The Crusades were a series of religiously sanctioned military campaigns, called by the pope and waged by kings and nobles who volunteered to take up the cross with the main goal of restoring Christian control of the Holy Land. The crusaders came from all over western Europe, and fought a series of disconnected campaigns between 1095 and 1291; historians have given them numbers. Similar campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula and Eastern Europe continued into the 15th century. The Crusades were fought mainly by Roman Catholics against Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians in Byzantium, with smaller campaigns waged against pagan Slavs, pagan Balts, Mongols, and Christian heretics. Orthodox Christians also took part in fighting against Islamic forces in some Crusades. Crusaders took vows and were granted a plenary indulgence by the pope.
The Crusades originally had the goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule and their campaigns were launched in response to a call from the leaders of the Byzantine Empire for help to fight the expansion of the Muslim Seljuk Turks into Anatolia. The term is also used to describe contemporaneous and subsequent campaigns conducted through to the 16th century in territories outside the Levant usually against pagans, heretics, and peoples under the ban of excommunication for a mixture of religious, economic, and political reasons. Rivalries among both Christian and Muslim powers led also to alliances between religious factions against their opponents, such as the Christian alliance with the Sultanate of Rûm during the Fifth Crusade.
The Crusades had some temporary successes, but the Crusaders were eventually forced out of the Holy Land. Nevertheless the Crusades had major far-reaching political, economic, and social impacts on Europe. Because of internal conflicts among Christian kingdoms and political powers, some of the crusade expeditions were diverted from their original aim, such as the Fourth Crusade, which resulted in the sack of Christian Constantinople and the partition of the Byzantine Empire between Venice and the Crusaders. The Sixth Crusade was the first crusade to set sail without the official blessing of the Pope.[6] The Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Crusades resulted in Mamluk and Hafsid victories, as the Ninth Crusade marked the end of the Crusades in the Middle East. |
