Lesson video

Hello and welcome to History today with me, Mrs Badhan.

We'll be starting a new inquiry of full lessons, looking at new question, who lived in the Crusader states? In our first lesson out of this four part inquiry, we'll be looking at the question, what were the Crusader states? For this lesson today, you will need a pen, piece of paper and calm, quite environment.

If you're not quite prepared press pause now, get yourself ready and press play once you're ready to learn.

Great, let's make a start.

The image you see in front of you, is of the siege of Antioch.

This took place during the first crusade in 1097 and 1098.

Antioch lay in a strategic location on Crusaders route to Palestine.

Supplies, reinforcements and retreat could all be controlled by their city.

Anticipation that it would be attacked, the Muslim Governor of the city, Yagisiyan began stockpiling food and sending request for help.

The Byzantine walls surrounding the city, presented a formidable obstacle to it's capture but the leaders of the crusade felt compelled to besiege Antioch anyway.

The Crusaders arrived outside the city and after stripping the surrounding area food, they were forced to look further afield to supplies, opening themselves up to a potential ambush.

As the siege went on, supplies dwindled and in early 1098, one in seven of the Crusaders was dying from starvation and people began deserting.

Antioch was finally captured on the 3rd of June, although the citadel remained in the hands of the Muslim defenders.

Kerbogha of Mosul began the second siege against the Crusaders who had occupied Antioch and it didn't last very long.

It was all over by the 20th of June 1098.

The second siege ended with Kerbogha's army defeated.

So why are we talking about Antioch? The siege of Antioch marked the arrival of the first crusade in the Holy Land.

It then set a pattern of betrayal, massacre and heroism that was to mark future campaigns.

By capturing Antioch, the Crusaders secured lines of supply and reinforcement to the west.

This city also tells us a lot about the people who lived there as it was considered as centre of cultural exchange.

Therefore, throughout our four lessons, we'll be looking at the city of Antioch and what it tells us about the people of the Crusaders States.

In front of you now, is an image showing you where Antioch was located within the Crusaders states and where it is located in modern world.

Today, Antioch is in Turkey and can be seen in the areas circled pink on your screen.

It seems sensible to now pause before going any further into the lesson to recap what the crusades were.

We'll come back to Antioch in a moment but first, let's understand what was happening in the Crusaders states and this will help to make sense of why Antioch was so important.

In middle ages, the Muslim world stretched from India to Spain, including Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

The Jews, Christians and Muslims, Jerusalem was and still is today, a Holy city.

In fact for Mediaeval Christians, it was the centre of their world, spiritually and geographically.

The crusades were a series of war, launched by the Western Christians on the lands we know today as the Levant.

This is when Western Christians came and conquered the Crusader states.

Some settled and lived there and some did not.

These people were often referred to as Latins, as they came from countries like, France, Germany and Italy.

The Muslim community also referred to them as Franks.

The first crusade began in 1096 where Christians set out on a long journey to the Holy Land, led by Nobles and Knights.

Around 10,000 people gathered at Constantinople before taking control of Edessa and Antioch.

After a long siege, they captured Jerusalem in 1099.

The attack was brutal with thousands killed.

A christian source from the time even claims that the slaughter was so great that their men were waded in blood up to their ankles.

So what are the Crusader states? The Crusader states were four parts of the Holy Land which were taken over by Christian knights.

Previously, these areas had been controlled by Muslims. The Crusader states were fought over during the first crusade and were the county of Edessa, Tripoli, the principality of Antioch and the Kingdom of Jerusalem as you can see on this map.

The territory covered at the coastal areas of modern day Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine which is also referred to as the Levant.

This map highlights where the Crusader states were and in particular, the Holy Land which was considered a sacred place by Muslims, Jews and Christians alike.

This timeline now shows you how important the fall of Antioch was for the Crusaders.

With the fall of this principality, which means their area, this now meant that the Crusaders had a stronghold in the area and could start to now look to take Jerusalem, the Holy Land.

And within a year, they were able to do this and this would be the beginning of their new rule.

So back to our story of Antioch, this source, is from Raymond d'Aguilers and he was the leading crusader.

He talks about the potential resistance during the crusade and I would like you to have a read of what he says and identify all the different types of people that you can find in this passage who lived in Antioch.

Press pause now on the video, have a good look and press play once you're ready to get going again.

Super, so some of the people that we can identify in this passage are, the Armenians, Greeks and Turks.

And then we have different social groups.

The youths, the servants, merchants, knights, wives and he even goes so far to differentiate those that lived in the city compared to those that lived in rural locations.

So this shows us that Antioch was a very mixed society and had many different groups of people.

So how was society organised? Let's find out.

Society was not so neatly structured in the Crusader states the way there were in other mediaeval societies in other countries during this time.

The leaders of the first crusade sought to recreate familiar structures and customs of the feudal system in Western Europe but they had to adapt these to the unusual circumstances in which they found themselves.

The result was a sort of hybrid society, composed of diverse and different elements, many of which were found nowhere else in the mediaeval world.

At the top of this society, we had Kings however, as they were new to the land, they had to establish themselves from a handful of noble men.

These kings were therefore elected and usually these elections were influenced by their wealth.

Underneath the Kings, we had Barons who were appointed by the King to reward them for their following and loyalty to him.

Underneath the Barons would be a group of high status women.

Continuous fighting and no immunity to disease meant often, Knights and Barons would die without having any male heir.

A law was passed to ensure that women could take over these lands.

This led to many high elite women who enjoyed many freedoms. We then had merchants who traded with other areas and at the bottom of society, we had peasants who had mainly been left behind from their Turkish rulers.

These people were never forced to convert to Christianity and they could retain their own customs and family religion.

Now, we've learned quite a bit about the Crusader states, let's have a quick look and see how much you've remembered.

So the first question is, which country was not part of the Crusader states? Was it Palestine, Israel, Syria or Egypt? The correct answer was, Egypt was not past the Crusader states.

Well done.

Which group of people did not live in the Crusader states? Was it Turks, Armenians, Russians or Greeks? Fantastic, it was the Russians.

What were the crusaders called by the Muslims? Franks, French, European or Christians? Good, it was option one, the Franks.

Now, although they were French or could have been French and were Europeans and often were Christians as well, the term that they referred to them as was, Franks.

Which city was the Holy Land? Antioch, Edessa Jerusalem or Tripoli? Well done, I hope you picked Jerusalem.

Super, now we're feeling a bit more confident about the Crusader states and what groups of people we had living there.

Let's take a deeper look at who these people were, who lived in the other states and what we can learn about their lives.

You can start to think about whether these people living in Antioch had similar lives to those in the other states too.

Press pause now, read through the comprehension task and then answer the questions.

Press play once you're ready to start again.

Great, so your task was to look at the following questions.

Why was the Holy Land important? What were the Crusader states? How did the population vary between locations? Why were the Orthodox Christians considered lower in society? And your challenge was to look at which groups of people are unlikely to have lived in the Crusader states and you were to look at the handout for this.

As we go through the following answers, I'd just like to stress that, these are suggestions rather than what you should have it written word for word.

It's okay if you wrote something similar along with the lines of.

This is just to guide you and help you to think about where your answers should have been directed.

So, an acceptable answer to the question, why was the Holy Land important could have been, the Holy Land was important to Muslims, Christians and Jews on religious grounds.

A good answer, the Holy Land was important to Jews, Muslims and Christians as it held religious importance for all three religions.

This is where the great Jewish temple was built, it was also where Jesus Christ died making it important for Christians and lastly, Muslims believe that, Muhammad was taken up to heaven here to meet God.

Question number two.

What were the Crusader states? The Crusader states were lands which the Western Christians took over during the crusades.

For a good answer, the Crusader states were four parts of the Holy Land which were taken over by Christians.

Previously, these areas had been controlled by Muslims. The Crusader states were fought over during the first Crusade.

This territory covered the coastal areas of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine also referred to as the Levant.

You could have also mentioned in this question, the areas within the Crusader states at the time.

So the principality of Antioch, the county of Edessa, the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Tripoli and they would have been fine to include in your answer.

How did the population vary between locations? An acceptable answer, a population varied as different religious and ethnic groups lived in different areas.

A good answer, the exact mix varied from place to place with Greek and Jacobite Christians more prevalent in the principality of Antioch, Armenians more common in the county of Edessa and Maronites in the county of Tripoli and Coptics and Samaritans mostly found in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Why were Orthodox Christians considered lower in society? An acceptable answer the Orthodox Christians were considered low in society because they spoke a different language.

A good answer.

Orthodox Christians were considered low in society and were seen as alien because of their language differences.

While these elements of the population were Christian in faith, they had become predominantly arabic speakers and had adopted many of the social customs and fashions of their conquerors over the previous centuries.

A challenge.

Which groups of people were unlikely to have lived in the Crusader states? Please look at the next slide to work this out.

So the groups that were unlikely to have lived in the Crusader states were Protestant Christians, as Protestantism had not yet been formed.

Orthodox Muslims, that's not actually a religion so they didn't exist and Buddhists and we don't know much of a Buddhist community within the Crusader states.

However, Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims did exist which you found out in your reading.

Catholic Christians, Orthodox Christians and Eastern Christians which are the same.

And then Samaritans and Orthodox Jews.

"The lion and the ox shall eat straw together." I'd like you to now have a little think about what this means.

Maybe this next challenge can help you work it out.

Your last challenge of the day, is to now consider the source on the next slide.

Have a little think about what it is saying and what it suggests about the people of the Crusader states.

You can pause now, have a look and press play once you're ready to start.

Now, you may have noticed these words in particular from the text.

Citizen, homes, wives, languages.

So what do they suggest to us? This source was all about the phrase we saw earlier about the ox and the lion.

Both show how the people of the Crusader states were living together which you found out about during this lesson.

These people from different cultures began to share communities, language and even some customs. Some Franks were even said to have married Muslim women who converted to Christianity and this was becoming a home and a new beginning for many of the Franks living here.

So what is this all about? However, not everyone mixed with the crusader so easily and readily.

Here pictured, is an image of the Citadel Salah ed-din.

This was located in Antioch.

Despite Antioch being taken over by the Crusaders, this remained under the control of the Muslims until 1108 and this reveals to us that some Muslims, in fact, resisted the Crusader rule.

This is something we will begin to look at in lesson number two.

Thank you for a great lesson.

To recap, we've looked at what the Crusader states were and how these created what we know to be the Crusader states.

We then looked at who was living in these states and how well the people who were already there, started mixing with the new arrivals of the Frankish people.

Next lesson, we'll be looking at how far these people mix together and how they got along with different cultures, religions and societies.

I'd love to see your work from today so if you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

I look forward to seeing you in our second lesson.