The Crusades

Catalog description

This course examines an important, but little understood, episode in European, Islamic, and Jewish history, the Crusades. Topics include: concepts of “just war” and the religious importance of the Holy Land; the appearance of the Seljuk Turks in the eastern Mediterranean; Urban II, the First Crusade, and the establishment of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem; Saladin’s recovery of Jerusalem, and the Second and Third Crusades; the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople; crusading in the 13th century; and crusading in Spain, southern France and the Baltic. This course will emphasize primary sources written by Christians, Muslims, and Jews in an effort to understand how medieval people perceived the Crusades then and now.