Migrating tribes of Turks known as Seljuks began arriving from the East in the territories of the Abbasid caliphate in about 970. They were soon converted to Sunni Islam and became invaluable to the Arabs for their martial qualities, especially for their mounted bowmen and the nomadic speed of their cavalry. But the caliphate was no longer a unified entity. Spain, Africa and Egypt had long since led a political life independent of the caliph in Baghdad. Indeed the enfeebled state of Arab rule stood as an open invitation, and in 1055 the Seljuks took Baghdad and established their hegemony over the caliphate. Under the Seljuks there was an immediate resurgence in the fortunes of Sunni Islam in Iran, Iraq and Syria. In 1071 the Seljuks defeated the Byzantine army at Manzikert in eastern Anatolia, opening the whole of Asia Minor to conquest by the Turks and threatening Constantinople itself. In that same year the Seljuks also turned south, taking northern Syria from the Byzantines and Jerusalem from the Fatimids.
With Byzantium suddenly reduced to hardly more than its capital, Constantinople, and the adjacent regions, in 1074 the Byzantine emperor Michael VII appealed to Pope Gregory VII for help, his desperation all the more evident in his willingness to overlook the Great Schism of 1054, which was the culmination of centuries of often violent doctrinal differences between the Latin and Orthodox Churches. Despite the schism, the appeal fell on ready ears, for already in 1063 the Papacy had given its blessing to a crusade against the Muslims in Spain and it might have done the same now. But this was not the moment when Gregory could call upon the secular powers of Europe to head eastwards on a crusade, as he was embroiled in the Investiture Controversy with many of those same secular authorities over whether it was they or the Church who had the right to appoint high church officials and thereby control the great wealth and powers such officials could command.
Meanwhile the Seljuks tightened their grip on Syria and Palestine. In 1076 they took Damascus from the Fatimids, and when the Fatimids briefly regained Jerusalem that year, the Seljuks recaptured the city after a siege of several months and massacred the entire Muslim population, about three thousand, as well as a large number of Jews who had supported the Fatimids, though the Christians were spared.
Throughout these convulsive events the pilgrim traffic had never entirely ceased, but the journey was now far more difficult than it had been before. Not only was there fighting between Turks and Egyptians in Palestine and Syria, but Asia Minor, which had offered secure passage when it was in the hands of the Byzantine Empire, could no longer be traversed without an armed escort owing to marauding Turkish tribesmen, and even then it was not safe. Everywhere throughout Anatolia and the Middle East there were brigands on the roads, and at every small town along the way the local petty headman tried to extort money from passers-by. The pilgrims who succeeded in overcoming all these harassments and dangers returned impoverished and weary to the West with tales to tell of the appalling conditions in the East.
The Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus began the fightback against the Seljuks, reclaiming territory along the Black Sea and round the shores of the Sea of Marmara during the 1080s. But in order to press harder against the Turks he sought mercenaries from the West, and in March 1095 he sent an appeal to Pope Urban II. In response Alexius got something wholly unexpected and astonishing. Alexius’ daughter, the historian Anna Comnena, described how a multitude from the West approached Constantinople in 1096 on their way to the East: They assembled from all parts, one after another, with arms and horses and all the other equipment for war. Full of enthusiasm and ardour they thronged every highway, and with these warriors came a host of civilians, outnumbering the sand of the seashore or the stars of heaven, carrying palms and bearing crosses on their shoulders. There were women and children, too, who had left their own countries. Like tributaries joining a river from all directions they streamed towards us in full force.’
World History
