The First Crusade Essay Research Paper The

The First Crusade Essay, Research Paper

The Start of the First Crusade

The First Crusade was fought because of the change from

Arab to Turkish control over Jerusalem. This change had an

effect on the people that were allowed to live there, and

the beliefs that they could have. Since the city was

important to Christians, Jews, and Muslims, this change

affected very many people. When the change in power

occurred, Jews and Christians were no longer allowed to live

in Jerusalem. Pope Urban II gave a speech to encourage

to volunteer to fight to regain Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is integral to the history of Judaism. David

conquered the city from the Jebusites in the 11th century

BC, and made it the political capital of the Jewish state.

Solomon, his son, made it the religious capital by building

the Temple there in the 10th century BC. The Temple was the

center of religious activity for all Jews until Solomon’s

death, when the kingdom split into Judah and Israel. (Pernoud

114) The Jews in Judah continued with the Temple

as their religious center, while the Jews in Israel to the

north attempted to build new religious centers that could

never quite replace Jerusalem’s Temple. The Temple was

destroyed in 586 BC by Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian ruler,

who razed the city and exiled most of the Jewish population

from Jerusalem. In 536 BC, the Persian Empire, which

conquered the Babylonians, allowed the Jews to return and

construction began on a new Temple. About 500 years later,

under the leadership of Herod the Great, Jerusalem rose to

prominence in the Roman Empire, with a lavish new Temple and

a cosmopolitan nature. After Herod’s death, the Jews

rebelled and the Temple was burned by invading Roman armies

in 70 AD. In 135 AD, the Jews revolted again and the Roman

Emperor Hadrian exiled them from the city. This time, they

were gone for 500 years, until the Muslim capture of the

city in 638 AD finally introduced a regime in Jerusalem that

would allow them to return.

While the Temple existed, pilgrimage to Jerusalem was a

duty to Jews. (Jerusalem) They visited on Passover, Pentecost

and Tabernacles. Following its final destruction and their exile,

pilgrimage became impossible. Muslim rule opened the

doors to Jews wishing to live in and visit the Holy City.

Following the Crusaders’ conquer of Jerusalem, the city was

closed to them for nearly 10 years. But for a people who had

lived in this city for more than 2000 years, a decade was

not a long time to wait.

In the Christian mind, Jerusalem exists both in the

physical and spiritual world. It is an actual city, with

human inhabitants, but it is also a spiritual place where

Christ was crucified and resurrected. (Phillips 104) Almost

all of the Christian holy sites in the city are places where

Christ spent the last days of his life, or where he was killed,

buried or resurrected. Those not directly related to Jesus’s

life are often connected to his family; Many shrines are

devoted to his mother Mary, and there is even one for his

grandparents. (Jerusalem)

Christianity arrived in Jerusalem along with Christ,

and after his death, it was where the movement spread from.

The Byzantine Empire brought a breath of new life to

Christianity in Jerusalem in 326 AD. The emperor of the

Byzantine Empire, Constantine, was a Christian convert and a

strong supporter of holy sites in Jerusalem. (Lamb 208) His

mother, the Empress Helena, is traditionally believed to have

discovered the cave which contained the True Cross and the nails

which held Christ to it. In honor of this discovery, Constantine

ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to be built on the

spot. Later Byzantine emperors more or less continued the

tradition of Christianity and support for Jerusalem’s holy

sites. Numerous churches were constructed during the 300

years that the Byzantine Empire had control of Jerusalem,

and the city took on a distinctively Christian feel.

Christianity was the dominant religion in Jerusalem until

the arrival of the Muslims in 638 AD. It would be over 450

years until the city was ruled by Christians again. (Muslim

Jerusalem) The Crusaders’ arrival was the beginning of a new

period of Christian dominance in the Holy City.

Jerusalem holds an honored place in Islam too. It is a

place rich in ideological, mythic, and historical importance.

From an ideological standpoint, the city’s importance is

unparalleled.

The most important of these virtues attributed to Jerusalem

is was the one asserting that Bayt al-Maqdis (Arabic for

Jerusalem) is the place of the second and final hijira (the

first hijira being to Medina). Jerusalem is the place of the

Resurrection, where, on the eve of th

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