ransom of ten gold coins for each man (perhaps equivalent to 47.5 dollars in today’s money), five coins for each woman, and one gold coin for each child, and made the freedom of seven thousand of the poorer ones conditional on the surrender of thirty thousand bezants of gold, that is, about 270,000 dollars today, which Henry II King of England had sent for the Hospitaller knights. One of the Christian chroniclers writes that these conditions were accepted “with gratitude and lamentation.” Perhaps some of these informed Christians compared the events of 1187 with those of 1099. Al-Adil, for Saladin, also demanded a thousand slaves from the poorer class who had not been subject to ransom as a gift. This demand was accepted, and Adil freed all of them in the path of God. Balian, the leader of the resistant Christian community, also following Adil’s example demanded a thousand slaves and took them and freed them. Another thousand slaves were demanded in the same way by the Christian patriarch of Jerusalem and freed. Then Saladin said: “My brother has given his alms, the patriarch and Balian have also given their alms. Now it is my turn.” He freed all the elderly who did not have the means to pay. Apparently of the sixty thousand Christian prisoners fifteen thousand remained without ransom and became slaves. Among the group who were freed by paying ransom were noble women who had been killed or captured at Hattin. Saladin, who had been moved to pity by the weeping of these women, freed the husbands and fathers (including Guy King of Jerusalem) who were prisoners in the hands of the Muslims. Ernoul, Balian’s steward, relates that “Saladin gave so much money from his treasury to the women and maidens whose husbands and fathers had perished that they praised God and, in other regions, wherever they went, the kindness and respect that Saladin had shown them was on their tongues.” Guy and the nobles who had been freed from bondage swore that they would never again take a step in opposition to him as long as they lived; but when they reached the safe Christian region of Tripoli and Antioch, “by the command of the priests they were released from the heavy burden of their promise,” and set about preparing revenge against Saladin. The Muslim sultan Saladin allowed the Jews to settle again in Jerusalem and also allowed the Christians, on condition of not carrying weapons, to have the right to enter the city. He helped Christian pilgrims and protected their life and property. The building of the Dome of the Rock, which had been turned into a church by the Christians, was purified again with rose water; and the golden cross that had been installed on top of the dome was thrown down amid the joyful shouts of the Muslims and the grumbling of the Christians. Then Saladin with his weary soldiers set out with the intention of besieging Tyre, and when he saw the conquest of that city impossible, he dismissed most of the army and himself, sick and exhausted, in the fiftieth year of his life returned to Damascus (1188).

VI – The Third Crusade: 1189–1192

The remaining of Tyre, Antioch, and Tripoli in Christian hands was for them a ray of hope. The Italian navy still dominated the Mediterranean and was willing, for a sum, to transport fresh Crusaders to the East. William, Archbishop of Tyre, returned to Europe and recounted the story of the loss of Jerusalem to the people of Italy, France, and Germany. In Mainz his request so affected the heart of Frederick Barbarossa that that great 67-year-old emperor almost immediately set out with his soldiers for Jerusalem (1189) and all Christians in the position of admiration called him the second Moses and the guide to the Promised Land. The new soldiers crossed the Hellespont at the place of Gallipoli and took a new route; they also repeated the same mistakes of the First Crusade. Groups of Turkish soldiers repeatedly attacked them and cut their connection with their supplies. Hundreds perished from hunger, Frederick himself drowned with disgrace in the small river Saleph in Cilicia (1190), and only part of his soldiers survived and participated in the siege of Acre. Richard I, famous as the Lionheart, who had just reached the throne of England at the age of thirty-one, decided to confront the Muslims. Since Richard feared that in his absence the French and English possessions in French soil would encroach, he insisted that the King of France Philip Augustus must also accompany him on this journey. Philip, who was a twenty-three-year-old youth, agreed to this proposal. In the place of Vézelay the two young kings, through exciting ceremonies, attained the receiving of the cross from the hand of William, Archbishop of Tyre. Richard’s soldiers, composed of Normans (for only a few English participated in the Crusades), set out by ship from Marseilles and Philip’s soldiers moved from the port of Genoa, and it was agreed that both armies would meet in Sicily (1190). There the Christian kings spent six months in quarrel and in various ways kept themselves occupied. Tancred, King of Sicily, caused Richard’s displeasure, and Richard “faster than a priest could recite the morning prayers” captured the city of Messina and, in exchange for forty thousand ounces of gold, returned that city to Tancred. Richard now, since with such spoils he was able to pay his debts, put his soldiers on ships and set out for Palestine. Some of his ships were wrecked on the coast of the island of Cyprus, and the Greek governor of that island imprisoned the crews of the ships. After a short stop, Richard conquered Cyprus and granted it to Guy de Lusignan, the exiled King of Jerusalem. Richard in June 1191, that is, one year after his departure from Vézelay, reached Acre. Philip had landed before him. The siege of Acre by the Christians lasted almost nineteen months and cost the lives of thousands. A few weeks after the arrival of Richard the Lionheart, the Muslims surrendered. The conquerors demanded two hundred thousand gold coins (950,000 dollars), one thousand six hundred elite prisoners, and the return of the True Cross, and the Muslims also undertook to accept these conditions. Saladin approved this agreement and allowed the Muslim people of Acre, apart from 1,600 men, to take as much provisions as they could and leave the city. Philip Augustus, who had fallen ill with fever, left his soldiers, who numbered 10,500, and himself returned to France. In this way Richard became the sole commander of the Third Crusade. From then on an unparalleled and confusing struggle began that after every battle and clash of arms, both sides successively turned to compliments and praise of each other’s qualities, and throughout all these adventures the English king and the Kurdish sultan, Saladin, displayed some of the highest qualities of their faiths and civilizations. Neither of those two great men held a place in the circle of saints. Whenever the requirements of war demanded, Saladin was able, without frowning, to send men to the abode of non-existence, and a romantic and imaginative man like Richard sometimes, during his wars, by virtue of nobility, would abandon his course. When the nobles of the besieged city of Acre delayed in fulfilling the terms of the surrender agreement, Richard, to hasten them, beheaded 2,500 Muslim prisoners before the city wall.

When this news reached Saladin’s ears, he ordered that thereafter all prisoners taken in battle with the English king be killed. Richard, seeing this, proposed that he was willing to give his sister Joan in marriage to al-Adil, Saladin’s brother, and with this marriage end the Crusades. The Church disapproved of this stratagem, and for this reason Richard did not insist on carrying it out. Richard, who knew that Saladin would not sit idle after accepting defeat, again set about preparing his soldiers and made himself ready to march a hundred kilometers southward along the coast and relieve Jaffa, which was again in Christian hands, from the Muslim siege. Many nobles were unwilling to accompany Richard on this journey and preferred to remain in Acre and plot for the attainment of the throne of Jerusalem, which they were sure would be conquered by Richard. The German soldiers returned to Germany, and the French repeatedly disobeyed orders and nullified the strategic plans of the English king. In addition, the men and officers were unwilling to gird their loins again. The chronicler of Richard’s Crusades writes that after this long siege, the Christian conquerors, who had become accustomed to softness and luxury, were extremely reluctant to leave behind a city so full of blessings, or in other words the most pleasant wines and the most beautiful maidens. Many, because they had become very accustomed to such pleasures, had turned into licentious beings, to the point that the city became polluted with their luxury and their gluttony and shamelessness shamed the wise men. Since by Richard’s command, to prevent sin, no one except washerwomen had the right to move with the soldiers, the arena became narrower for the men. Richard’s unparalleled skill in commanding soldiers, his expertise in the minutiae of military campaigns, and his inspiring courage in the battlefield compensated for the deficiencies of his soldiers, and in this respect he was superior to Saladin and all the Christian commanders of the Crusades. Richard’s and Saladin’s soldiers confronted each other at Arsuf, and Richard achieved an inconclusive victory (1191). Saladin proposed to renew the battle, but Richard withdrew his soldiers into the city of Jaffa. Saladin sent a messenger with a peace proposal to Richard. During the negotiations Conrad, Marquis of Montferrat, who ruled the port of Tyre, independently sent a letter to Saladin and announced that he was willing to ally with him and conquer Acre for the Muslims, on condition that Saladin agree to his control over Sidon and Beirut. Despite this proposal, Saladin ordered his brother to conclude a peace treaty with Richard and to cede all the coastal cities that were then in Christian hands along with half of Jerusalem to them. Richard was so pleased with this matter that in special ceremonies he knighted the son of the Muslim ambassador (1192). Shortly after these events, when he heard that Saladin was again facing a rebellion in the East, he rejected the conditions proposed by the Ayyubid king, besieged and captured Darum, and advanced to within nineteen kilometers of Jerusalem. Saladin, who had dismissed his soldiers because of the winter season, called them back again. Meanwhile discord fell in the Christian army. The Christian army’s scouts brought news that the drinking water wells on the road to Jerusalem had been poisoned and the warriors would be deprived of drinking water. A council was formed to see what should be done. The members of the council gave the opinion that it was advisable to abandon Jerusalem and move toward Cairo, which was four hundred kilometers away from that point. Richard, sick and weary and disheartened, gave up the war, turned toward Acre, and thought of returning to England. But when he heard that Saladin had again attacked Jaffa and captured it in the space of two days, his pride gave him new life. He immediately, with little time, prepared as large an army as possible and set out for Jaffa. Upon entering the port he shouted: “Death to the rearmost!” and threw himself into the sea up to his waist. Then, while brandishing his famous Danish battle-axe, he struck to the ground all those who raised the standard of manhood before him, led his soldiers into the city, and before Saladin became aware of the situation, cleared Jaffa of the Muslim soldiers (1192). Saladin called his main forces to help. Although Saladin’s army far outnumbered Richard’s three-thousand-man army, Richard’s reckless courage prevented the defeat of the Crusaders. When Saladin saw Richard on foot during the battle, he sent him a swift horse and sent a message that it would be a pity for such a brave warrior to go to war with the enemy on foot. Saladin’s soldiers soon became weary of the war and began to reproach their commander for why he had left the Jaffa garrison to its own devices so that they could now take up arms again. If the Christian chroniclers’ account of this battle is correct, finally Richard, while holding his spear at ease, rode along the Muslim front without anyone daring to attack him. The next day fortune turned against him. Fresh forces arrived to help Saladin. And Richard, who had again fallen ill and received no support from the knights residing in Acre and Tyre, again demanded peace. Richard, while burning in the fire of fever, loudly asked for ice water and fruit. Saladin, to fulfill his wish, sent him some pears and peaches and snow, as well as his personal physician, to his bedside. On 2 September 1192 those two brave men signed a peace treaty for three years and divided the land of Palestine. According to the treaty, it was agreed that Richard would rule all the coastal cities he had conquered, from Acre to Jaffa; Muslims and Christians would be allowed to freely cross each other’s lands; the life and property of pilgrims in Jerusalem would remain safe and protected, but the city of Jerusalem would be administered under Muslim supervision (it is not unlikely that because the Italian merchants were generally interested in supervising the ports of Palestine, they had encouraged Richard to cede Jerusalem in exchange for the coastal regions to the Muslims). With the preparation of tournaments, they celebrated the conclusion of the peace. Richard’s chronicler writes about this event: “Only God the Blessed and Exalted knows the immense joy of these two armies.” For a short time the people washed their hearts of hatred. When Richard boarded the ship with the intention of England he sent his last insolent letter to Saladin in which he promised that he would return in three years and recapture Jerusalem, Saladin replied that if he were forced to lose his land, losing it to Richard would be preferable to any other living man. Justice, patience, and moderation of Saladin had defeated the skill, courage, and military strategy of Richard; the unity and loyalty of the Muslim commanders had triumphed over the discord and treachery of the feudal lords; experience had shown that a short supply line behind the ranks of the Muslim army had far more advantage than the Christians’ domination of the seas of the world. The existence of the Muslim sultan was a clearer and more specific example of all the virtues and defects of the Christians than the existence of the Christian king. Saladin carried piety to the point that he had no qualms about persecuting opponents of the faith, and in such matters he became so emotional that his enmity toward the Hospitaller and Templar knights was excessive. Nevertheless, he usually treated the weak gently, was kind to the defeated, and in keeping his word was so superior to his enemies that the Christian chroniclers wondered how a theology could produce such a man. He behaved with the utmost kindness toward his servants, and personally attended to all complaints. “Money in his view was worth as much as dust,” and what he left in his personal treasury was only one dinar. A short time before he died, he apparently gave advice to his son that no Christian sage could have spoken a more pithy word than that:

“My son, I entrust you to God the Blessed and Exalted ... . Act according to His will, for peace of mind lies in it.

Avoid bloodshed ... . For blood that is shed on the earth never sleeps. Strive to win the hearts of all your subjects and take care of their welfare; for you have been chosen by God and by me to ensure their happiness. Strive to win the hearts of your ministers, nobles, and emirs. If I have attained a high position, it is because I have conquered the hearts of the people with love and kindness.”

He died in 1193, when he was no more than fifty-five years old.

VII – The Fourth Crusade: 1202–1204

The Third Crusade freed Acre, but left Jerusalem still in Muslim hands.

Such a meager result from a series of struggles in which the greatest kings of Europe had participated naturally caused discouragement. The drowning of Frederick Barbarossa, the flight of Philip Augustus, the obvious failure of Richard, the carefree plots of the Christian knights in the Holy Land, the disputes between the Hospitaller and Templar knights, and the resumption of war between England and France humbled the proud nose of Europe and further weakened the faith of Jesus among his followers. But when Saladin died soon after and his empire disintegrated, the hope of the European believers rose. Innocent III from the beginning of his assumption of the papal office desired another effort in this path and a simple priest named Fulk of Neuilly, in a series of sermons, called on kings and people to participate in the Fourth Crusade.

The results obtained were by no means a cause for hope. Emperor Frederick II was a four-year-old son; Philip Augustus considered participation in one Crusade sufficient for a lifetime; and Richard I King of England, who had forgotten his last letter to Saladin, laughed at Fulk’s encouraging words and in response to him said: “You advise me to abandon my three daughters—Pride, Greed, and Licentiousness. I give them to those who deserve them most: my Pride to the Templars, my Greed to the Cistercian monks, and my Licentiousness to the assembly of bishops.” With all this, Innocent insisted on his demand. He proposed that the struggle against Egypt would be successful if Italy were master of the Mediterranean, and domination over a rich and fertile land like Egypt was the best means of reaching and conquering Jerusalem. After bargaining for some time with Venice, they finally satisfied that small seafaring republic, in exchange for 85,000 marks of silver (equivalent to 8,500,000 dollars), to provide the means of movement for four thousand five hundred knights with their horses, nine thousand of their retainers, and twenty thousand infantry along with nine months’ provisions for them; in addition, to put fifty warships manned with rowers at the disposal of the Crusaders. It also set one condition for these services, which was to take half of the spoils of the conquered lands. But the Venetians had no intention at all of attacking Egypt. The Venetian merchants every year made millions of dollars by exporting timber and iron and weapons to Egypt, and importing slaves, and now they were unwilling to risk this trade with war or to share these transactions with Pisa and Genoa. For this reason, while they were negotiating with the Crusader committee, they secretly made an alliance with the Sultan of Egypt and undertook to protect that country against foreign attacks (1201). Ernoul, one of the chroniclers of this era, states that Venice received a considerable bribe to divert the Crusade from Palestine. In the summer of 1202 the new Crusader soldiers gathered in Venice. The commanders of this army were Marquis Boniface of Montferrat, Count Louis of Blois, Count Baldwin of Flanders, Simon de Montfort (who later gained great fame in the struggle against the Albigensian heretics), and many nobles and aristocrats of the era, including Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne, who not only played a significant role in diplomacy and the Crusades, but also compiled the disgraceful history of it in the form of respectable memoirs that were themselves the introduction to literary prose works of the French language. According to the usual custom, most of the Crusaders came from France. Every person who participated in this great matter had been instructed to bring a sum of cash money with him according to his financial ability so that the 85,000 marks of silver demanded by Venice would be gathered. After collecting all the funds, there was still a shortage of 34,000 marks. Enrico Dandolo, the almost blind Doge of Venice “whose heart was called a sea of worms,” with all the respect due to a ninety-four-year-old man, proposed that if the Crusaders helped Venice in the conquest of the port of Zara, the republic would waive the demand for the remaining money. This port, after Venice itself, was the most important port of the Adriatic Sea. In 998 Venice had captured it, and many times the people there had raised the banner of rebellion and been suppressed. But at this date it belonged to Hungary and was the only route of connection for the Hungarian lands with the sea. Since the wealth and power of this port was increasing, Venice feared that it would become a major rival in Adriatic trade. Innocent III called such a proposal wicked and threatened to excommunicate anyone who participated in carrying out this plan. But the sweet voice of gold coins was so loud that it was impossible for the words of the greatest and most powerful popes of the world to reach anyone’s ears.

The joint fleet of the warriors attacked Zara and captured that port in the space of five days, and divided the spoils obtained among themselves. Then the Crusaders sent a delegation to the Pope for intercession and demanded pardon. The Pope sent them absolution, but demanded that the spoils obtained be returned. The Crusaders thanked the Pope for the forgiveness of sins, but kept the spoils. The Venetians ignored the Pope’s excommunication decree and set about carrying out the second part of their program, which was domination over Constantinople. The royal government of Byzantium had learned nothing from the Crusades; the help it had given to the Crusaders in these struggles was little, but it had gained immense benefits; it had regained most of Asia Minor and with peace and tranquility witnessed the mutual weakening of Islam and the West in the struggle over Palestine. Emperor Manuel had imprisoned thousands of Venetians in Constantinople, and for some time had canceled Venetian commercial privileges in that region (1171). Isaac II, nicknamed Angelos, had allied with the Muslim Arabs without any discomfort or worry. In 1195 Isaac was deposed by his brother Alexius III, imprisoned, and blinded. Isaac’s son, who was also named Alexius, fled to Germany. In 1202 he set out for Venice. He asked the Venetian senate and the Crusaders to save his father and restore him to the throne, and in return promised to provide all kinds of provisions for the attack on the Muslims. Dandolo and the French barons imposed a heavy contract on the young Alexius: that is, they took a commitment from him to deliver 200,000 marks of silver to the Crusaders, to equip an army of ten thousand for service in Palestine, and to make the Greek Orthodox Church obedient and submissive to the Supreme Pope.

Despite this clever bribe, Innocent III prevented the Crusaders from attacking the Byzantine Empire, and threatened to excommunicate anyone who violated his words. Some nobles were unwilling to participate in such an adventure. Part of the soldiers considered themselves exempt from the Crusades and returned to their homelands. But the hope of conquering the richest city of Europe was such a promising idea that it took strength from everyone. On 1 October 1202 the great fleet, consisting of 480 ships, amid great excitement and enthusiasm, while priests on the battlements of the warships were chanting the religious hymn “Come, O Holy Spirit, Creator,” set out.

After a series of various delays, on 24 June 1203 the great fleet reached opposite the city of Constantinople.

Villehardouin writes about this event:

“Be assured that those who had never seen Constantinople now had their eyes wide open with amazement, for they had never believed that in the whole world there was a city so wealthy; a city surrounded by high walls and strong towers and having royal palaces and magnificent churches, and the number of such buildings was so great that if one had not seen them with one’s own eyes, one would never have believed it; and also the width and length of this city surpassed all other cities of the world. And know that among us there was no one so bold that he did not tremble at the sight of that scene; and there was no wonder in this, for from the beginning of the creation of the world until now, men had never undertaken such a great matter as our attack on the city.”

An ultimatum was delivered to Alexius to the effect that he must immediately hand over the throne of the empire to his blind brother or his nephew, the young Alexius who had traveled with the fleet. When he refused to accept this matter, the Crusaders, against slight resistance, landed in front of the city wall on land, and the elderly Dandolo was the first to set foot on shore. Alexius III fled to Thrace. The Greek nobles brought Isaac Angelos out of the dungeon, seated him on his throne, and sent a message in his name to the Latin commanders to the effect that he was waiting to welcome his son.

Dandolo and the barons, after taking a commitment from Isaac to fulfill the promises and vows that his son had made, entered the city, and the young Alexius IV was crowned emperor. But when the Greeks learned at what price he had bought his victory, they turned away from him with hatred and anger. Ordinary people realized that the emperor, in order to fulfill his promise to provide financial help to the rescuing army, needed to collect taxes from them. The Greek noble class hated the presence of foreign nobles and soldiers in their land, and the clergy class with great anger had rejected the proposal and were unwilling to obey the Pope. Meanwhile, some Latin soldiers who had seen a group of Muslims worshiping in a mosque, even in a Christian city, were so terrified that they set that mosque on fire and killed the Muslim believers. The fire continued for eight days and spread to the surroundings at a distance of five kilometers and turned a large part of Constantinople into ashes. A prince who had a blood relation with the emperor’s family called the people to rebellion, killed Alexius IV, imprisoned Isaac Angelos again, and himself ascended the throne as Alexius V (known as Doukas) and began to prepare and equip an army to drive the Latin soldiers out of their camp in Galata. But the Greeks, who for years had become accustomed to safety and security inside the walls of their cities, now had nothing left of those ancient Roman virtues except a name. After one month of the siege of Constantinople, all surrendered. Alexius V fled, and the victorious Latins fell upon the capital of the Byzantine Empire like a great swarm of hungry locusts (1204). The Crusader soldiers, who had long been waiting for such a fat and sweet morsel, now during the week of Easter plundered Constantinople in such a way that even Rome had not seen its like in the invasions of the Vandals and Goths. The number of Greek casualties was not so great, and perhaps did not exceed two thousand, but the plunder was limitless. The Latin nobles divided the palaces among themselves and seized the valuables they found in them. The soldiers entered people’s houses, shops, and churches and took whatever pleased them. Not only the gold and silver and jewels that had been gathered in the churches over a thousand years were plundered, but some of the relics of the saints were also stolen and a short time later sold at exorbitant prices in Western Europe.

The damage done to the Church of Hagia Sophia was far greater than the losses of the Turks in 1453, for in this plunder the great altar of the church was broken into pieces so that its gold and silver could be divided among the conquerors. Since the Venetians had come to this city as merchants, it was obvious that they knew where the finest treasures of it were located, and for this reason with the utmost care they stole such valuables. Statues, textiles, slaves, and jewels all fell into their hands. Four bronze horses that overlooked the city of Constantinople were thereafter taken to Venice to adorn and beautify the square of the Church of San Marco. Nine-tenths of all the collection of artworks and jewels that later enriched the treasury of that church was supplied from this precisely arranged theft. To limit rape some measures were taken. Many of the soldiers observed moderation and contented themselves with prostitutes, but Innocent III complained that the Latin soldiers, in the face of the rebellion of the carnal soul, paid attention neither to age, nor to sex, nor to religious profession, so that Greek nuns were forced to endure the love-making of French or Venetian coachmen or peasants. Among these plunders, libraries were looted and valuable manuscripts were destroyed or disappeared. Two more fires destroyed libraries and several museums, in addition to churches and people’s houses. Of the plays of Sophocles and Euripides, which until that date had been preserved complete, after these plunders and fires only a few remained. Thousands of artistic masterpieces were stolen, damaged, or destroyed. When the wave of aggression and plunder subsided, the Latin nobles chose Baldwin, Count of Flanders, to become the ruler of the Latin Empire of Constantinople (1204), and made French the official language of this newly founded kingdom. The Byzantine Empire was divided into several realms and fiefs over each of which one of the Latin nobles ruled. Venice, which had a great desire to supervise the trade routes, established its domination over Adrianople, Epirus, Acarnania, the Ionian Islands, part of the Peloponnese, Euboea, the Aegean Islands, Gallipoli, and three-eighths of Constantinople. The forward positions and “factories” that the Genoese merchants had in Byzantium were taken from them, and Dandolo, who now limped in the boots of anger of the empire, took the title “Doge of Venice, Lord of a Quarter and an Eighth of the Roman Empire.” It was not long before he died in the height of his wicked success. Most of the Greek clergy were removed from their positions, and Latin priests were appointed in their place, and since the number of such priests was small, in some cases ordinary people were hastily brought into the ranks of the clergy; Innocent III, who was still protesting the action of the Latin soldiers, accepted the official reunion of the two Churches of Greece and Latin with good will. Most of the Crusader warriors returned to their homeland with the spoils they had obtained. Some settled in the new possessions, and only a handful reached Palestine, which was also fruitless. Perhaps the Crusaders imagined that when Constantinople fell into their hands, it would be a stronger base against the Turks than when the Byzantine Empire ruled there. But generations of differences between the Latins and the Greeks had now made the power of the Greek world insignificant. The Byzantine Empire never recovered from this blow, and the conquest of Constantinople by the Latin armies in the course of two centuries prepared the ground for the Turkish conquest of that city.

VIII – The Decline of the Crusades: 1212–1291

The disgrace of the Fourth Crusade, which within ten years was added to the defeat of the Third Crusade, was in no way a source of consolation for the Christian faith, which would soon face the revival of Aristotelian wisdom and the precise rationalism of the followers of Ibn Rushd. Thinkers exerted great effort in explaining why God had allowed the defenders of such a sacred matter to be defeated and had granted success only to wicked people like the Venetians. Among these doubts and hesitations, the idea occurred to simple-minded people that only innocence could be the means of reconquering the stronghold of Christ. In 1212 a German youth, about whom little information is available and who is only remembered as Nicholas, declared that God had given him the mission to prepare a Crusader army of children and lead them to the Holy Land. Priests and also lay people condemned his action, but in an era when people were more subject to passionate emotions than other ages, such an idea easily spread. Fathers and mothers made every effort to dissuade their children from this idea, but thousands of boys (and some girls in boys’ clothing) whose ages did not exceed twelve secretly left their homes and set out following Nicholas, and perhaps they were happy that they left behind the tyranny of home and chose the freedom of the road to Jerusalem (the Holy City). A great crowd of thirty thousand children, most of whom had come from Cologne, poured down from the banks of the Seine and crossed the Alps. Many perished from hunger, and some who lagged behind the caravan fell prey to the wolves of the desert; a group of thieves joined them and, along the way, stole their food and clothing. Those who had survived finally reached Genoa. Here the materialistic Italians mocked them and cast doubt upon them. No captain was willing to take them to Palestine, and when they sought refuge with Pope Innocent III, he gently encouraged them to return to their homelands. Some, despairing and distressed, again turned toward the Alps, and many settled in Genoa and busied themselves with learning the customs and manners of a commercial society. In the same year, in France, a twelve-year-old shepherd named Stephen came to Philip Augustus and said that while he was tending his flock, Jesus had appeared to him, commanded him to be the leader of a Crusader army of children to Palestine. Philip ordered him to return to his sheep; nevertheless, twenty thousand youths gathered to set out for Palestine under Stephen’s banner. This group set out toward Marseilles, for Stephen had promised them that there the ocean would open its mouth and the water would dry up so that all could reach Palestine. In Marseilles the ocean did not open its mouth, but two shipowners agreed to take them to their destination for free. All of them gathered in seven ships and, while chanting victory songs, set out. Two of these ships were wrecked near the coast of Sardinia, and all their passengers perished. The other children were taken to Tunis or Egypt and sold as slaves. Later, by order of Frederick II, those shipowners were hanged for committing this crime.

Three years later Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council again asked the Europeans to wrest the homeland of Jesus Christ from the hands of the Muslims, and put forward the plan of attacking Egypt, which had been thwarted by Venice. In 1217 the fifth Crusader army from Germany, Austria, and Hungary, under the command of Andrew II King of Hungary, set out and safely reached Damietta, located at the eastern end of the Nile Delta. The city of Damietta was opened after a year of siege, and al-Kamil, the new sultan of Egypt and Syria, proposed peace, to the effect that he was willing to cede most of Jerusalem to the Crusaders, free the Christian prisoners, and return the True Cross.

The Crusaders, in addition to these, also demanded compensation, which al-Kamil refused to accept. The war was resumed, but did not go well. The fresh reinforcements that were expected did not arrive. Finally a truce agreement for eight years was signed between the two sides according to which it was agreed that the True Cross would be returned to the Crusaders, but Damietta would again belong to the Muslims and all Christian soldiers would leave Egyptian soil. The Crusaders blamed this disaster on Frederick II himself, the young emperor of Germany and Italy.

In 1215 he had joined the ranks of the Crusaders by taking an oath and had promised to join the besiegers of Damietta, but political difficulties in Italy, and perhaps lack of sufficient faith, had prevented his movement. Frederick in 1228, when he had been excommunicated for repeated delays and postponements, set out for the Sixth Crusade. Upon entering Palestine he received no help from the Christian believers there, for they all considered him a rebel and one cast out by the Church and avoided associating with him. He sent representatives to al-Kamil, who at that time held the leadership of the Muslim soldiers in Nablus. Kamil politely replied to Frederick’s letter; Fakhr al-Din, the sultan’s ambassador, was greatly astonished at Frederick’s knowledge of the Arabic language and his mastery of literature, sciences, and philosophy. The two sultans began to exchange ideas and compliments out of friendship, and with the conclusion of a treaty (1229) astonished the two worlds of Islam and Christianity. According to this treaty, al-Kamil ceded to Frederick Acre, Jaffa, Sidon, Nazareth, Bethlehem, and all of Jerusalem, except the Dome of the Rock which was sacred in the eyes of the Muslims. It was agreed that Christian pilgrims would have the right to enter that area, to pray in the site of Solomon’s Temple if they wished, and that Muslims would also enjoy similar rights in Bethlehem. Both sides agreed to free all their prisoners and to maintain peace for ten years and ten months. The excommunicated emperor had achieved something that the entire Christian world had failed to attain for a whole century. Finally two different cultures, which for a moment had come close to each other with understanding and mutual respect, saw the possibility of friendship between themselves. The Christians of Jerusalem were happy, but Pope Gregory IX disapproved of this treaty as an insult to the Christian world and refused to approve it. After Frederick’s departure, the Christian nobles of Palestine took Jerusalem into their own hands and allied with the Muslim ruler of Damascus against the sultan of Egypt (1244).

The sultan of Egypt called upon the Khwarezmian Turks for help, and they captured and plundered Jerusalem and killed many of the city’s residents. Two months later, al-Zahir Baybars defeated the Christians at Gaza and once again Jerusalem became conquered by the army of Islam (October 1244).

While Innocent IV was calling on the Christians to a crusade against Frederick II and promising all those willing to fight the emperor in Italy the same pardons and indulgences that were granted to the Crusaders in Palestine, Louis IX, the pious king of France, prepared for the Seventh Crusade.

Shortly after the fall of Jerusalem, Louis officially joined the Crusader army and encouraged the nobles of the country to follow him; at Christmas he gave some who were reluctant about such an action valuable robes on which the sign of the cross had been embroidered. Louis made every effort for a reconciliation between Innocent and Frederick so that a united Europe would support the Crusaders. Innocent refused to reconcile; instead, he sent a monk—Giovanni da Pian del Carpine—to the Great Khan of the Mongols and repeated the Pope’s proposal that the Mongols and Christians unite against the Turks of Asia Minor. The Mongol Khan in response demanded the submission of the Christian world.

Finally in 1248 Louis with his French knights, including Jean Sire de Joinville who later compiled his king’s conquests in a famous history, set out for Palestine. The warriors reached Damietta and soon captured it, but the annual flooding of the Nile, which had been completely forgotten in the war plans, began as soon as the Crusaders entered, and flooded the lands around the Nile in such a way that the warriors were almost forced to remain in Damietta for six months. But on the whole this forced stop was not a cause of regret for them, and Joinville writes that “the barons busied themselves with preparing banquets ... and the common people became addicted to making love with harlots.” When the Crusader army moved again, the number of its men had been reduced by hunger, disease, and flight and weakened by indiscipline. At Mansurah the Christian soldiers, despite the courage they showed, were defeated and their shattered ranks were put to flight. Ten thousand Christians, including Louis himself who had fainted from dysentery, were captured (1250). One of the Arab physicians treated Louis, and after a month of hardship, in exchange for the surrender of Damietta and five hundred thousand livres (equivalent to 3,800,000 dollars today) ransom, they freed him. When Louis agreed to pay such a huge ransom, the sultan of Egypt reduced it by one-fifth and trusted the word of the French king for half of this amount that had not been paid in cash. Louis took the remnants of his soldiers to Acre, stayed there for four years, and in vain begged Europe to abandon its internal wars and support him in a new Crusade. He sent a famous monk, William of Rubruck, to the Mongol Khan and repeated Innocent’s demand, but the Mongol Khan’s answer was exactly what they had heard before. In 1254 Louis returned to France.

The years of Louis’s stay in the East had extinguished the fire of discord and factionalism among the Christians of that region.

His departure from Palestine rekindled that fire. From 1256 to 1260 an internal war broke out in the ports of Syria between the Venetians and the Genoese merchants that dragged all the Christian sects into it and depleted the forces of the Christians in Palestine. Al-Zahir Baybars, a slave who had risen to the throne of Egypt, set out with his soldiers along the coastal shore and captured the Christian cities one after another. Caesarea in 1265, Safed in 1266, Jaffa in 1267, and Antioch in 1268 were opened. Christian prisoners were killed or became slaves, and Antioch was so destroyed by plunder and fire that it never again saw prosperity.

Louis IX, who in old age had again become aroused with the sweat of his piety, for the second time under the Crusader banner set out for Palestine (1267). Three of his sons followed him, but the French nobles considered his plans foolishly manly and were unwilling to accompany him. But Joinville, who loved Louis from the bottom of his heart, was not ready to participate in this Eighth Crusade. This time the King of France—who was a wise man in the matter of government and an ignorant person in conducting war—landed his small forces in the land of Tunis, for he hoped to invite the Muslim ruler of Tunis to the Christian faith and attack Egypt from the west. He had not yet set foot on African soil when he suddenly “became ill due to a discharge in the stomach” and, while having the word “Jerusalem” on his lips, died (1270). One year later Edward, the English prince, landed in Acre and bravely carried out several fruitless attacks and with great haste set out for England to seize the throne. The final disaster occurred when some Christian adventurers attacked a Muslim caravan in Syria, plundered the people’s property, hanged nineteen Muslim merchants, and plundered several Muslim cities. Sultan Khalil demanded that the Christians make amends and pay sufficient compensation in return. When no one paid attention to his demand, he marched with his army toward Acre, which was the strongest forward position of the Christians, and after forty-three days of siege captured it. In this event sixty thousand people were taken prisoner, whom by Khalil’s order they either made slaves or killed (1291). Shortly after this event, Tyre, Sidon, Haifa, and Beirut were opened. For a short time the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem remained only in the form of empty titles that a few princes bestowed upon themselves, and for two centuries a few adventurers or passionate men, in a scattered and separate manner, made a fruitless effort to restart this “great struggle,” but Europe knew that the Crusades had ended.

IX – Results of the Crusades

The Crusades did not achieve the direct goals and intentions that the Christians had openly expressed. After two centuries of war Jerusalem was in the hands of the fierce Mamluk sultans, and the Christian pilgrims who came to that city were fewer and more fearful for their lives. The powerful Muslim sultans, who once showed tolerance toward the followers of other religions, had lost this quality because of the attacks of the Christian peoples. The ports of Palestine and Syria, which had been conquered for the Italian merchants, had all been lost. Islamic civilization had practically shown that in terms of refinement, comfort, culture, and war it was far superior to Christian civilization. The strenuous efforts of the popes to establish peace in Europe by creating a common goal had been nullified by the ambitions of nationalism and the popes’ own “jihads” against the emperors. Feudalism barely recovered from the defeat it had suffered in the Crusades. Since the feudal method was suited to individual manliness and adventure in a limited sphere, it had naturally been unable to adapt itself to the requirements of the climate of the East and struggles that took place far from Europe. Without justifiable excuse, its work in delivering supplies and necessities to an army whose supply lines were constantly lengthening had led to disgrace. Instead of dominating the Muslims, it had depleted its material forces in overcoming the Byzantine Christians and had weakened its spirit. Many knights, to provide for the expenses of their journeys to the East, had been forced to mortgage or sell their properties to lords, moneylenders, the Church, or the sultan; in exchange for a sum, they had waived all rights and privileges they had in their cities; or in exchange for a sum, they had transferred feudal dues and debts to many farmers. Thousands of serfs had used the privilege that the Pope himself had given them for participating in the Crusade, had left the land, and never again returned to the former manorial estates. While feudal arms and wealth had poured toward the East, the power and wealth of the royal government of France had increased—this was one of the important results of the Crusades. At the same time, as a result of these struggles, the two empires of Eastern and Western Rome were weakened. The emperors of Western Rome, because of their defeats in Jerusalem and their struggles with a papal institution that had gained greater elevation because of the Crusades, had lost their prestige.

And the Eastern Roman Empire, although it revived to a new life in 1261, never regained its former power or prestige. With all this, the Crusades were to such an extent successful that without them the Turks would certainly have conquered Constantinople long before 1453. The world of Islam was also weakened by the Crusades and fell far more easily than would have been possible before the flood of the Mongol invasion. Some of the Christian military orders met with tragic fates. Those Hospitaller knights who had survived the massacre of Acre fled to Cyprus. The same group in 1310 wrested the island of Rhodes from the Muslims, changed their name from Hospitaller knights to Knights of Rhodes, and ruled that island until 1522. In that year, when the Turks drove them out of Rhodes, they all took themselves to the island of Malta, and became the Knights of Malta and were active there until their order disintegrated in 1799.

The Teutonic Knights, after the fall of Acre, transferred the headquarters of their order to Marienburg in Prussia, for they had wrested that land from the Slavs and conquered it for Germany. The Templars who had been driven out of Asia re-established their organization in France and since they possessed valuable properties throughout Europe, with the intention of using this immense wealth, they settled there. Since this group was exempt from paying taxes, they began to lend money at a much higher interest than what the Lombards and Jews demanded and gained considerable profits from this path. Unlike the Hospitaller knights, the individuals of this group neither administered a hospital, nor established schools, nor helped the weak class; finally their defiance of the king’s orders, the wealth they had accumulated, and the independent base they had created for themselves inside an independent country became a source of envy, fear, and anger for the King of France, Philip the Fair. On 12 October 1310, by his order and without any prior warning, all the Templars throughout France were arrested and their properties were sealed with the royal seal. Philip accused them of homosexuality, and claimed that because of long contact with Islam they had abandoned their faith, denied the existence of Jesus, spat on the cross, worshiped idols, had secretly allied with the Muslims, and had repeatedly betrayed in the path of advancing their sacred movement. A court composed of archbishops and monks who were loyal to the king interrogated the detainees, but each of them declared himself innocent of the king’s accusations.

Then the judges tortured them to extract confessions. They tied the wrists of some to wood, hung them in this way and repeatedly lifted and suddenly released them; some were held with bare feet on the flame of fire. Sharp blades were driven under the fingernails of a group of them, and the teeth of some were slowly pulled out every day. In many cases all these tortures were used, so that when most of them were again brought to the interrogation table, they had become so weak that they were close to death. One showed that the bones had separated from his burned feet. Many confessed to all the king’s accusations, some said how they had been promised by the king that if they confessed to the sins they would enjoy the blessing of life and freedom. Some of them died in prison. Some killed themselves. Fifty-nine of them were burned alive on a pile of firewood (1310), while this group until the last moment insisted on proving their innocence. Jacques de Molay, the grand master of the order, confessed under torture, and when he was brought to the pile of firewood, he retracted his confession. The executioners attempted to interrogate him again.

Philip did not consider this delay permissible; he ordered that he be burned immediately, and the presence of the beautiful king at the execution assembly. All the properties of the Templars were confiscated by the government in France. Pope Clement V protested this event but the clergy class supported the king. The Pope, who was literally a prisoner in Avignon, abandoned his opposition and at Philip’s request dissolved the order (1312). The King of England, Edward II, who also needed money, confiscated the properties of the Templars in his country. Part of the wealth that in this way came into the possession of Philip and Edward was transferred to the Church. Also the kings gave some of it to their favorites, and they in this way established large aristocratic estates and in the struggle against the feudal nobles became the main supporters of the kings. Probably some of the Crusaders because of their stay in the East acquired a new tolerance toward sexual deviations, and perhaps it can be said that the revival of public baths and private toilets was one of the results of the Crusades. It is likely that the Europeans because of contact with the Muslims of the East revived the shaving of beards, which was an ancient Roman custom. Now thousands of Arabic words had entered the European languages. The romantic and imaginative legend of the East moved westward and in the newly emerging native languages took a new form. Since the Crusaders had been greatly astonished by the Muslim art of glazing on glass, it is very likely that they learned the technical secrets of this art from Eastern masters and this very matter led to the development of the construction of colored and painted glass in the decoration of Gothic cathedrals. Before the Crusades ended, the people of the East were familiar with the compass, gunpowder, and the art of printing, and it is likely that the arrival of these means to Europe also resulted from the results of those struggles. Apparently the Crusaders were so illiterate and devoid of virtues that they paid no attention to the philosophy, sciences, or literature of the “Arabs.” The influence of the Muslims in such discussions was more from Spain and Sicily than from the encounters of Europeans and Muslims in the Crusades. After the conquest of the city of Constantinople, the Westerners came under the influence of Greek culture, and William of Moerbeke, the Flemish archbishop of Corinth, translated various Aristotelian philosophical discussions directly from the Greek original and placed them at the disposal of Thomas Aquinas. In general, when the Crusaders realized that if they were not more civilized, more compassionate, and more trustworthy than the followers of other faiths, they must at least be no less in such merits than them, the understanding of this truth disturbed the thoughts of some and helped weaken the beliefs of true believers during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Historians such as William, Archbishop of Tyre, in some cases spoke of Islamic civilization with such admiration and in general with such respect that their statements would certainly have caused horror and terror to the harsh warriors of the First Crusade.

The power and prestige of the Church of Rome increased immensely as a result of the First Crusade and gradually declined as a result of the other Crusades. The gathering of various peoples and the union of famous nobles and proud knights, and sometimes emperors and kings, under the Crusader banner, with the intention of victory, and under the leadership of the Church, elevated the papal office. Papal envoys turned to every country and ecclesiastical diocese to encourage the people to join the Crusader armies and to collect funds for the expenses of these struggles. They commanded encroachment on the domain of the secular hierarchy and often became substitutes for the power of such positions, and through them the Christian believers everywhere almost became tributaries of the Pope himself. This method of collecting funds became a permanent tradition, and it was not long before these funds, in addition to the Crusades, were also used for numerous other purposes. The Pope himself, despite the severe displeasure of the kings, was able to collect taxes from their subjects and direct immense sums that could have been poured into the kings’ treasuries or spent on local needs toward Rome. The distribution of indulgences in exchange for forty days of service in Palestine, following the usual methods in the system, was a legitimate act. The service of those who paid the travel expenses of one of the Crusaders was apparently worthy of pardon, but the extension of this mercy to those who sent money to the popes’ treasury, or to those who in Europe, in support of the Pope, fought against Frederick, Manfred, or Conrad was another act that caused more displeasure to the kings and provided a pretext for witticisms to the satirists. In 1241 Gregory IX instructed his envoy in Hungary that, in exchange for accepting a certain sum, he should annul the pacts of those who had undertaken to participate in a Crusade, and spend the proceeds on preparing his vital and mortal war with Frederick II. The troubadours of Provence reproached the Church for granting the same general pardon to those interested in fighting the Albigensian heretics in France as to the Crusaders, and for this reason diverting from that path those who should hasten to help the warriors of the path of the liberation of Palestine. Matthew Paris says: “The believers were astonished that the same general pardon was promised for shedding Christian blood as for shedding the blood of infidels.” Many landowners, to provide for the expenses of the Crusade, sold or mortgaged their lands and properties to monasteries or churches. Some monasteries in this way became owners of vast estates, and since the defeat of the Crusades lowered the prestige of the Church, the immense wealth of the Church became a suitable target for the envy of kings, public hatred, and the reproach of opponents. Some considered the cause of Louis IX’s defeats in 1250 to be the struggles of Pope Innocent IV against Frederick II that coincided with each other. Bold skeptics claimed that the defeat of the Crusades proved the falsehood of the popes’ claims who had called themselves the caliph or successor of God on earth. After 1250, when monks demanded financial help from the people for another series of wars, some of their listeners, in jest or out of bitterness, summoned beggars and gave them alms in the name of Muhammad (peace be upon him), and in explanation said that in practice they had seen Muhammad (peace be upon him) stronger than Jesus.

Besides this weakening of Christian beliefs, another important effect of the Crusades was that they familiarized the Christians with the industry and commerce of the Islamic world and in this way caused the increase of non-religious activities of European societies. War has one virtue, and that is teaching geography to people. The Italian merchants, who gained much wealth as a result of the Crusades, learned the method of preparing accurate maps of the Mediterranean Sea; chroniclers who traveled in monastic robes accompanying the knights gained a new understanding of the extent and diversity of the continent of Asia and transmitted the same through their writings to other people. The enthusiasm for travel and discovery stirred the people; maps and collections of guides for directing pilgrims to Jerusalem and their travel in Palestine were prepared and placed at the disposal of the interested. Christian physicians became aware of the method of treating diseases at the hands of Jewish and Muslim physicians, and surgery benefited greatly from the Crusades. Wherever the Crusaders went, merchants followed them with their goods, perhaps the merchants were also the guides and encouragers of the Crusaders. The knights lost Palestine, but it was the Italian merchant ships that not only cut off the hands of the Muslims, but also the hands of the Byzantine Empire from the Mediterranean and made their domination over that sea clear.

Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi, Marseilles, and Barcelona before these events had commercial transactions with the Muslims of the Near East, the region of the Bosphorus, and the Black Sea, but this trade greatly expanded as a result of the Crusades. The conquest of Constantinople by the Venetians, the transport of pilgrims and Crusader warriors to Palestine, delivering supplies to the Christians and others in the East, importing Eastern goods to the countries of Europe—all these became means of expanding commerce and maritime transport to a degree whose like had never been seen since the most prosperous periods of the rule of the Roman emperors. Silk fabrics, sugar, and spices—such as pepper, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon, all of which in eleventh-century Europe were considered rare luxuries—now became abundantly a source of pleasure in that continent.

Plants, products, and trees that had become famous in Europe from Muslim Spain were now planted in very large quantities from east to west, including: corn, rice, sesame, carob, lemon, melon, peach, apricot, cherry, date ... and shallot. For a long time the people of Europe called apricot “Damascus plum.”

Silk fabrics, muslin, satin, velvet, and brocades, carpets, dyes, makeup tools, perfumes, and jewels—all were brought as souvenirs from the Islamic world for the purpose of adorning and making pleasant the homes and bodies of the feudal and bourgeois.

Now glass mirrors on which a thin sheet of metal had been drawn replaced polished bronze or steel plates. Europe learned the method of refining sugar and burning “Venetian” glass from the East.

In the new markets of the East, Italian and Flemish industry expanded and encouraged the development of cities and the progress of the middle class. Better methods of banking were adopted from the Islamic world and the Byzantine Empire and various new types of credit documents came into existence. The movement of individuals, exchange of ideas, and circulation of money increased. The Crusades had begun with an agricultural feudalism that was inspired by German barbarism combined with a series of religious emotions. These wars ended with an economic revolution that was the means of advancing industry and developing commerce and finally the herald and founder of the Renaissance movement.