• The major participants
• Response to the First Crusade
• The counter-Crusade begins
• Zengi, Nur al-Din, and Saladin
• For More Information

In the late 1090s the European Crusaders in Syria and Palestine were fighting on foreign soil and in harsh, desert conditions to which they were not accustomed. They were far from their homelands and sources of supply. Further, their numbers were not very large; perhaps twenty thousand Crusaders made it to Jerusalem. After the city fell to the Crusaders in 1099, only a few thousand remained in Jerusalem and the other Crusader states, including Antioch, Edessa, and Tripoli. Jerusalem remained defended by only about three hundred knights. Muslims, meanwhile, had shown themselves...