The Crusades

Undergraduate

The crusades, launched by European Christians who sought to secure military control over the Holy Land, led to a period of sustained and largely inimical contact between Christian and Muslim cultures. Covering the period from 1095-ca.1350, this course explores the cultural, religious, and ideological contexts of crusade history which shaped notions of religious violence, holy war, and ethnic cleansing, along with a long history of distrust between the peoples of Christian Europe (or the Christian West) and the Islamic Middle East.