How Did The Christian Crusades End?

How did the Crusades end? Were Christians or Catholics that were responsible, or the Muslims?

The Crusaders

Who were the Crusaders? Where they Protestants? Were they Anglicans or were they Catholics? Or, was it all of them combined? The Crusades were a series of military campaigns to reclaim the holy land back from the Muslims who had invaded and conquered the area. After Christians from Western Europe responded to Pope Urban II’s plea to go to war in 1095 against Muslim forces in the Holy Land, they were able to regain control over Jerusalem by 1099, although they would lose it again. When Christians set up several Latin Christian states in the 1000’s, Muslims in the region vowed to wage holy war (jihad) to regain control over the region. It was never the Crusaders who went into the lands where the Muslims lived to kill and destroy but rather the Muslims who came into where Christianity had been established and where hundreds of churches were burned and Christians were either put under subjugation, tortured, burned, beheaded, and many murdered. This battle lasted more than 200 years and with the help of Egyptians forces, the Islamic forces drove the Crusaders out of Palestine and Syria by 1291. The Crusaders simply lacked the power to remove the Muslims, at least for a time.

From Weakness to Power

Western Europe was not able to remove and retake the lands that the Muslims had captured until about the end of the 11th century when they finally had power enough to move against the Muslims. There were five major campaigns of the Crusades which were bent on removing the Muslims from Jerusalem and surrounding areas that were previously non-Muslim lands like the Middle East and North Africa. By the 1tth century, there were millions of Christians living throughout the region. The Crusades were thought necessary because as early as 638, the Islamic armies had pushed into Italy, Spain, and even France. Jerusalem had been held by Islam for more than four hundred years and the Muslims had not only been holding Jerusalem but they had subjugated most of the Christians living there and throughout the lands that the Muslims had captured.

The Last Crusades

The fifth major crusade was led by the Holy Roman emperor, Frederick II. He was able to gain control of Jerusalem by negotiating with the Islamic forces, promising them free access to the city but also free access for Christians and Jews and not just Muslims. Christians held the city for the last time from 1229 to 1244 when Frederick was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for his compromise. Who started this war where the Crusaders felt compelled to retake the holy lands? Most historians agree that Islam initiated the wars against Christian lands and were savagely brutal to the Christians in the war. Islam continued its aggressive war against the West for centuries, well after the end of the Christian Crusades, however today many Muslims continue to view Christianity as a violent religion and project their Islamic convictions that religion and state should be united in the West, although you don’t see pictures of Christians burning Mosques or beheading Muslims. Conversely, we see plenty of this from Islam, still spouting that it’s a religion of peace.

Backdoor Invasion

In 1258, as the Islamic forces were destroying Christian churches and forcing Christians to be subjugated to them or murdering them by the thousands, the Muslims had unexpected visitors from the north in the form of Mongolians who brought Mongols, Turkic’s, Persians, Chinese, and even Georgian troops as they invaded the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. After a two week siege they destroyed it, however later the Egyptian Mamluks overtook the Mongols, pushing them back into the mountains and back into upper Asia. Since the Mongols were forced to withdraw from Syria with the majority of his army, the Mongols never again threatened the Islamic forces. The Mongols had diverted the Islamic forces and slowed them down for a time but they are determined, as their book says to assimilate the world and install Sharia Law as being mandatory.

Conclusion

The Crusades were never out to exterminate the Muslims or the Islamic faith and they never took what was not their land but only reclaimed it for the previous residents, but they also never burned Mosques as the Muslims did churches, and at times even locking Christians inside the church and burning them alive. Of course we can pass around a lot of blame for what’s done in the past but it does no good to try and blame Christians or Muslims living today for what happened hundreds of years ago. We weren’t there; therefore, we’re not responsible for what others did in the past. We are only responsible for those things that we do in our life, therefore we need to drop the gavel; case dismissed.

Article by Jack Wellman

Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren Church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Teaching Children the Gospel available on Amazon.