The Crusades: Course Content

In this modern world, many people make reference to the Crusades to justify their beliefs and actions. In this course we won't be looking directly at the ways the Crusades are invoked for modern purposes, although we'll probably come to understand a lot about why they are used in these ways. Instead, we'll be looking at the Crusades (from the First Crusade in 1095 through the Fourth Crusade in 1204) as they were experienced by the willing or unwilling participants in them: Christians, Muslims, Byzantines (the East Roman Empire), and Jews. We will be examining primary source accounts from all four perspectives as a way of understanding how contemporaries viewed the crusades, which we will combine with two modern accounts and assorted other secondary materials. At the end you may think twice about calling anything a crusade but the crusades!