subject	Journeys
topic	The Crusades
grade	Seven
time	30 minutes
objective	To enable students to understand how the Crusades are portrayed in Islam.
instructional material	Info Sheet 7F – The  Crusades

 

INTRODUCTION

 

1.      After the death of Mohammed, the Islamic world was led by the caliphs.

2.      Caliph means “one who comes after.”

3.      The language of the Koran is Arabic.

4.      The Arab language spread as Islam spread to new lands.

5.      The Arabs conquered a large empire.

6.      The Arabs were very interested in learning other cultures.

7.      The Europeans learned the numeral system from the Arab people.

8.      The first Crusade was called by Pope Urban II.

9.      Urban hoped to recapture lands Christians consider holy from Muslims.

10. Crusade means “war for the cross.”

11.  The Crusaders were Christians.

12.  Most of the Crusaders came from Europe.

13.  The Crusades lasted about 117 years.

14.  The Crusaders wanted to capture Jerusalem from the Muslims.

15.  Jerusalem is regarded as a holy city by Christians, Jews and Muslims.

16.  Jerusalem is a part of the modern nation of Israel.

17.  Saladin led the Muslim army that captured Jerusalem in 1187.

18.  Saladin allowed Christians to visit their shrines

19.  By 1291, Muslims controlled all of the lands captured by the Christians in the Crusades.

20. Until 1922, Turkey was ruled by Ottoman sultans.

21.  The Ottoman Turks ruled for over six hundred years.

 

DEVELOPMENT

 

Read through the Info sheet with the students.

 

INFO SHEET 7F – The Crusades

 

To Arab historians, the Crusaders were a minor irritant, their invasion one more barbarian incursion, not nearly as serious a threat as the Mongols were to prove in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

 

The First Crusade began in 1095 after the Byzantines - threatened by Seljuk power- appealed to Pope Urban II for military aid. Pope Urban, hoping to divert the Christian kings and princes from their struggles with each other, and perhaps also seeing an opportunity to reunite the Eastern and Western churches, called for a "Truce of God" among the rulers of Europe and urged them to take the Holy Land from the Muslims.

Considered dispassionately, the venture was impossible. The volunteers - a mixed assemblage of kings, nobles, mercenaries, and adventurers - had to cross thousands of miles of unfamiliar and hostile country and conquer lands of whose strength they had no conception. Yet so great was their fervor that in 1099 they took Jerusalem, establishing along the way principalities in Antioch, Edessa, and Tripoli. Although unable to fend off the Crusaders at first - even offering the Crusaders access to Jerusalem if they would come as pilgrims rather than invaders - the Muslims eventually began to mount effective counterattacks. They recaptured Aleppo and besieged Edessa, thus bringing on the unsuccessful Second Crusade.

In the meantime the Crusaders - or Franks, the Arabs called them - had extended their reach to the borders of Egypt, where the Fatimids had fallen after two hundred years. There they faced a young man called Salah al-Din (Saladin) who had founded still another new dynasty, the Ayyubids, and who was destined to blunt the thrust of the Crusaders' attack. In 1187 Saladin counterattacked, eventually recapturing Jerusalem. The Europeans mounted a series of further crusading expeditions against the Muslims over the next hundred years or so, but the Crusaders never again recovered the initiative. Confined to the coast, they ruled small areas until their final defeat at the hands of the Egyptian Mamluks at the end of the thirteenth century.

Although the Crusades achieved no lasting results in terms of military conquest, they were important in the development of trade, and their long-range effects on Western society - on everything from feudalism to fashion - are inestimable. Ironically, they also put an end to the centuries-old rivalry between the Arabs and Byzantines. By occupying Constantinople, the capital of their Christian allies, in the Fourth Crusade, the Crusaders achieved what the Arabs had been trying to do from the early days of Islam. Although the Byzantine Empire continued until 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, it never recovered its former power after the Fourth Crusade, and subsisted only in the half-light of history during its remaining years.

For the West, however, the Crusaders' greatest achievement was the opening of the eastern Mediterranean to European shipping. The Venetians and Genoese established trading colonies in Egypt, and luxury goods of the East found their way to European markets. In the history of the Middle Ages, this was far more important than ephemeral conquests. Control of the Eastern trade became a constantly recurring theme in later relations between the European countries and the East, and in the nineteenth century was to lead to widespread Western intervention.

 

In summary:

1.      After the death of Mohammed, the Islamic world was led by the caliphs.

2.      Caliph means “one who comes after.”

3.      The language of the Koran is Arabic.

4.      The Arab language spread as Islam spread to new lands.

5.      The Arabs conquered a large empire.

6.      The Arabs were very interested in learning other cultures.

7.      The Europeans learned the numeral system from the Arab people.

8.      The first Crusade was called by Pope Urban II.

9.      Urban hoped to recapture lands Christians consider holy from Muslims.

10. Crusade means “war for the cross.”

11.  The Crusaders were Christians.

12.  Most of the Crusaders came from Europe.

13.  The Crusades lasted about 117 years.

14.  The Crusaders wanted to capture Jerusalem from the Muslims.

15.  Jerusalem is regarded as a holy city by Christians, Jews and Muslims.

16.  Jerusalem is a part of the modern nation of Israel.

17.  Saladin led the Muslim army that captured Jerusalem in 1187.

18.  Saladin allowed Christians to visit their shrines

19.  By 1291, Muslims controlled all of the lands captured by the Christians in the Crusades.

20. Until 1922, Turkey was ruled by Ottoman sultans.

21.  The Ottoman Turks ruled for over six hundred years.

 

Pope Urban persuaded the knights of Europe to join the Crusades

·        Urban appealed to the knight's religious convictions

·        Urban said Muslim Turks were robbing and torturing Christian pilgrims journeying to the holy land.

·        The war offered knights a chance for glory and wealth.

·        Urban suggested the knights fight Muslims instead of continuing to fight one another.

The Crusades led to an increase in trade in Europe.

·        The Crusaders traveled to new lands and learned of new and interesting cultures.

·        The Crusaders discovered spices that allowed food to last longer and taste better.

·        Europeans wanted the fine cloths manufactured in the Middle East.