A limestone tomb effigy of a French knight of the d'Aluye family, lying in armour with a shield
A Knight of the d'Aluye Family, after 1248–by 1267
Marked Clermont

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Crusades

From 1095, popes called on Christians in Europe to fight for Jerusalem. Crusaders took it in 1099 and held parts of the coast for two centuries; Muslim writers saw the wars very differently from European ones.

Place
Clermont · Jerusalem · Hattin · Acre · Krak des ChevaliersEurope, The Middle East
Laid out as
A warTwo sides, a front line, and the turns the fighting took.
Lessons
7 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

Crusaders from Latin Christian Europe

  1. IThe call at Clermont
  2. IIJerusalem, 1099
  3. IIIThe crusader states
  4. IVSaladin
  5. VRichard and the Third Crusade
  6. VIThe fall of Acre
  7. VIISeen from both sides

Muslim states of the Middle East, from the Seljuks to the Mamluks

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Urban II
  • Saladin
  • Richard I
  • Melisende
  • Usama ibn Munqidh

Objects

  • Krak des Chevaliers
  • Crusader coins

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1095 to 1291. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?