21 Facts About Crusades

Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period.

The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were intended to recover Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Islamic rule.

Crusades encouraged military support for Byzantine emperor AlexiosI against the Seljuk Turks and called for an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Crusades differed from other Christian religious wars in that they were considered a penitential exercise, and so earned participants forgiveness for all confessed sins.

Crusades was lying in state for five days, before his burial at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

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Crusades died in 1111, leaving Tancred as regent to his son Bohemond II, who ignored the treaty.

Crusades defeated Fulk at the Battle of Ba'rin of 1137, seizing Ba'rin Castle.

Crusades undertook a series of four invasions of Egypt from 1163 to 1169, taking advantage of weaknesses of the Fatimids.

Crusades's death caused several thousand German soldiers to leave the force and return home.

Crusades withdrew his legate to disassociate from the attack but seemed to have accepted it as inevitable.

Crusades offered to surrender the kingdom of Jerusalem, less the fortresses of al-Karak and Krak de Montreal, guarding the road to Egypt, in exchange for the evacuation of Egypt.

Crusades sent his emissaries to inform Gregory IX of the situation, but the pope did not care about Frederick's illness, just that he had not lived up to his agreement.

Crusades's life was spared, and as soon as his health permitted him, he took the cross and immediately began preparations.

Crusades forged a document which appointed his son al-Muazzam Turanshah, then in Syria, as heir and Fakhr ad-Din as viceroy.

Crusades supported King Manfred of Sicily's failed resistance to the attack of Charles and the papacy.

The Crusades strengthened exchanges between oriental and occidental economic spheres.

Crusades created national mythologies, tales of heroism, and a few place names.

Historiography of the Crusades is concerned with their "history of the histories" during the Crusader period.

The histories describing the Crusades are broadly of three types: The primary sources of the Crusades, which include works written in the medieval period, generally by participants in the Crusade or written contemporaneously with the event, letters and documents in archives, and archaeological studies; secondary sources, beginning with early consolidated works in the 16th century and continuing to modern times; and tertiary sources, primarily encyclopedias, bibliographies and genealogies.

The primary sources for the Crusades are generally presented in the individual articles on each Crusade and summarized in the list of sources for the Crusades.

The secondary sources of the Crusades began in the 16th century, with the first use of the term crusades was by 17th century French historian Louis Maimbourg in his Histoire des Croisades pour la delivrance de la Terre Sainte.