by Marie Antonia Parsons

Created on: December 17, 2009

The First Crusade occurred between 1095 and 1099. It began with the plea from Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus I to the Pope in Rome and the Western nations to send him help against the encroaching Seljuk Turks. It ended when the European Crusaders captured Jerusalem.

It seems inadequate to point to one brief clarion call to action. Motives and the events that inspired those motives, mistakes, errors and grand designs must also be analyzed to reach better understanding of the WHY a thing happened.

The Near East had become united under a Muslim banner. Jerusalem had surrendered to the Arab advance in 638. By 646 Syria and Egypt were also Muslim. The Byzantine Empire, descendant of the Roman, was losing its eastern territories. Even Constantinople was besieged twice in 674 and 717.

The Byzantine forces, still strong, were able to take back many of the cities in the Levant, as Muslim rulers were as fractured as were the Europeans and Byzantines. Perhaps if they had not been distracted by political infighting within the Byzantine nobility and royal house, the Byzantines might have found common unity with the Europeans and consolidated their strength to maintain a strong presence in the Levant.  In any case, they stopped short of attacking and capturing Jerusalem. That would have to wait.

Under Byzantine Emperor Basil II, the Empire had experienced a resurgence of power, almost doubling in size. Unfortunately he had left no heir, and his successors were chosen by the court bureaucrats to be only weak and pliable. The empire began to wither and weaken, exacerbated by a final religious schism between the Roman Church and the Byzantine Orthodox in 1054. The empire, once able to refuse demands from the Muslim Fatimids in Egypt, was now alone. Even the local militias that had guarded its frontiers had been disbanded.

Then the Seljuk Turks broke on the scene, moving from the east. They were nomads, used to marauding. They replaced the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad in 1055, and by 1067 they were virtually unopposed as they looted through Armenia. Emperor Romanus Diogenes pushed them back once across the Euphrates, but instead of this garnering him support, the aristocracy instead feared his strength. Then he met the Turks at Manzikert, and his army was defeated and he was captured and humbled in 1071. In truth, the Turkish sultan had offered terms, but the Byzantine nobles had refused. Even after, their continued infighting unleashed civil war throughout the Empire. 

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