History

The Crusades were no doubt a series of events that altered world history as we know. To this day, the Crusades and their after-effects live on in the consciousness of Arabs, Europeans, and Americans alike. This is because the Crusades are largely remembered as an extremely brutal series of wars between “Christendom” and the “Islamic world”, which is alive in today’s political rhetoric. As right-wing pundits like to put it, today there is a “clash of civilizations” between the Christian West and the Arab Middle East, although this view is rooted in bigotry and ignorance. The first Crusade culminated in the siege of Jerusalem which saw the mass slaughter of the city’s Muslim and Jewish inhabitants at the hands of Frankish crusaders. This article will explore some of the political and cultural origins that led to this tremendously important event.