Western Civilization.p

Medieval Religion and Thought165

The Struggle for the Holy Land

Christian successes in Spain and Sicily were greeted
with enthusiasm throughout Europe. When added to
the great wave of piety unleashed by the Cluniac re-
forms, they raised the prospect of a general offensive
against the Muslim infidel. In 1095 Pope Urban II pro-
claimed a crusade to free Jerusalem and the Holy Land
from Muslim control. The privileges and indulgences
were similar to those granted earlier in Spain (see docu-
ment 9.4), but Urban’s decision was rooted in the
complexities of Middle Eastern politics.
Turkish tribes, most of them converts to Islam, were
beginning their long migration from the steppes of cen-
tral Asia into the lands of the Greek empire. One such
group, called the Seljuks after the name of their ruling
family, defeated the armies of Byzantium and seized
control of eastern Anatolia at the battle of Manzikert in

1071. Alarmed, the Byzantine emperors hinted deli-
      cately at the reunification of the eastern and western
      churches if only the west would come to their aid.
      Twenty years later, the death of the Abbasid sultan
      of Baghdad, Malek Shah, inaugurated a civil war among
      his emirs in Syria and Palestine. The disorder was such
      that Christian pilgrims could no longer visit the Holy
      Land in safety. This was intolerable, especially when Is-
      lam seemed elsewhere in retreat. The disintegration of
      the Caliphate of Córdoba, the expulsion of the Mus-

lims from the Balearic Islands in 1087, and the chaos in

Syria could only encourage the dream of liberating

Jerusalem and perhaps of uniting all Christendom under

papal rule.

The proclamation of the First Crusade was met

with more enthusiasm than the pope had anticipated.

Thousands of European men and women were prepared

to leave their homes and travel to fight in an unknown

and hostile land. Their motives were in large part pious,

but they had other reasons as well. The social pressures

that had produced the Norman expansion were still at

work throughout the feudal world. Younger sons hoped

to claim Middle Eastern lands as their own, and an in-

creasing number of landless peasants were happy to ac-

company them. Princes in turn were happy to see them

go. The martial enthusiasm of the feudal classes had

produced an alarming number of local wars. The

church tried unsuccessfully to restrain them by pro-

claiming the Truce of God, which attempted to restrict

fighting to certain days of the week. The Crusades pro-

vided an acceptable outlet for these energies. In a

broader sense they justified the continuing privileges of

a feudal class that no longer had an external threat to

combat.

Though the Christian command was deeply di-

vided, Jerusalem fell to the Christians on July 15, 1099.

The Muslim and Jewish population of the city was

Atlantic

Ocean

Mediterranean Sea

Ebro

R.

Tagus R.

Gua

dianaR.

Valencia

Granada

Córdoba

Lisbon Toledo Barcelona

Rome

Palermo

Tunis

Algiers

Corsica

Sardinia

CAT

ALO

NIA

PORTUGAL

LEON

NAVARRE

ARAGON

CASTILE

SICILY

ANDALUSIA

Pyre

nees

Mts.

Douro R. 0 200 400 Miles

0 200 400 600 Kilometers

Christian reconquests, 1000–1100

Christian reconquests, 1100–1250

Christian reconquests, 1492

MAP 9.1

Christian Reconquests in the Western Mediterranean