The Crusades, attempting to check this advance, initially enjoyed success, founding a Christian state in Palestine and Syria, but the continued growth of Islamic states ultimately reversed those gains. Crusading declined rapidly during the 16th century with the advent of the Protestant Reformation and the decline of papal authority.Īpproximately two-thirds of the ancient Christian world had been conquered by Muslims by the end of the 11th century, including the important regions of Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Anatolia. Between 1095, when the First Crusade was launched, and 1291, when the Latin Christians were finally expelled from their kingdom in Syria, there were numerous expeditions to the Holy Land, to Spain, and even to the Baltic the Crusades continued for several centuries after 1291. Their objectives were to check the spread of Islam, to retake control of the Holy Land in the eastern Mediterranean, to conquer pagan areas, and to recapture formerly Christian territories they were seen by many of their participants as a means of redemption and expiation for sins. The capture of Acre in 1291 by the Māmluk sultan al-Ashraf Khalil marked the end of Crusader rule in the Middle East.Ĭrusades, military expeditions, beginning in the late 11th century, that were organized by western European Christians in response to centuries of Muslim wars of expansion.

None of the following Crusades were successful. The Fourth Crusade-rather than attacking Egypt, then the centre of Muslim power-sacked the Byzantine Christian city of Constantinople. Richard signed a peace treaty with Saladin allowing Christians access to Jerusalem. The Third Crusade, called after the sultan Saladin conquered the Crusader state of Jerusalem, resulted in the capture of Cyprus and the successful siege of Acre (now in Israel), and Richard I’s forces defeated those of Saladin at the Battle of Arsūf and at Jaffa. However, after the Muslim leader Zangī captured one of them, the Second Crusade, called in response, was defeated at Dorylaeum (near Nicaea) and failed in an attempt to conquer Damascus. The Crusaders conquered Nicaea (in Turkey) and Antioch and then went on to seize Jerusalem, and they established a string of Crusader-ruled states.

The First Crusade, called in response to a request for help from the Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus, was astonishingly successful.

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