110 Fun Facts About Crusades

Which pope proclaimed the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095?

Urban II promised remission of sins to all who marched east, yet never learned how it ended: he died two weeks after Jerusalem fell, before the news could reach Italy.

Which Seljuk capital, site of a famous church council in 325, surrendered in 1097 during the First Crusade's opening siege?

Nicaea gave up in June 1097, but to the Byzantine emperor's envoys, who had bargained in secret with its Turkish garrison; the crusaders camped outside were left without the plunder they had expected.

Which Byzantine emperor's appeal for help against the Seljuk Turks sparked the First Crusade?

Alexios I Komnenos had asked the West for mercenaries to help him win back Anatolia; what arrived instead were vast armies with a goal of their own, Jerusalem.

Where was the 1071 battle in which the Seljuks captured a Byzantine emperor and opened Anatolia?

Manzikert left Emperor Romanos IV a prisoner of the sultan Alp Arslan, who freed him on terms; his rivals at home then overthrew and blinded him, and Anatolia lay open to the Turks.

The Latin battle cry of the First Crusade, 'Deus vult', means what?

God wills it: one eyewitness chronicle has cross-wearing crusaders chanting it three times with one voice in 1096, and shouting it again with glad voices as they seized an enemy city's towers.

Which French priest led the peasant 'People's Crusade' of 1096?

Peter the Hermit was away asking the Byzantine emperor for help when the Turks wiped out his followers, so he survived, joined the princes' armies and preached on the Mount of Olives before Jerusalem fell.

On their way east in 1096, crusaders led by Count Emicho carried out massacres of Jews in which region?

The Rhineland towns of Worms and Mainz saw Jews killed even inside the bishops' palaces where they had sought shelter; Emicho never reached the Holy Land, for the Hungarians routed his band on the way.

Which city did the First Crusade capture in June 1098 after a siege of more than seven months?

Antioch fell when an Armenian guard let the crusaders climb into his tower by night; within days a huge Turkish relief army arrived and trapped the victors inside the city they had just taken.

Which relic did Peter Bartholomew claim to unearth during the 1098 siege in Syria?

The Holy Lance, dug from under a church floor after Peter's visions, rallied the besieged crusaders, but doubts never died: he tried to prove it by walking through fire and was dead within two weeks.

Which Shia dynasty ruling from Cairo had retaken Jerusalem from the Turks a year before the crusaders stormed it?

The Fatimids of Egypt won Jerusalem back in 1098, so a crusade preached against the Turks ended on 15 July 1099 by storming a city held by the Turks' own enemies.

Godfrey of Bouillon would not be called king in Jerusalem and, by tradition, took which title?

Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre is the title tradition gives him, with the story that he would not wear a crown of gold where Christ had worn thorns; his brother and successor had no such qualms and was crowned king in 1100.

The crusader states were also known by the French name 'Outremer', meaning what?

Overseas, literally 'beyond the sea': Outremer was always short of fighting men, because most crusaders went home once Jerusalem was won.

The Second Crusade was called after which crusader state fell to Zengi in 1144?

The County of Edessa, the first crusader state to be founded, was also the first to fall: Zengi struck while its count had marched most of his army away, and the city was his by Christmas Eve 1144.

Which abbot preached the Second Crusade in a famous sermon at Vézelay in 1146?

Bernard of Clairvaux drew such a crowd that he had to preach in a field; when the crusade he had raised collapsed, the blame fell on him and he sent the pope a written apology.

The Second Crusade's main army under Louis VII and Conrad III failed to take which city in 1148?

Damascus had once been an ally of the crusader kingdom, yet the two kings chose it as their target and abandoned the siege after only four days, short of water outside its walls.

Which queen of France rode on the Second Crusade beside her husband, Louis VII?

Eleanor of Aquitaine came home estranged from Louis; the marriage was annulled in 1152, and within two months she had married Henry Plantagenet, the future Henry II, taking Aquitaine with her.

Crusaders sailing to the Second Crusade stopped in 1147 to help capture which Iberian city from the Moors?

Lisbon fell after a four-month siege: bad weather had driven the crusader fleet into Porto, where Portugal's king won its help by promising the city's plunder, and many settled there instead of sailing on.

Saladin, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, was of which ethnic origin?

Kurdish: Saladin was born into a Kurdish military family and first reached Egypt on the staff of his uncle Shirkuh, whose command he took over in 1169 at the age of 31.

Saladin destroyed the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem on 4 July 1187 at which battle?

Hattin was won by thirst: Saladin lured the army away from its springs onto an arid plateau, and after a night without water it broke; King Guy was captured and the relic of the True Cross was lost.

The 'Horns' that give Saladin's great 1187 victory its name are the twin peaks of what?

An extinct volcano: the waterless crusader army, already choked by smoke from the brush fires Saladin's men had lit, made its last stand on the slopes of its twin peaks.

Which crusader lord's raid on a Muslim caravan during a truce provoked Saladin's 1187 campaign?

Raynald of Châtillon had earlier sent ships down the Red Sea to threaten the pilgrim road to Mecca; captured in 1187, he was killed, by most accounts, by Saladin's own hand.

Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, who beat Saladin at Montgisard in 1177, is known by which nickname?

The Leper King's illness was first noticed by his tutor, the chronicler William of Tyre, who saw that the boy felt nothing when playmates scratched his arm; he still led armies against Saladin in his teens.

The Third Crusade was led by Richard I, the King of France and which emperor?

Frederick Barbarossa, by then in his late sixties, was the first of the three to set out, and chose to march his army overland through the Balkans and Anatolia while the two kings went by sea.

How did the German emperor die on the Third Crusade in June 1190?

He drowned crossing a river, the Saleph in what is now Turkey; accounts differ on whether he fell from his horse or stopped to bathe, but most of his army turned for home and only a remnant reached the Holy Land.

On his way to the Holy Land in 1191 Richard I conquered which island from Isaac Komnenos?

Cyprus fell within weeks: its ruler had seized Richard's shipwrecked followers, and tradition says that Richard, having promised not to put Isaac in irons, had him bound in chains of silver instead.

Richard I defeated Saladin in September 1191 at which battle during the crusaders' march south along the coast?

Arsuf was decided by a charge Richard may not have ordered: after hours under arrow fire the Hospitallers at the rear broke ranks, and he threw every knight in behind them and drove Saladin's army from the field.

The 1192 Treaty of Jaffa left Jerusalem in Muslim hands but granted what?

Access for unarmed Christian pilgrims was the most Richard could win: he had marched within sight of Jerusalem but judged that he lacked the men to hold it even if he took it, and settled for a three-year truce.

In legend, which minstrel found the captive Richard I by singing beneath castle walls?

Blondel belongs to a tale first told around 1260. The real captive was passed from Duke Leopold of Austria to the emperor Henry VI, who set his price at 150,000 marks, a sum raised by heavy new taxes on Richard's subjects.

Which relative plotted with France's king to seize the captive Richard I's throne?

John, his younger brother, allied with the king of France and tried to seize the throne while the 150,000-mark ransom was being raised; once free, Richard forgave him and in the end named him heir.

Richard I survived the Third Crusade only to be killed in 1199 by what weapon while besieging a minor French castle?

A crossbow bolt at Châlus ended a ten-year reign of which he had spent barely six months in his own kingdom; the rest went on crusade, in a German prison and at war in France.

The Fourth Crusade, meant for Egypt, ended instead with the 1204 sack of which Christian city?

Constantinople lost even its landmarks: the Venetians, whose fleet had carried the crusade, shipped the four bronze horses of the Hippodrome home to St Mark's, where they stood until Napoleon looted them in turn.

Which aged and blind Doge of Venice steered the Fourth Crusade towards Zara and the Byzantine capital?

Enrico Dandolo had the leverage: the crusaders could not pay for the fleet Venice had built them, so he offered to defer the debt if they first retook rebellious Zara. He died in the conquered capital in 1205.

After the sack of the Byzantine capital, who was crowned emperor of the new Latin Empire in Hagia Sophia?

Baldwin IX of Flanders was chosen over the crusade's own commander, Boniface of Montferrat, then reigned barely a year: the Bulgarians captured him in battle in 1205 and he died in their prison.

Which 1212 movement set out, in legend, believing the Mediterranean would part to let its marchers walk to Jerusalem?

The Children's Crusade, led in the tales by a French shepherd boy and a German youth, found the sea unmoved; in the legend merchants offered ships instead and sold many of the marchers into slavery.

The Fifth Crusade captured and held which Egyptian port for two years from 1219?

Damietta mattered so much to Egypt that its sultan offered to give back Jerusalem for it; the papal legate Pelagius refused, marched up the Nile instead, and lost army and port alike when the sluices were opened.

Which saint walked into the Fifth Crusade's camp in 1219 asking to visit Sultan al-Kamil?

Francis of Assisi expected to convert the sultan or be martyred; instead he was received graciously, preached in the Muslim camp for a few days and walked back to the crusaders, leaving the war as it was.

Which emperor, excommunicated by the pope, won back Jerusalem in 1229 by treaty without fighting a battle?

Frederick II sailed under a papal ban for his delays, bargained a ten-year truce out of Egypt's sultan that handed over Jerusalem, and then set the crown on his own head in its holiest church.

Which pope called both the Fourth Crusade and, in 1209, the Albigensian Crusade?

Innocent III soon lost control of the first: he excommunicated its army for storming the Christian city of Zara, and it sailed on to sack another Christian capital anyway.

Which French king led the Seventh Crusade to Egypt in 1249 and was captured with most of his army?

Louis IX paid a vast ransom for himself and his army, then, instead of sailing home, spent four more years in the Holy Land strengthening its fortresses; he is the only king of France to be made a saint.

The Eighth Crusade collapsed in 1270 when its royal leader died of disease outside which North African city?

Tunis was as far as the crusade got: disease swept the summer camp, the king died within weeks, and his newly arrived brother Charles of Anjou took command and brought the army back to Sicily.

Lord Edward's Crusade of 1271–72, sometimes called the Ninth, was led by the future king of which realm?

England's future Edward I killed an assassin who stabbed him with a dagger feared to be poisoned, then learned in Sicily on the way home that his father had died and he was already king.

The Knights Templar were founded around 1119 with what original purpose?

Protecting pilgrims on the roads to Jerusalem was the whole job at first; the king lodged the knights in the former Aqsa Mosque, which crusaders called the Temple of Solomon, and the address became their name.

On Friday 13 October 1307 which king had the Templars in France arrested?

Philip IV was deep in debt to the order he destroyed: his officers extracted confessions of heresy from the arrested knights, and under his pressure Pope Clement V dissolved the Templars in 1312.

After losing the Holy Land, the Knights Hospitaller ruled which island from 1310 to 1522?

Rhodes stayed theirs until the Ottomans took it in 1522; eight years later Charles V settled the homeless knights on Malta, for a yearly rent of a single falcon.

Which military order began as a field hospital on the Third Crusade and later carved out its own state in Prussia?

The Teutonic Knights started as a tent hospital run by merchants from Bremen and Lübeck, became a fighting order in 1198, and ended up ruling a state of their own from the fortress of Marienburg.

Krak des Chevaliers fell to the Mamluks in 1271 reportedly by what trick?

A forged letter ordering surrender, supposedly from the Hospitallers' own Grand Master, is said to have ended the five-week siege: the knights opened the gates, and the sultan spared their lives.

The Mamluk general Baibars helped halt the Mongols' westward advance at which 1260 battle in Galilee?

Ain Jalut was won by a feigned retreat: Baibars drew the Mongol cavalry into hills where the main Mamluk army lay hidden. Weeks later he joined the plot that killed his own sultan and took the throne.

Who was the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, burned at the stake in Paris in 1314?

Jacques de Molay took back the confession forced from him and went to the fire protesting the order's innocence; the king and the pope who had destroyed it were both dead within the year.

At which Persian castle did Hasan-i Sabbah found the Order of Assassins in 1090?

Alamut was the sect's headquarters for over 160 years and was thought impregnable; it fell at last in 1256 to the Mongols, who took the Assassins' castles one by one.

The Albigensian Crusade of 1209–1229 was launched to wipe out which heresy in southern France?

Catharism outlived twenty years of war: the crusade's lasting result was political, bringing Languedoc under the French crown, and it took the Inquisition, set up afterwards, to hunt down the last believers.

The Northern Crusades aimed to Christianise pagans around which sea?

The Baltic crusades ran from the 1140s into the 15th century: Lithuania's grand prince accepted baptism in 1386, and in 1410 Poland and Lithuania together crushed the crusaders at Grunwald.

Crusaders knew the feared leader of the Assassins by which nickname?

The Old Man of the Mountain ruled from hill castles and killed by stealth: his agents twice tried to murder Saladin, and in 1192 they stabbed the newly chosen King of Jerusalem in the street.

The Reconquista, the Iberian counterpart to the crusades, ended in 1492 with the capture of which city?

Granada's last emir handed over the Alhambra in January 1492; Columbus was waiting in the royal camp, and with the war won Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to fund his voyage west that same year.

After losing Jerusalem in 1187, the crusader kingdom was re-established in 1192 with its capital in which port?

Acre, retaken in 1191, served as the kingdom's capital for a century; when the Mamluks stormed it in 1291 the crusaders lost their last major stronghold in the Holy Land.

Which princess did Richard I marry on his way to the Third Crusade?

Berengaria of Navarre was brought out to him by his mother and married on the voyage; tradition has it that she never once set foot in her husband's kingdom, which Richard himself scarcely saw again.

The seal of the Knights Templar showed two knights sharing what?

One horse under two riders is often read as a sign of the order's early poverty, an odd badge for what the Templars became: trusted bankers with whom the kings of France kept their treasure.

Whatever their homeland, the western settlers of the crusader states were known to their neighbours by what name?

Franks was what Greeks and Arabs alike called every western settler, French or not, and the label outlived the crusades: words descended from it still mean 'Westerner' in languages from Persian to Thai.

The crusade of 1365, led by the Lusignan king Peter I, sacked which great port before sailing away within days?

Alexandria was looted for days, but Peter could not keep his prize: his own troops refused to stay and defend it, and the crusade sailed home with its plunder.

Where was a French and Burgundian crusading army crushed by the Ottomans in 1396?

Nicopolis began with a quarrel over precedence: the French knights insisted on charging first, ahead of their Hungarian allies, and were cut off; Burgundy's heir was captured and freed only for an enormous ransom.

Which knight negotiated the surrender of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187?

Balian of Ibelin, the hero of the film Kingdom of Heaven, won terms by threat: he told Saladin the defenders would destroy the holy places and their own treasure before yielding, and Saladin let the inhabitants buy their freedom.

Before storming Jerusalem in 1099, crusaders marched barefoot around its walls in imitation of which biblical siege?

Jericho was the model: a priest reported a vision promising the city would fall if the army fasted and circled it barefoot, and Jerusalem was stormed a week after the procession.

Which 2007 Ubisoft video game is set in the Holy Land in 1191, during the Third Crusade?

Assassin's Creed began life as a Prince of Persia sequel before its hooded hero Altaïr got a game of his own, played out across Jerusalem and other cities of 1191.

Richard I, the king who fought Saladin on the Third Crusade, is best known by which nickname?

The Lionheart was a tribute to his reputation as a military leader, yet in a reign of ten years he spent no more than six months in his own kingdom.

Which 2005 Ridley Scott film dramatises Saladin's siege of Jerusalem and the surrender of the city?

Kingdom of Heaven stars Orlando Bloom as the city's defender, and the Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud was widely praised for his portrayal of Saladin.

Knights Templar let travellers deposit valuables at home and reclaim them in the Holy Land, pioneering which business?

Banking in an early form grew out of the order's letters of credit, which from 1150 let a traveller carry a document instead of treasure that robbers could steal.

Knights Templar were recognised by their white mantles, which carried a cross of what colour?

Red was the colour of the cross, probably added at the launch of the Second Crusade in 1147, while the white mantle stood for purity and was denied to the order's sergeants.

After the Ottomans drove them from their island fortress, the Knights Hospitaller were granted which new home in 1530?

Malta came from Emperor Charles V in return for a yearly tribute of a single falcon, and the order held the island until Napoleon's fleet seized it in 1798.

William of Tyre called which crop, brought home to Europe by returning crusaders, 'very necessary' for human health?

Sugar reached Europe after crusaders met caravans carrying what they called sweet salt, and it stayed a costly luxury there for centuries afterwards.

Medieval Europeans commonly used which name, once applied to Arab tribes, for the Muslims they fought on the Crusades?

Saracens were first the desert peoples on Rome's Arabian frontier, and the word stayed the West's usual term for any Muslim until the 18th century.

Saladin let Christians of crusader origin leave Jerusalem in 1187 on which condition, unlike the massacre of 1099?

Paying a ransom of ten dinars a man, five a woman and two a child bought safe passage; Saladin freed the elderly who could not pay, though thousands of others were sold into slavery.

Saladin was born in which town on the Tigris in present-day Iraq, where his father commanded the fortress?

Tikrit expelled the family on the very night of Saladin's birth, his biographer says, and the Iraqi governorate around the town now carries his name.

Which Jewish philosopher, author of the Mishneh Torah, served as a personal physician to Saladin in Egypt?

Maimonides first treated Saladin's chief secretary and then the sultan himself, and later wrote a guide to good health for a son of Saladin who suffered from depression.

In Dante's Inferno, Saladin appears among the virtuous non-Christians in which first circle of Hell?

Limbo holds souls Dante thought virtuous but unbaptised, so the sultan stands in the company of Homer, Aristotle and Plato, a sign of the chivalrous name Saladin had won in Europe.

To end the Third Crusade, Richard I proposed marrying his sister Joan to which relative of Saladin?

His brother al-Adil was to rule Jerusalem jointly with Joan under the plan, but the talks failed and the two armies went back to fighting.

Which duke, insulted when Richard I tore down his banner on crusade, imprisoned the king on his way home?

Leopold of Austria held the king at Dürnstein Castle before handing him to the emperor, who demanded a ransom of some 35,000 kilograms of silver for his release.

Which relic, carried into battle by the army of Jerusalem, was captured by Saladin in 1187 and never returned?

The True Cross stayed lost even though Richard I, the Byzantine emperor and the ruler of Georgia each tried to buy it back from Saladin.

Which Paris landmark, famed for its stained glass, did a crusader king build in the 1240s to house the Crown of Thorns?

Sainte-Chapelle was raised by France's crusader king for relics he bought in 1239 from the Latin emperor in the East for 135,000 livres.

The pope who launched the First Crusade may have hoped to heal which 1054 split between the Latin and Greek churches?

The Great Schism was only about forty years old when the pope spoke, and some scholars think the crusaders' own sack of the Byzantine capital in 1204 divided the churches more than 1054 had.

Which eldest son of William the Conqueror mortgaged the Duchy of Normandy to pay for joining the First Crusade?

Robert Curthose raised 10,000 marks from William Rufus, won a name for bravery on the march, and was still travelling home when Rufus died and Henry, the youngest of the family, took the crown.

Which term describes the remission of penance that the pope granted to First Crusade volunteers at Clermont in 1095?

An indulgence on this scale was new: counting the journey as a complete penance set the pattern for every later crusade, and the sale of such pardons eventually provoked Martin Luther.

Which Norman leader of the First Crusade, son of Robert Guiscard, kept a captured Syrian city as his own principality?

Bohemond of Taranto had sworn to hand conquered lands to the Byzantine emperor, then argued the oath was void because the emperor had failed to come to the crusaders' aid.

Which Lebanese port fell to the crusaders in 1109 and became the seat of a county held by the house of Toulouse?

Tripoli had held out for years against Raymond of Toulouse, who built a fortress on a ridge outside the walls and died in 1105 without taking the port.

Sailors from which Italian republic dismantled their ships in 1099 to supply timber for the siege of Jerusalem?

Genoa's captain William Embriaco had the timber hauled inland from Jaffa and turned into war machines that proved crucial to taking the city.

Merchants from which southern Italian port founded the Jerusalem hospital that grew into the Knights Hospitaller?

Amalfi's traders won leave from Egypt's caliph to build in Jerusalem, so their hospital for the sick and poor was at work decades before the First Crusade arrived.

In 1120 the Knights Templar were given a headquarters in which captured building on Jerusalem's Temple Mount?

Al-Aqsa Mosque was then serving as the royal palace, and because the site was believed to lie above the ruins of Solomon's Temple, the new order took its name from it.

Which pope, under pressure from the king of France, abolished the Knights Templar with the bull Vox in excelso?

Clement V dissolved the order even though the Council of Vienne, which he had summoned himself, refused to convict the Templars of heresy.

Which French knight co-founded the Knights Templar around 1119 and served as the order's first Grand Master?

Hugues de Payens probably came from the village of Payns near Troyes, and when he died in 1136 the leadership of the order passed to Robert de Craon.

Which king of Jerusalem, husband of Queen Sibylla, was taken prisoner by Saladin when his army was destroyed in 1187?

Guy of Lusignan was handed a goblet of iced rose water in Saladin's tent, and by custom a prisoner offered a drink by his captor would not be killed.

Which crusader lord was stabbed by Assassins in 1192, days after being elected king of Jerusalem?

Conrad of Montferrat was attacked in the street by two men of the sect, and the survivor claimed under torture that Richard I was behind it, which cannot be proved.

The Mamluks, the soldiers who finally destroyed the crusader states, took their name from an Arabic word meaning what?

Owned, because they began as enslaved soldiers; in 1250 they seized the sultanate of Egypt for themselves and ruled it until 1517.

Modern versions of which English legend are set while King Richard I is away fighting on the Third Crusade?

Robin Hood was first placed in the 1190s by a historian writing in 1521, and the 1938 Errol Flynn film set his revolt firmly in the years the king was abroad.

Which Walter Scott novel follows a Saxon knight who has just returned home from the Third Crusade?

Ivanhoe fights in disguise under the name Desdichado until he is unmasked as a tournament champion, in a story set as Richard I makes his own way home from captivity.

Krak des Chevaliers, among the best-preserved medieval castles in the world, stands in which modern country?

Syria holds the fortress on a 650-metre hill in the Homs Gap, and its romantic French name, coined only in the 19th century, means Fortress of the Knights.

Which heraldic bird, named after Saladin, appears on the national coat of arms of Egypt?

Eagle of Saladin is its name, adopted after Egypt's 1952 revolution, whose leaders likened their cause to the sultan uniting Arab forces against the crusaders.

Papal crusades of the 1420s failed to crush which Bohemian reform movement, known for its war wagons and handguns?

The Hussites turned carts into mobile wagon forts bristling with early firearms, and after the execution of the preacher Jan Hus they defeated five consecutive papal crusades.

Which prince of Novgorod defeated the knights of the crusading Livonian Order on frozen Lake Peipus in 1242?

Alexander Nevsky became a Russian saint and national hero, though the famous image of armoured knights crashing through breaking ice first appeared in a 1938 film.

Which grand duchy, the last pagan state in Europe, faced repeated crusades until it adopted Christianity in 1387?

Lithuania changed course when Grand Duke Jogaila was baptised in Kraków and crowned King of Poland, then came home to build a cathedral on the site of a pagan temple.

Which French baron led the Albigensian Crusade and was killed besieging Toulouse in 1218?

Simon de Montfort was killed by a stone from a mangonel that one source says was worked by the ladies, girls and women of Toulouse.

Which Norwegian king, the first European monarch to lead a crusade in person, sailed for Jerusalem in 1107?

Sigurd Magnusson set out with 60 ships and about 5,000 men, and the voyage to Jerusalem, Jorsala to the Norse, earned him the byname Jorsalafari.

Which queen of Jerusalem, crowned beside her husband Fulk in 1131, gave her name to a famous illuminated psalter?

Melisende took full power when Fulk died in 1143, and the luxurious prayer book is thought to have been his peace offering after the couple quarrelled.

Two massive wheeled examples of which machine were built for the crusaders' final assault on Jerusalem in 1099?

A siege tower let attackers fight level with the ramparts, and Jerusalem's governors had earlier dug a deep ditch round much of the city precisely to keep such machines away.

Which stone-throwing engine, powered by a falling counterweight, did crusaders reportedly use at Tyre in 1124?

Trebuchet beams were swung by gravity as a heavy box of stones, sand or lead dropped, and by the Third Crusade the two sides' siege weapons looked remarkably alike.

Jean de Joinville's memoirs describe which incendiary weapon being hurled at the Seventh Crusade's camp in Egypt?

Greek fire could burn on water, which made it a feared naval weapon that rivals tried and failed to copy, and the name itself became common during the Crusades.

Saladin crippled the army of Jerusalem in July 1187 by placing his own forces between the crusaders and what?

The nearest water lay behind Saladin's lines, and while camels carried goatskins up from Lake Tiberias to his men, his army lit fires whose smoke blinded the thirsty crusaders.

Seljuk horsemen used which battlefield tactic to rout the armies of two crusader states at Harran in 1104?

A feigned retreat drew the crusaders into some two days of pursuit at Harran before the Seljuks turned to fight and caught them unawares.

The Fifth Crusade's march on Cairo collapsed in 1221 when Sultan al-Kamil stopped the army by doing what?

Opening the Nile sluices flooded the ground and made battle impossible, so the trapped crusaders agreed to leave Egypt altogether in return for an eight-year truce.

The powerful stallion that carried an armoured knight into battle in the crusading era was known by which name?

Destrier stallions were bred for war from foalhood, yet fewer than one warhorse in twenty on the muster rolls was one, and most knights fought on cheaper coursers and rounceys.

Around 1100 a crusader knight's main armour was a knee-length shirt of mail known by which name?

Hauberk comes from a Germanic word meaning neck protector, and the garment was split front and back to the groin so that its wearer could sit in a saddle.

At which 1097 battle in Anatolia did the First Crusade survive a dawn attack by Kilij Arslan's mounted archers?

Dorylaeum turned when the rest of the army arrived and set the enemy camp ablaze; the Turks, whose arrows could barely hurt the armoured knights, called them men of iron.

The First Crusade's last battle, in August 1099, routed an Egyptian relief army outside which coastal city?

Ascalon saw the crusaders surprise the Egyptian army asleep in its camp at dawn, yet the city itself stayed an enemy base raiding the kingdom until 1153.