QuillAndQuery

Between the years of 2014 and 2016, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) published an online newsletter entitled Dabiq, named after a city in Syria that that they believed to be the site of the holy battle that will precede the end times. Aimed at recruiting new recruits for their Caliphate, Dabiq pushed a blend of ideological fervor, anti-Western sentiment, and violent religious symbolism. The English editions of these newsletters fronted catchy names including The Flood, The Terror, and most notably for the purposes of this article, The Failed Crusade.

At the risk of giving credit to an organization as unmistakably evil as ISIS, invoking the Crusades was a savvy choice. At the height of their influence, the terrorist group would repeatedly outline their intent to “destroy the Crusaders” at Dabiq before retaking Constantinople (known by most Westerners as Istanbul) before pushing to Rome.

It is a chilling example of how the Crusades still echo through modern conflict. But how did we get here? Why is it that a series of conflicts that began nearly a millennium ago are still an efficient rallying cry for bloodshed today?

That is a complicated question, and to answer it we first need to understand the geo-religious dynamic that led Pope Urban II to raise the most famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) religious army in human history.

The Seljuks and the Fatimids

At the beginning of the 11th century it was the Fatimids who ruled Jerusalem. Though Shia in doctrine, they were mostly tolerant and peaceful toward Christian pilgrims in the city with the notable exception being the order from the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah to demolish the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009. The outrage from Christians led to the church’s partial reconstruction in the mid-11th century. Still, the vast majority of Christians were free to worship in the city as they pleased under the Fatimids.

In 1073, Sunni muslims under the Seljuk Empire conquered the city, rapidly deteriorating the wellbeing of visiting Christians. The Seljuks marched from modern day Turkey and exploited the weak and decentralized Fatimid command structure to seize the city from their Shia rivals. The Seljuk Empire was widely intolerant of non-Muslim visitors and reports of harassment, robbery, and murder of Christian pilgrims spread like wildfire. The Christian church took notice, but was slow to act. Muslim rule over the city was solidified and it seemed the Christian church could do little more than watch.

The Great Schism

The Seljuks were wise to wait until the latter half of the 11th century to take the city, as the united Christian churches likely had the political and military influence to prevent any mistreatment of Christian travelers. That is until 1054, when the Roman Orthodox Church in the West and the Eastern Orthodox Church formally split, largely due to a power struggle between the Roman Pope and the Christian Patriarch of Constantinople.

Eastern Christian leaders saw themselves as equal in power to the Pope in the West. Language and cultural barriers started the divide as Christian teachings and publishings were written in Latin in the West and in Greek and the East. These translations did not always equal one another in meaning and disagreements over the true source of Christian teaching ensued.

In a dramatic bid to assert dominance, Pope Leo IX sent a delegation to Constantinople demanding that the Eastern churches submit to papal authority. The Patriarch denied his demands and as a result, was excommunicated by the Roman Church. The Patriarch excommunicated the Pope in turn and ties between East and West were officially severed in what would become known as the Great Schism.

The situation in the West

We now turn our attention to Western Europe, more specifically the Iberian peninsula (better known as modern day Spain). As early as the 8th century, Christians and Muslims had been vying for control of the peninsula. The Islamic Caliphate of Córdoba controlled the vast majority of the region in the early 10th century, with it’s territory expanding from Catalonia (Northeast Spain) all the way to the Atlantic in the West and the Mediterranean in the South.

In the mid-11th century the Caliphate formally fractured into smaller warring tribes. Christian powers in the region saw this for the opportunity that it was and escalated the war to take back Iberia from their Muslim adversaries. The war for control over Western Europe had been raging for centuries and would go on for centuries more; however, the 11th century escalation in the conflict meant the appetite for religious conquest in the Christian church had never been higher. No one knew it, but the stage was being set for history’s most infamous holy war.

A call to war

Conditions for Christian pilgrims in Seljuk controlled Jerusalem deteriorated rapidly. The most holy of Christian landmarks were becoming inaccessible without risking property, life, and limb. Something had to be done, and no one understood that better than the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos.

As a post-Schism Christian ruler in the East, Alexios surely took no pleasure in the task in front of him. The Church in his Empire had been divided from papal rule for 41 years, and mistrust ran deep. Regardless, he knew he could not face the Seljuks alone. Putting his pride aside, he resolved to ask the West for assistance.

Alexios traveled the Rome and met with none other than Pope Urban II to urge the Roman Catholic Church to raise an army to end Seljuk persecution of Christians. Urban, sensing both opportunity and divine purpose, embraced the call. The formal beginning of the First Crusade would come at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The Pope painted a grim picture of the situation in the East and promised eternal rewards and the remission of sins for anyone who would join him in righting what he saw as a great wrong.

Urban’s army would ignite its march to the holy land within a year. The First Crusade was underway.

More to come

The events that followed shook the world forever. Urban II did not explicitly state the goal of conquering Jerusalem, but we can be sure it was on his mind. Over the centuries to come crusading armies would repeatedly march to conquer and re-conquer the holy land, committing their own fair share of religious persecution in the process.

The Crusades were not set off by a spark, but instead a very long fuse that burned for hundreds of years before exploding in a barrage of religious violence. Even today, groups such as ISIS use the Crusades as historical precedent for their own atrocities. The modern Pope may no longer rally armies, but his predecessor’s words at Clermont are still hauntingly relevant in an age where faith, violence, and history remain deeply entangled.