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The struggle for the Holy Land

The timing was perfect. When the first Crusaders, with the Pope’s blessing, set out for the Holy Land in 1096, the Muslim world was riven by internal strife and the European knights could march east unhindered. Victory followed victory, and in 1099 the Christians took Jerusalem. In a bloodlust, they went house to house, slaughtering Muslim men, women and children. The Muslim world was stunned, and the caliphs nurtured a smouldering desire for revenge. But the Crusaders took a firm grip on power in the Holy Land, fortifying it with a network of impregnable fortresses. Only 100 years later were the caliphs united under a single, strong commander. Saladin demonstrated superiority in desert warfare at the Battle of the Horns of Hattin and captured Jerusalem in 1187. For the next 100 years, the fighting ebbed and flowed, but when Ottoman forces captured Constantinople in 1453, the Byzantine Empire and Christian ascendancy in the east were over.

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