crusade

[Jack-inessex]

can someone explain to me the first crusade?

[elpresdentde]

basicly it was and apeal by the byzantine emperor for mercenary troops from the pope. this was misstranslated or missinterpeted to mean a holy war and the wanted to stop knights fighting christians so he used the apeal to launch the crusade.
thats the backround find out the full story at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_crusade

[jno]

Muslims had captured Jerusalem, which was and is holy to Christians (and Muslims, of course); the pope wanted it recaptured for Christianity.

[Clanad]

Trying not be overly pedantic, jno, but I'm sure you know that Jerusalem was actually taken over by the Muslims around 638 BC. A period of about 500 years passed with relative calm and peace in the area until the triggering event of Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim ordering the destruction of over two thousand Christian churches in the area, including the Chruch of the Holy Sepulchre in A.D. 1009. Events in Europe, most notably Spain, played a large part in the decision to launch the First Crusade in 1095 culminating in the re-capture of Jerusalem in 1099... lasting only about 90 years...

[Clanad]

Meant, of course, AD 638...

[jno]

yes, I was just offering the Reader's Digest condensed version there Clanad... for more detail, elpresdentde's Wikipedia link is helpful; if you have a few weeks to spare, Sir Steven Runciman's multi-volume work is the standard history. OUP's Very Short Introduction series of books has one on the Crusades; a copy was recently given away free with the BBC History magazine. Like most big historical events, they had many causes.

[ll_billym]

Great mistake there Clanad!! I read your post 3 times and not made any sense of it before noticing the correction below.