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The political situation in Western Asia was changed by later waves of Turkish migration, in particular the arrival of the Seljuk Turks in the 10th century. Previously a minor ruling clan from Transoxania, they had recently converted to Islam and migrated into Iran. In two decades following their arrival they conquered Iran, Iraq and the Near East. The Seljuks and their followers were from the Sunni tradition. This brought them into conflict in Palestine and Syria with the Fatimids who were Shi'ite.[11] The Seljuks were nomadic, Turkic speaking and occasionally shamanistic, very different from their sedentary, Arabic speaking subjects. This difference and the governance of territory based on political preference, and competition between independent princes rather than geography, weakened power structures.[12] In 1071, Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes attempted confrontation to suppress the Seljuks' sporadic raiding, leading to his defeat at the battle of Manzikert. Historians once considered this a pivotal event but now Manzikert is regarded as only one further step in the expansion of the Great Seljuk Empire.[13]

By the end of the 11th century, the period of Islamic Arab territorial expansion had been over for centuries. The Holy Land's remoteness from focus of Islamic power struggles enabled relative peace and prosperity in Syria and Palestine. Muslim-Western European contact was only more than minimal in the conflict in the Iberian Peninsula.[8] The Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world were long standing centres of wealth, culture and military power. The Arab-Islamic world tended to view Western Europe as a backwater that presented little organised threat.[9] By 1025, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II had extended territorial recovery to its furthest extent. The frontiers stretched east to Iran. Bulgaria and much of southern Italy were under control, and piracy was suppressed in the Mediterranean Sea. The empire's relationships with its Islamic neighbours were no more quarrelsome than its relationships with the Slavs or the Western Christians. The Normans in Italy; to the north Pechenegs, Serbs and Cumans; and Seljuk Turks in the east all competed with the Empire and the emperors recruited mercenaries—even on occasions from their enemies—to meet this challenge.[10]

The term "crusade" first referred to military expeditions undertaken by European Christians in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to the Holy Land. The conflicts to which the term is applied has been extended to include other campaigns initiated, supported and sometimes directed by the Latin Church with varying objectives, mostly religious, sometimes political. These differed from previous Christian religious wars in that they were considered a penitential exercise, and so earned participants remittance from penalties for all confessed sins.[2] What constituted a crusade has been understood in diverse ways, particularly regarding the early Crusades, and the precise definition remains a matter of debate among contemporary historians.[3][4] At the time of the First Crusade, iter, "journey", and peregrinatio, "pilgrimage" were used for the campaign. Crusader terminology remained largely indistinguishable from that of Christian pilgrimage during the 12th century. A specific term for a crusader in the form of crucesignatus—"one signed by the cross"—emerged in the early 12th century. This led to the French term croisade—the way of the cross.[3] By the mid 13th century the cross became the major descriptor of the crusades with crux transmarina—"the cross overseas"—used for crusades in the eastern Mediterranean, and crux cismarina—"the cross this side of the sea"—for those in Europe.[5] The use of croiserie, "crusade" in Middle English can be dated to c. 1300, but the modern English "crusade" dates to the early 1700s.[6] The Crusader states of Syria and Palestine were known as the "Outremer" from the French outre-mer, or "the land beyond the sea".[7]

he Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Christian Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these military expeditions are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that had the objective of reconquering Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Muslim rule after the region had been conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate centuries earlier. Beginning with the First Crusade, which resulted in the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, dozens of military campaigns were organised, providing a focal point of European history for centuries. Crusading declined rapidly after the 15th century. In 1095, after a Byzantine request for aid,[1] Pope Urban II proclaimed the first expedition at the Council of Clermont. He encouraged military support for Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos and called for an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Across all social strata in Western Europe, there was an enthusiastic response. Participants came from all over Europe and had a variety of motivations. These included religious salvation, satisfying feudal obligations, opportunities for renown, and economic or political advantage. Later expeditions were conducted by generally more organised armies, sometimes led by a king. All were granted papal indulgences. Initial successes established four Crusader states: the County of Edessa; the Principality of Antioch; the Kingdom of Jerusalem; and the County of Tripoli. A European presence remained in the region in some form until the fall of Acre in 1291. After this, no further large military campaigns were organised.

Conflict with Urban II meant that King Philip I of France and Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV declined participation. Aristocrats from France, western Germany, the Low Countries, Languedoc and Italy led independent contingents in loose, fluid arrangements based on bonds of lordship, family, ethnicity and language. The elder statesman Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse was foremost, rivaled by the relatively poor but martial Italo-Norman Bohemond of Taranto and his nephew Tancred. Godfrey of Bouillon and his brother Baldwin and forces from Lorraine, Lotharingia, and Germany also joined. These five princes were pivotal to the campaign, which was augmented by a northern French army led by Robert Curthose, Count Stephen II of Blois, and Count Robert II of Flanders.[28] The total number may have reached as many as 100,000 people including non-combatants. They traveled eastward by land to Constantinople where they were cautiously welcomed by the emperor.[29] Alexios persuaded many of the princes to pledge allegiance to him and that their first objective should be Nicaea, the capital of the Sultanate of Rum. Sultan Kilij Arslan left the city to resolve a territorial dispute, enabling its capture after the siege of Nicaea and a Byzantine naval assault in the high point of Latin and Greek co-operation.[30]