Crusades

 The Crusades By: //**Nandar**// **Introduction**

Did you know about Crusades? The crusades were the holy wars that were fought b etween the Christian and the Muslims. Who started the fight? Of course, the Christians. The Muslims were living in Jerusalem. The Christians thought Jerusalem was their holy land because they said that their god, Jesus, died and went to heaven in Jerusalem. When the Christians arrived at Jerusalem, they saw how wealthy the Muslims were. After for some days, the Christians went back to their land with lots of wealthy things like silk, jewelries, and treasures. After some years, the Christians return to take over Jerusalem. Now the holy war was starting between the two religions. They fought for their religions. It took like about over hundred years. Mostly the Muslims won the holy war.  **Why do they have Crusades? ** Jerusalem was the heart of two most powerful religions: Christians and Muslims. Every year all over the world, people of these two religions paid homage to Jerusalam as Christians believed that it was the place where Jesus was crucified and his tomb, ** the Church of the Holy Sepulchre **, was there, whereas Muslims believed that Muhammad, the most important prophet of their God, visited Heaven from ** the Dome of the Rock ** in Jerusalem. Hence, it became the most holy city for both Cristians and Muslims. In AD 638, Jerusalem fell under the rule of Arabs, who were Muslims leaded by Caliph Umar, and it was ended by the Turkish's invasion in 1076, which was the major cause of Crusades. The reason was that, unlike the Arabs, the Turkish Muslims were not very good to Christian pilgrims and sometimes murdered them. This stopped the Christians from all over the world to visit Jerusalem and made them extremely angry. Moreover, the greedy Turks had even planned to expand their empire towards Europe. Therefore, the Christians from all over the world united and decided to fight the Turks back and to win back the Holy City of Jerusalem from the Muslims. [|1]  [|First Crusade 1095-1099] [|2] [|Second Crusade 1147–1149] [|3] [|Third Crusade 1187–1192] [|4] [|Fourth Crusade 1202–1204] [|5] [|Albigensian Crusade] [|6] [|Children's Crusade] [|7] [|Fifth Crusade 1217–1221] [|8] [|Sixth Crusade 1228–1229] [|9] [|Seventh Crusade 1248–1254] [|10] [|Eighth Crusade 1270] [|11] [|Ninth Crusade 1271–1272] ||
 * ==Time Line of Crusades==

  How did they fight?  <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">The crusaders travelled in a group. They travelled far away for the battles with the enemies. In order to be a knight, they needed lots of money. Poor crusaders often ran out of money quickly, so they couldn’t be a knight but a regular soldier. The knights needed lots of money to buy their armors, weapons and horses. When the knights travelled, they didn’t have real maps. They had no maps at all.They    <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;"> <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 140%;">
 * My Opinion**

I think they shouldn’t fight a single time. Lots of people die and ispread their religion. They fight with lots of knights, soldiers and horses. The knights did most of the fighting in the holy wars. The soldiers were the backups. They don’t really fight. They were just helpers to the knights. What would happen if all the knights had been killed? The soldiers would have to retreat and fight another time with more knights. According to the lords and the king, they are busy giving lands and sharing it, so they can’t help the knights and the soldiers. A commander might control them, like one of the best knight fighter could lead them.