The Crusades--Who started it? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

To answer this question, you have to look closely at chronology and historical context.

Armies, composed of a mixture of Arabs, Persians, and defected Roman federate soldiers, conquered Jerusalem in the mid 7th century. They continued to move west, reaching Spain by the end of the century. These armoes weren't Muslim - they were composed of a mixture of Christians, Jews, and other monotheists, united by their beleif that the end of the world was coming as foretold by a desert prophet. Only in the 690s, with the solidification of Umayyad rule over this new empire, did this group identify itself as a new and separate religion. Islam, like most new religions, took time to develop.

In conquering Jerusalem and much of the Mediterranean coastline, these armies were directly immitating the actions Persian and Roman empires whose land they conquered. They were participating in a long tradition of empires who blended religion and politics, and used this blend to justify military expansion. Persia had recently conquered Jerusalem, and the Byzantine (Roman) emperor had just taken it back. The pre-Muslim army that conquered it next was filled with, among others, Ghassanid soldiers who had served in the Roman army, but who had grown discontent with their treatment and decided to steike out on their own.

This all happened in the 7th century.

The first Crusade was at the very end of the 11th century, roughly 400 years after the rise of Islam. By the time of the first Crusade, the Muslim world had been reorganized several times into new and competing kingdoms; it hadn't remained a united political zone for very long after the initial conquest before breaking apart. Jerusalem had passed through the hands of several empires before the Pope called for its reconquest, and was ruled, in the 11th century, by an empire composed of Turks, not Arabs.

Several political events helped prompt the Crusades - the Byzantine empire was figting armies whose faith was Muslim (because neighbors fought frequently in the middle ages), and the pope may have wanted to tey to improve relations with the Byzantine church by offering political help. But Byzantium's border wars weren't some kind of endless war against the same Muslim force that conquered Jerusalem and Spain 400 years before - this were a new empire (Seljuk) that had also recently conquered Muslim Baghdad and kept going west.

The pope also claimed that pilgrims were having difficulties reaching the holy land on pilgrimage. This complaint responded to the unique circumstances of the 11th century, not those of 400 years before.

And the crusaders also sought to reclaim the Holy Land from its Muslim inhabitants; but this was hardly a reconquest by the 11th century. The Muslims who controlled Jerusalem had been there for 450 years; the city was their home. The Norman armies, who had recently finished conquering Germany, Sicily, and parts of Italy, had no native claim to the city. They were continuing their outward expansion, just like the Seljuks against whom they fought.

The crusades are complex, and the crusaders were motivated by a complex blend of material ambition, religious piety, and social pressures. But you'd be hard pressed to argue that the 11th century inhabitants of Jerusalem 'started it' because an army 400 years before (that hadn't even begun to think of itself as Islamic) had one-upped its aggressive Roman and Persian neighbors and won the game of 7th-century empire building. The two events are very disconnected from each other by chronology and context.