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Crusades: The Crescent and the Cross

Crusades: The Crescent and the Cross

Fuelled by religious belief, the Crusades of the Middle Ages generated a bitter legacy that has cast a long shadow on relations between Christianity and Islam up to the present day.

By the close of the eleventh century, Jerusalem had been in Muslim hands for over four hundred years, but in 1095 Pope Urban II launched an unprecedented military campaign to seize it back – a ‘Crusade’ to purge the Holy Land of ‘the infidel’. Over sixty thousand Christian warriors would journey three thousand miles and for almost three years to reclaim the Holy City in the name of God. In a series of epic battles and bloody massacres, tens of thousands would die as the crusaders inched ever closer towards Jerusalem. This was the clash of the Crescent and the Cross.

Broadcaster:

History Channel

TX Date:

November 2001

Credits:

Exec Producer/s: Richard Bradley