Let’s look at each of these factors in turn. In the case of motivation by religion, some historians make the point that Pope Urban II indicated at the Council of Clermont in 1095 that crusaders would be coming to the aid of Christians in the Byzantine Empire. He reported in his speech that the people of Persia, who were actually Turks and not Persians, had taken so much land from the Greek empire that it would take months to walk through it. It is also true that, at this time, the Byzantine emperor, Alexius I, called for the help of Christians in the West since the Seljuk Turks of Central Asia, having recently become Muslim, seized the lands of Anatolia in Asia Minor. The pope promoted myths of Muslim atrocities by saying that churches were destroyed, turned into mosques, and Muslims had killed Christians in disturbing ways, most notably by cutting their abdomens open, taking a part of their intestines out, tying the intestines to a stake, and forcing them to walk until all their intestines fell out and they collapsed. An additional horrific scene described by the pope was of Muslims forcing the people in conquered lands to stretch their necks to see if their heads could be cut off with one stroke of a
Let’s look at each of these factors in turn. In the case of motivation by religion, some historians make the point that Pope Urban II indicated at the Council of Clermont in 1095 that crusaders would be coming to the aid of Christians in the Byzantine Empire. He reported in his speech that the people of Persia, who were actually Turks and not Persians, had taken so much land from the Greek empire that it would take months to walk through it. It is also true that, at this time, the Byzantine emperor, Alexius I, called for the help of Christians in the West since the Seljuk Turks of Central Asia, having recently become Muslim, seized the lands of Anatolia in Asia Minor. The pope promoted myths of Muslim atrocities by saying that churches were destroyed, turned into mosques, and Muslims had killed Christians in disturbing ways, most notably by cutting their abdomens open, taking a part of their intestines out, tying the intestines to a stake, and forcing them to walk until all their intestines fell out and they collapsed. An additional horrific scene described by the pope was of Muslims forcing the people in conquered lands to stretch their necks to see if their heads could be cut off with one stroke of a