Palestine · A closer look
1099
Crusaders and Saladin
On 15 July 1099 the armies of the First Crusade took Jerusalem and killed most of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. For most of a century a Latin kingdom ruled from the city. In 1187, after the battle of Hattin, Saladin took Jerusalem back and let its people ransom themselves rather than repeat the slaughter.
Conquest and a Latin kingdom
The First Crusade brought western European armies to Jerusalem in 1099. Its capture and massacres established a new political order centred on the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Sacred buildings were reassigned: the Dome of the Rock became a church, and al-Aqsa was used by the new rulers. Military conquest therefore changed not only government but also the ways communities could use and interpret the city's religious spaces.
Source: The Met: The Crusades, 1095–1291
War did not stop every exchange
The Crusader period also involved trade, pilgrimage and artistic contact across religious boundaries. Mediterranean ports linked the region with Europe, and travellers described commerce continuing even while armies fought. Such exchanges do not diminish the violence of conquest; they show that everyday relationships could be more complicated than a map of opposing kingdoms. Buildings and objects reveal craftsmen and patrons drawing on more than one tradition.
Source: The Met: The Crusades, 1095–1291
After Saladin
Saladin's recovery of Jerusalem in 1187 did not immediately end the Crusader presence on the coast. Nor did it end the city's importance to Christians or Jews. Across the following centuries, Muslim patrons endowed religious and educational buildings while pilgrims of different faiths continued to look towards Jerusalem. The city's medieval history includes devastating conflict and exclusion, but also sustained investment in scholarship, worship and the arts.