The First Crusade Essay, Research Paper
The Start of the First Crusade
The First Crusade was fought because of the change from
Arab to Turkish control over Jerusalem. This change had an
effect on the people that were allowed to live there, and
the beliefs that they could have. Since the city was
important to Christians, Jews, and Muslims, this change
affected very many people. When the change in power
occurred, Jews and Christians were no longer allowed to live
in Jerusalem. Pope Urban II gave a speech to encourage
to volunteer to fight to regain Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is integral to the history of Judaism. David
conquered the city from the Jebusites in the 11th century
BC, and made it the political capital of the Jewish state.
Solomon, his son, made it the religious capital by building
the Temple there in the 10th century BC. The Temple was the
center of religious activity for all Jews until Solomon’s
death, when the kingdom split into Judah and Israel. (Pernoud
114) The Jews in Judah continued with the Temple
as their religious center, while the Jews in Israel to the
north attempted to build new religious centers that could
never quite replace Jerusalem’s Temple. The Temple was
destroyed in 586 BC by Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian ruler,
who razed the city and exiled most of the Jewish population
from Jerusalem. In 536 BC, the Persian Empire, which
conquered the Babylonians, allowed the Jews to return and
construction began on a new Temple. About 500 years later,
under the leadership of Herod the Great, Jerusalem rose to
prominence in the Roman Empire, with a lavish new Temple and
a cosmopolitan nature. After Herod’s death, the Jews
rebelled and the Temple was burned by invading Roman armies
in 70 AD. In 135 AD, the Jews revolted again and the Roman
Emperor Hadrian exiled them from the city. This time, they
were gone for 500 years, until the Muslim capture of the
city in 638 AD finally introduced a regime in Jerusalem that
would allow them to return.
While the Temple existed, pilgrimage to Jerusalem was a
duty to Jews. (Jerusalem) They visited on Passover, Pentecost
and Tabernacles. Following its final destruction and their exile,
pilgrimage became impossible. Muslim rule opened the
doors to Jews wishing to live in and visit the Holy City.
Following the Crusaders’ conquer of Jerusalem, the city was
closed to them for nearly 10 years. But for a people who had
lived in this city for more than 2000 years, a decade was
not a long time to wait.
In the Christian mind, Jerusalem exists both in the
physical and spiritual world. It is an actual city, with
human inhabitants, but it is also a spiritual place where
Christ was crucified and resurrected. (Phillips 104) Almost
all of the Christian holy sites in the city are places where
Christ spent the last days of his life, or where he was killed,
buried or resurrected. Those not directly related to Jesus’s
life are often connected to his family; Many shrines are
devoted to his mother Mary, and there is even one for his
grandparents. (Jerusalem)
Christianity arrived in Jerusalem along with Christ,
and after his death, it was where the movement spread from.
The Byzantine Empire brought a breath of new life to
Christianity in Jerusalem in 326 AD. The emperor of the
Byzantine Empire, Constantine, was a Christian convert and a
strong supporter of holy sites in Jerusalem. (Lamb 208) His
mother, the Empress Helena, is traditionally believed to have
discovered the cave which contained the True Cross and the nails
which held Christ to it. In honor of this discovery, Constantine
ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to be built on the
spot. Later Byzantine emperors more or less continued the
tradition of Christianity and support for Jerusalem’s holy
sites. Numerous churches were constructed during the 300
years that the Byzantine Empire had control of Jerusalem,
and the city took on a distinctively Christian feel.
Christianity was the dominant religion in Jerusalem until
the arrival of the Muslims in 638 AD. It would be over 450
years until the city was ruled by Christians again. (Muslim
Jerusalem) The Crusaders’ arrival was the beginning of a new
period of Christian dominance in the Holy City.
Jerusalem holds an honored place in Islam too. It is a
place rich in ideological, mythic, and historical importance.
From an ideological standpoint, the city’s importance is
unparalleled.
The most important of these virtues attributed to Jerusalem
is was the one asserting that Bayt al-Maqdis (Arabic for
Jerusalem) is the place of the second and final hijira (the
first hijira being to Medina). Jerusalem is the place of the
Resurrection, where, on the eve of the Day of Judgment, God
will send his best creatures and most faithful to be saved.
The Rock at Jerusalem will be the bastion, the refuge, of
Muslims from al-Dajjal (the anti-Christ). To all Islamic
groups, Jerusalem is the place to which the Mahdi (the
Messiah) will come to triumph over evil (Muslim Jerusalem).
Because of the esteem in which the city is held, Muhammad the
Prophet, founder of Islam, initially made Jerusalem the qibla.
This is the place to which Muslims turn and direct their prayers.
For political reasons, he stripped it of this honor when
difficulties arose with the Jewish community there, and
designated Mecca to be the new qibla.
Though it suffered a fall from grace in Islamic eyes,
Jerusalem remains at the heart of an enduring tradition
known as Muhammad’s Night Journey (Phillips 42). According
to tradition, the Angel Gabriel took Muhammad to Jerusalem
on the back of a winged half mule/half donkey. There, he
ascended from the rock on the Temple Mount to heaven to
stand with other prophets of God, including Jesus and Moses,
and led their prayers.
Because of its enormous ideological and traditional
importance, it is not surprising that Jerusalem was quickly
conquered by the Muslim armies. In 638 AD, about six years
after Muhammad’s death, the city was taken, and the Muslims
moved quickly to make their mark upon this mostly-Christian
city. They found the rock where Muhammad is said to have
ascended into heaven, and built the magnificent structure of
the Dome of the Rock on it (Muslim Jerusalem)
In the 600s A.D., Jerusalem was taken over by Arab invaders.
They were mostly Muslims. These Arabs did tolerate other
religions besides Islam. Therefore, both Christians and Jews
were still allowed to live there. This way all of the three
religions had a place in the city. Though they were not in
control of the city, Christians and Jews were happy because they
were allowed to stay in the city that meant so much to them.
The Arabs that were in charge of Jerusalem for so long
tolerated other religions. This meant that Christians
and Jews could live there; not just Muslims. Of course this made
everyone happy because they all got to live in the city that was
sacred to them in their own ways. Jews and Christians that
lived in Jerusalem had to pay taxes and follow certain
regulations, but that was a small sacrifice for living in the
holiest place on Earth. (Joinville and Villehardouin 15)
This land was part of their religious heritage, so Christians,
Jews, and Muslims obviously would all want to live in Jerusalem.
This would change though, and would prove to cause a lot of
trouble.
In the late 1000s A.D., the Seljuk Turks, a Muslim people
from central Asia, conquered the Arabs and took over Jerusalem.
This changed everything that was happening, and created a very
dangerous situation. (Grousset 98). The Seljuks Turks were,
like the Arabs, a Muslim people, but they ran Jerusalem much,
much differently. The Seljuk Turks did not allow Christians and
Jews to stay in Jerusalem. This posed a huge problem for the
future of Jerusalem. (Pernoud 123)
It was a problem for Christians and Jews not to be allowed
to live in Jerusalem because of all of these events that happened
there. The city was a part of their heritage, and without it,
their lives would not be the same. They could not have the
same customs that had roots in Jerusalem, they could not worship
in places that were sacred to their religion, and they were
unable to see, but only hear legends about the place that meant
so much to them. Therefore, they would have to try to regain the
territory somehow.
The First Crusade began on November 27, 1095, with a
proclamation from Pope Urban II delivered to clergy and lay
folk who had gathered in a field in Clermont, central
France. His topic: an appeal for help that he had received
from the Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I Comnenus. (The First
Crusade, an Overview) There are no records of exactly what pope
Urban said, but it seems he began with a general denouncement of
the continual warfare which plagued the Europe of his day. He
then described in lurid detail the attacks of the Turks upon the
Christian Byzantine Empire, and begged the soldiers present to
travel to the east to attack the Muslims, rather than their
fellow Christians.
As a further encouragement Urban offered them a Papal
indulgence, which promised the immediate remission of all
sins of any who participated in the expedition. (Lamb 74). The
speech motivated the people very much, and most of them agreed to
go and fight. The crowd responded with the chant the was to
become the war cry of the first crusade – Dieu li Volt. (Smail
67). Of course the people would not be cleansed of their sins,
but they did not know that. Also, they feared what might happen
if they did not agree to go on the crusade.
So Jerusalem was a very important city in the starting of
the First Crusade. It was an important city to Muslims,
Jews, and Christians, and this caused problems when certain
religions were not allowed to live there. Before the Seljuk
Turks, people of three religions were all able to live
peacefully in Jerusalem. But when then when the Seljuks
took over, everything changed, and the Jews and Christians
were no longer allowed to live there. This is what sparked
the flame that was the First Crusade