The Crusades – Muslims vs Christians

The Crusades were military campaigns sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Pope Urban II authorized the First Crusade in 1095 with the goal of restoring European access to the Holy Land, and an intermittent 200-year struggle ensued. Urban was also seeking to reunite the Catholic Church under his leadership by militarily supporting Emperor Alexios I. After centuries of competitive co-existence with the Arabs following the initial Muslim conquests the Byzantine Empire had been defeated by the Turks in 1071 at the Battle of Manzikert.

As a result, the Byzantines lost the fertile coastal area of Anatolia and were forced into competition with Turks migrating westward

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Jihad vs. Crusade – Holy Wars in Comparative Perspective

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Hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholics from many different classes and nations of Western Europe became crusaders by taking a public…