Notes on the Crusades
the first, 1095-1101; Pope Urban II and the capture of Jerusalem
the second, headed by Louis VII (St. Bernard of Clairvaux), 1145-47; Shi’ia to the southwest, Sunni to Southeath, Seljuk Turks to the East, Constantinople at the rear.
the third, conducted by Philip Augustus and Richard Coeur-de-Lion, 1188-92; after Saladin retook Jerusalem, and killed King of Jerusalem Renaud de Châtillon by his own hand. All Muslims united under Saladin. Pope Gregory VIII united Europeans. Siege of Syrian coastal city Acre lasted two years.
the fourth, during which Constantinople was taken, 1204; Pope Innocent III focused all attention on retaking Jerusalem but intrigue undermined this goal, with Pope losing control of the Crusades. Thibaut IV, count of Champagne decided to attack Egypt without consulting the Pope. Isaac Angelus, the dethroned Emperor of the dethroned Emperor of Constantinople had sought refuge/help from West, while Pope Innocent negotiated with pretender/usurper Alexius III to reconcile with Rome and fight for Jerusalem. Boniface of Montferrat replaced Thibault on his death, and with Philip of Swabia (brother-in-law of Isaac Angelus) turned the Crusaders away from Jerusalem towards Constantinople. This is the crusade that started the trend of bad behavior by the Europeans that gave a bad name to the crusades.
Background to First Crusade
Long history of Europeans going on pilgrimage to Holy Land, either to visit the Holy Places or to follow the ascetic life among the monks of the Thebaid or Sinai.
385 AD St. Jerome and St. Paula founded the first Latin monasteries at Bethlehem
~580AD The Itinerary of St. Silvia (Mother of Pope St. Gregory the Great, born ~515; died about 592) shows the organization of these expeditions, which were directed by clerics and escorted by armed troops.
600 AD, St. Gregory the Great had a hospice erected in Jerusalem for the accommodation of pilgrims, sent alms to the monks of Mount Sinai, and, although the deplorable condition of Eastern Christendom after the Arab invasion rendered this intercourse more difficult, it did not by any means cease.
614 AD Persians capture Jerusalem under Shaharbarz, the son-in-law of Chosroes (Khusru) II, King of Persia with help of 26,000 Jews. 90,000 Christians killed. Relic of True cross taken to Persia
Modestus, Abbot of the monastery of St. Theodosius in the desert to the south, acting apparently as vicar for the captured patriarch, had already begun modest restoration the shrines around the Holy Sepulchre, including the round Anastasis.
622AD Roman Emperor Heraclius drives Persians out,
628AD Persians defeated, Relic of True cross returned
629AD Heraclius visits Jerusalem to venerate relic of true cross, reinstates ban of Hadrian on Jews in Jerusalem. Brief period of peace and rebuilding.
632AD 8 June Mohammed dies, Omar and Abu Bakr found Muslim Caliphate in opposition to Ali (Fatima’s husband). 1st Abu Bakr, 2nd Omar (Ali served Omar as Judge of Medina), 3rd Uthman (assassinated), 4th Ali (656-661 the first Fitna or civil war)
636AD Moslem army of Abu-'Ubaidah attacked (with OK from Omar). After 4 months of resistance, St. Sophronius the Patriarch of Jerusalem negotiating directly with Abu-'Ubaidah, proposing to capitulate on fair and honourable terms; the Christians were to keep their churches and sanctuaries, no one was to be forced to accept Islam, and Abu-'Ubaidah signed the treaty personally, entering the city with St. Sophronius, "and courteously discoursed with the patriarch concerning its religious antiquities" (Gibbon, ci, ed. Bury, London, 1898, V, 436). It is said that when the hour for his prayer came he was in the Anastasis, but refused to say it there, lest in future times the Moslems should make that an excuse for breaking the treaty and confiscating the church.
Jerusalem is known to Moslems as Al-Kuds, the third holiest place in Islam after Mecca and Medina.
656AD Ali victorious at Battle of Bassorah (Basra, Iraq)
661AD Ali assassinated in Kufa by Kharijite Ab-al-Rahman ibn Muljam. Muawiyah become Caliph, establishing Umayyad Caliph. Ali’s son Hasan becomes leader of Kufi muslims. Umayyad highhandedness, misrule and repression were gradually to turn the minority of Ali's admirers into a majority. Ali considered 1st Shi’ia Caliph, Hasan 2nd.
684-705AD, during the reign of the fifth Ommaid caliph, at Damascus
People of Iraq revolt and block access to Mecca and Medina, so Caliph 'Abd-al-malik resolved to make Jerusalem a centre of pilgrimage
691AD 'Abd-al-malik has Byzantine architects build "Dome of the Rock" mosque in the middle of the Temple area. It is an eight-sided building crowned with a dome, covered outside with marble and most beautiful many-coloured tiles, certainly one of the most splendid monuments of architecture in the world. It stands over a great flat rock, probably the place of the old altar of holocausts
661-750AD Caliphs of Damascus rule Jerusalam, St. John Damascene holds an important office in their court
732AD Charles Martel stops Mohammedan invaders at Pointiers (near Lyon)
786-809AD Abbasid Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd English: Aaron the Upright, Aaron the Just, or Aaron the Rightly Guided; March 17, 763 – March 24, 809) was the fifth and most famous Abbasid Caliph. He was born in Rayy, near Tehran, Iran, and lived in Baghdad, Iraq and most of his reign was in Ar Raqqah at the middle Euphrates.
Gives Charlemagne the ‘keys’ to the Holy Sepulcher.
Source Einhard “The life of Charlemagne” written ~832AD
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/einhard.html
“His relations with Aaron [ie Harun Al-Rashid, 786-809], King of the Persians, who ruled over almost the whole of the East, India excepted, were so friendly that this prince preferred his favor to that of all the kings and potentates of the earth, and considered that to him alone marks of honor and munificence were due. Accordingly, when the ambassadors sent by Charles to visit the most holy sepulcher and place of resurrection of our Lord and Savior presented themselves before him with gifts, and made known their master's wishes, he not only granted what was asked, but gave possession of that holy and blessed spot. When they returned, he dispatched his ambassadors with them, and sent magnificent gifts, besides stuffs, perfumes, and other rich products of the Eastern lands.. A few years before this, Charles had asked him for an elephant, and he sent the only one that he had.”
903-904AD sect of the Karamita (Carmathians) devastate Syria, seize Mecca and prevent pilgrims from going there from 929 to 950, increasing pilgrimages to Jerusalem.
962AD Roman(Constantinople) Emperor Nicephorus Phocas with 100,000 men attacks Aleppo in N. Syria.
968AD Phocas reconquered Antioch. Christians in Jerusalem of course support this, and of course Moslems punish Christians for this support.
969AD Jerusalem Patriarch John VII put to death for treasonable correspondence with the Romans. - Seljuk Turks begin pouring into area after conversion to Islam. - Mu-'ezz-li-Din-Allah, the fourth Fatimide Caliph in Egypt, conquered Jerusalem in the same year.
1009 AD Hakem, (Al-Hakim bi-amr-Allah) 6th Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, in a fit of madness ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre and all the Christian establishments in Jerusalem. For years thereafter Christians were cruelly persecuted. (See the recital of an eyewitness, Iahja of Antioch, in Schlumberger's "Epopée byzantine", II, 442.) In 1027 the Frankish protectorate was overthrown and replaced by that of the Byzantine emperors, to whose diplomacy was due the reconstruction of the Holy Sepulchre. The Christian quarter was even surrounded by a wall, and some Amalfi merchants, vassals of the Greek emperors, built hospices in Jerusalem for pilgrims, e.g. the Hospital of St. John, cradle of the Order of Hospitallers. Instead of diminishing, the enthusiasm of Western Christians for the pilgrimage to Jerusalem seemed rather to increase during the eleventh century. Not only princes, bishops, and knights, but even men and women of the humbler classes undertook the holy journey (Radulphus Glaber, IV, vi). Whole armies of pilgrims traversed Europe, and in the valley of the Danube hospices were established where they could replenish their provisions.
William of Tyre (1130-1186) cites the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcre by Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah as a reason for the 1st Crusade.
1026 AD Richard, Abbot of Saint-Vannes, led 700 pilgrims into Palestine at the expense of Richard II, Duke of Normandy.
1064-1065 Great German Pilgrimage suffered attacks from local Muslims (The Crusades; A History pp1012 by Jonathan Riley-Smith)
1070 AD Seljuk Turks capture Jerusalem
1071 Romanos IV Diogenes, the Greek emperor defeated and made captive at battle of Mantzikert by the Seljik Turk leader Alp Arslan on Aug. 26
1084 Antioch falls to Seljuk Turks.
1092 All Asia Minor but Constantinople fall to the Turks.
On the basis of contemporary Jewish Cairo Geniza documents, as well as later Muslim accounts, Moshe Gil argues that the Seljuk conquest and occupation of Palestine (c. 1073–1098) was a period of "slaughter and vandalism, of economic hardship, and the uprooting of populations".
1095 Pope Urban II, "On beholding the enormous injury that all, clergy or people, brought upon the Christian Faith . . . at the news that the Rumanian provinces had been taken from the Christians by the Turks, moved with compassion and impelled by the love of God, he crossed the mountains and descended into Gaul" (Foucher de Chartres, I, in "Histoire des Crois.", III, 321).
November 1095 Council of Clermont – On 27 November, the pope himself addressed the assembled multitudes, exhorting them to go forth and rescue the Holy Sepulchre. Amid wonderful enthusiasm and cries of "God wills it!" (Deus vult - Dieu le veut) all rushed towards the pontiff to pledge themselves by vow to depart for the Holy Land and receive the cross of red material to be worn on the shoulder.
1096 First disorganized, undisciplined, penniless hordes (one lead by the Picard), almost destitute of equipment, who, surging eastward through the valley of the Danube, plundered as they went along and murdered the Jews in the German cities. One of these bands, headed by Folkmar, a German cleric, was slaughtered by the Hungarians. Peter the Hermit, however, and the German knight, Walter the Pennyless (Gautier Sans Avoir), finally reached Constantinople with their disorganized troops. To save the city from plunder Alexius Comnenus ordered them to be conveyed across the Bosporus (August, 1096); in Asia Minor they turned to pillage and were nearly all slain by the Turks. Can you say wastrels?
1096AD Dec. 23 – Godfrey of Bouillon from lower Lorraine arrives after following Danube through Hungry
1097 April Raymond of Toulouse arrives with Adhemar, Bishop of Puy-en-Velay in France, apostolic Legate to the Crusade, the Spiritual leader and “glue” for the endeavor.
1097 AD May, Hugh of Vermandois, brother of King Philip I of France, Robert Courte-Heuse, Duke of Normandy (son of William the Conqueror), and Count Stephen of Blois arrive in Constantinople after travelling to Southern Italy and sailing from Puglia (Bari) to Albania (Dyrrhachium or Durrës), then travelling by land across Thessalonica.
1097 the Normans of Southern Italy with Tancred and his uncle Bohemond of Taranto arrive April 26
1097 June 1 Crusaders laid siege to the city of Nicæa, but Alexius negotiated with the Turks, had the city delivered to him, and prohibited the crusaders from entering it
1097 July 1 Crusader Victory in the battle of Dorylæum
1097 Oct. 20 Crusaders arrive at fortified (walled with 450 towers) and well-provisioned Antioch in Syria. Carpenters and engineers who belonged to a Genoese fleet that had arrived at the mouth of the Orontes, the crusaders were enabled to construct battering-machines
1098 Edessa captured, kept by Crusaders until 1144 when Turk Zengi killed most all of its inhabitants including the Latin archbishop.
1098 June 2, Antioch captured. Hugh Vermandois sent to Constantinople to ask for reinforcements. None given, Hugh goes back to France. Killed in minor Crusade of 1101 at Tarsus. Bohemond stayed in Antioch to solidify his claim to it, only going to Jerusalem by Christmas of 1099.
June 3 Kerbûga, Ameer of Mosul attacks Crusaders inside Antioch. Repulsed by June 28 after Holy Lance “found”.
Adhemar dies of typhus, but many foot soldiers continue to think of him as their Spiritual leader, some claiming to see his ghost during the siege of Jerusalem – the ghost instructed them to circle the walls of Jerusalem once more -
April 1099 March to Jerusalem starts after infighting between Raymond and Bohemond over who would rule Antioch
June 7 1099 siege of Jerusalem begins. Genoese fleet arrived at Jaffa and, as at Antioch, furnished the engineers necessary for a siege. After a general procession which the crusaders made barefooted around the city walls amid the insults and incantations of Mohammedan sorcerers, the attack began 14 July, 1099. Next day the Christians entered Jerusalem from all sides and slew its inhabitants regardless of age or sex.*
July 1099 Jerusalem captured. Having accomplished their pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, the knights chose as lord of the new conquest Godfrey of Bouillon, who called himself "Defender of the Holy Sepulchre". They had then to repulse an Egyptian army, which was defeated at Ascalon, 12 August, 1099. Their position was nevertheless very insecure. Alexius Comnenus threatened the principality of Antioch, and in 1100 Bohemond himself was made prisoner by the Turks, while most of the cities on the coast were still under Mohammedan control. Before his death, 29 July, 1099, Urban II once more proclaimed the crusade. In 1101 three expeditions crossed Europe under the leadership of Count Stephen of Blois, Duke William IX of Aquitaine, and Welf IV, Duke of Bavaria. All three managed to reach Asia Minor, but were massacred by the Turks. On his release from prison Bohemond attacked the Byzantine Empire, but was surrounded by the imperial army and forced to acknowledge himself the vassal of Alexius. On Bohemond's death, however, in 1111, Tancred refused to live up to the treaty and retained Antioch. Godfrey of Bouillon died at Jerusalem 18 July, 1100. His brother and successor, Baldwin of Edessa, was crowned King of Jerusalem in the Basilica of Bethlehem, 25 December, 1100. In 1112, with the aid of Norwegians under Sigurd Jorsalafari and the support of Genoese, Pisan, and Venetian fleets, Baldwin I began the conquest of the ports of Syria, which was completed in 1124 by the capture of Tyre. Ascalon alone kept an Egyptian garrison until 1153
*Many Muslims sought shelter in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, and the Temple Mount area generally. According to the Gesta Francorum, speaking only of the Temple Mount area, "...[our men] were killing and slaying even to the Temple of Solomon, where the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles..." According to Raymond of Aguilers, also writing solely of the Temple Mount area, " in the Temple and porch of Solomon men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins." However, this imagery should not be taken literally; it was taken directly from biblical passage Apocalypse 14:20.[4] Writing about the Temple Mount area alone Fulcher of Chartres, who was not an eyewitness to the Jerusalem siege because he had stayed with Baldwin in Edessa at the time, says: "In this temple 10,000 were killed. Indeed, if you had been there you would have seen our feet coloured to our ankles with the blood of the slain. But what more shall I relate? None of them were left alive; neither women nor children were spared".[5] The slaughter of large numbers of Muslims on the Temple Mount is sometimes dubiously projected into the entire city, with some modern commentators claiming that all or almost all of the inhabitants of the city were killed. There is no eyewitness evidence for such a wholesale slaughter outside the Temple Mount area.
The eyewitness Gesta Francorum states that some people managed to escape the siege unharmed. Its anonymous author wrote, "When the pagans had been overcome, our men seized great numbers, both men and women, either killing them or keeping them captive, as they wished."[6] Later the same source writes, "[Our leaders] also ordered all the Saracen dead to be cast outside because of the great stench, since the whole city was filled with their corpses; and so the living Saracens dragged the dead before the exits of the gates and arranged them in heaps, as if they were houses. No one ever saw or heard of such slaughter of pagan people, for funeral pyres were formed from them like pyramids, and no one knows their number except God alone." [7]
Another eyewitness source, Raymond of Aguilers, suggests that some Muslims survived. After recounting the slaughter on the Temple Mount he reports of some who "took refuge in the Tower of David, and, petitioning Count Raymond for protection, surrendered the Tower into his hands." These Muslims left with the Fatimid governor for Ascalon. [9] A version of this tradition is also known to the later Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir (10, 193-95), who recounts that after the city was taken and pillaged: "A band of Muslims barricaded themselves into the Oratory of David (Mihrab Dawud) and fought on for several days. They were granted their lives in return for surrendering. The Franks honoured their word, and the group left by night for Ascalon."[10] One Cairo Geniza letter also refers to some Jewish residents who left with the Fatimid governor.[11]
Tancred claimed the Temple quarter for himself and offered protection to some of the Muslims there, but he was unable to prevent their deaths at the hands of his fellow Crusaders. The eyewitness Gesta Francorum states that some people managed to escape the siege unharmed. Its anonymous author wrote, "When the pagans had been overcome, our men seized great numbers, both men and women, either killing them or keeping them captive, as they wished."[6] Later the same source says, "[Our leaders] also ordered all the Saracen dead to be cast outside because of the great stench, since the whole city was filled with their corpses; and so the living Saracens dragged the dead before the exits of the gates and arranged them in heaps, as if they were houses. No one ever saw or heard of such slaughter of pagan people, for funeral pyres were formed from them like pyramids, and no one knows their number except God alone. But Raymond caused the Emir and the others who were with him to be conducted to Ascalon, whole and unhurt."[12] The other eyewitness source, Raymond of Aguilers, also reports that Raymond allowed some Muslims to leave unharmed: "[they] took refuge in the Tower of David, and, petitioning Count Raymond for protection, surrendered the Tower into his hands." [13] A version of this tradition is also known to the later Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir (10, 193-95), who recounts that after the city was taken and pillaged: "A band of Muslims barricaded themselves into the Oratory of David (Mihrab Dawud) and fought on for several days. They were granted their lives in return for surrendering. The Franks honoured their word, and the group left by night for Ascalon." [14]
Although the Crusaders killed many of the Muslim and Jewish residents, eyewitness accounts (Gesta Francorum, Raymond of Aguilers, and the Cairo Geniza documents) demonstrate that some Muslim and Jewish residents were allowed to live, as long as they left Jerusalem.[15] All modern estimates of the numbers actually killed in Jerusalem after the Crusader siege are entirely speculative; the primary sources from the period simply do not allow a reliable estimate to be made.
Thomas Asbridge, U.London wrote The First Crusade, a New History, “Greed is unlikely to have been a major factor because of the extremely high cost of travelling so far from home, and because almost all of the crusaders eventually returned home after completing their pilgrimage, rather than trying to carve out possessions for themselves in the Holy Land.”
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