The Crusades

The Crusades would shape Islamic attitudes toward the West for centuries, so much so that it was noted that George Bush should never have used the term with reference to the War on Terror because of the bad feelings involved. In the eleventh century, much of the Moslem world was under siege from the Seljuk Turks. The Moslems were in control of the Holy Lands, the seat of Christianity, and in the eleventh century European Christians undertook the Crusades to recapture the Holy lands, notably the city of Jerusalem. The Crusaders saw their opportunity because of the dissension within the Moslem world itself. There were divisions within the Christian world as well, notably the splitting off of the Byzantine Empire as the Holy Roman Empire disintegrated. The Greeks were in power in the East, and the remnants of the Latin factions were in power in the west. The...
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