The Crusades are defined as any of the military expeditions undertaken by the Christians of Europe in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries for the recovery of the Holy Land from the Muslims. Western European Christian kingdoms and Islamic kingdoms of the Middle East were in an epic struggle for control over the Holy Lands. The first of the Crusades began in 1095, when armies of Christians from Western Europe responded to Pope Urban II’s plea to go to war against Muslim forces in the Holy Land. Document 14-2 in Sources of World Societies (2012) deals with Pope Urban II’s plea that differs from the actual accounts of the conflict (see Document 14-3 & 14-4). In the following paragraphs I want to analyze and compare the documents with each other.
In 1095, Pope Urban II ruled in the city of Rome. “He saw that people stole worldly goods from one another, that many captives were taken unjustly and were most barbarously cast into foul prisons and ransomed for excessive prices…” (Page 293). In his opinion vacillating faith was the reason for it, so “Urban, greatly moved by compassionate piety and by the prompting of God’s love, crossed the mountains and descended into Gaul and caused a council to be assembled in Auvergne at Clermont…” (Page 294). There, he stated that Christianity has to overcome the evil in the world and …show more content…
As soon as the Christians from the West arrived in the East, they “found no one openly venturing into battle or taking up arms to resist;” (Page 296) but they found destruction: broken signs and statues of Jesus. Document 14-4 describes the reactions of the Christians to that. Zakariya Al-Qazwini claims that the people from the west are Christians with a respectable king, who knows how to protect his cities and faith. His soldiers show courage, but “they are people of perfidy and mean character” (Page 300). Zakariya clearly shows that the Christians are willing to fight and shed