Summary of the crusades

The Crusades were a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims started primarily to secure control of holy sites considered sacred by both groups. In all, eight major Crusade expeditions occurred between 1096 and 1291. The bloody, violent and often ruthless conflicts propelled the status of European Christians, making them major players in the fight for land in the Middle East.

What Were the Crusades?

By the end of the 11th century, Western Europe had emerged as a significant power in its own right, though it still lagged behind other Mediterranean civilizations, such as that of the Byzantine Empire (formerly the eastern half of the Roman Empire) and the Islamic Empire of the Middle East and North Africa.

However, Byzantium had lost considerable territory to the invading Seljuk Turks. After years of chaos and civil war, the general Alexius Comnenus seized the Byzantine throne in 1081 and consolidated control over the remaining empire as Emperor Alexius I.

In 1095, Alexius sent envoys to Pope Urban II asking for mercenary troops from the West to help confront the Turkish threat. Though relations between Christians in the East and West had long been fractious, Alexius’s request came at a time when the situation was improving.

the romans were initially interested in expansion via sicily (which at that time was a cultural melting pot), part of which lay under carthaginian control. at the start of the first punic war (264-241 bc), carthage was the dominant power of the western mediterranean, with an extensive maritime empire

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