CRUSADES: Domination Clothed in Piety

The Call to Holy War
 In 1095 CE, Pope Urban II stood before a throng of knights and peasants at Clermont, France. He painted a picture of Jerusalem in chains and pilgrims in peril.

“Jerusalem groans under the infidel! Take up the cross, help free Jerusalem from the heathen Arabs, and your sins are forgiven!”

The crowd roared, “Deus vult! God wills it!” Cloth was torn, crimson crosses stitched to cloaks. Urban had taken the violence of Europe’s restless knights and given it a holy direction.

Europe at the close of the 11th century was ripe for such a call. Landless knights, second sons of nobility, roamed hungry for land and plunder. Papal authority sought to expand its reach and bind Christendom under Rome. The Byzantine emperor Alexios I, pressured by Turkish advances, had only asked for mercenaries, but Urban turned this into a holy war.

The cry Deus vult cloaked the truth: domination, plunder, and papal ambition disguised as pilgrimage.

Zecharia Sitchin told us that papal timing was not accidental. Beneath the Christian rhetoric, he argued, lay awareness of a larger cosmic timetable—the return of Nibiru, the homeworld of the Anunnaki gods. The Temple Mount, site of Solomon’s temple and later the Dome of the Rock, was not just sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. It had been, in Sitchin’s reading, a key Anunnaki landing platform and control center. Thus, the Crusades were not only about spiritual salvation or papal politics—they were moves in a cosmic game, securing a site of ancient power before Nibiru’s next return cycle [Sitchin, The End of Days].

From Clermont, the crusaders marched eastward—but before they reached Jerusalem, they unleashed terror on their Jewish neighbors.

The First Crusade: Blood and Fire
Before even leaving Europe, crusaders fell on Jewish communities along the Rhine. At Mainz, Worms, and Cologne, families fled into synagogues. Crusaders set them alight.

“Strike them down!” commanders ordered. Some knights looted gold, others truly believed they were purifying Christendom. Yet voices of mercy remained—bishops who tried, often in vain, to shield the Jews, and knights who recoiled at the slaughter.

Across the Mediterranean, the Muslim world was fractured. The Seljuk Turks pressed into Anatolia, but emirs quarreled with one another. The Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt schemed for Jerusalem. Ibn al-Qalanisi of Damascus later wrote: “They were heedless, their hearts divided, and so calamity befell them.”

So the crusaders reached Jerusalem. In July 1099, they breached its walls. The massacre was total—Muslim, Jew, and Eastern Christian alike. “God wills it!” the victors shouted as streets ran red.

Domination consciousness—papal power cloaked in salvation, knights cloaking plunder in pilgrimage—had triumphed. Yet even here were glimpses of partnership: defenders who hid neighbors, moments of restraint, Jerusalem’s long memory as a city of many faiths.

But the triumph was fragile. When Edessa fell decades later, Christendom once again rallied under the banner of the cross.

The Second Crusade: Christendom Divided, Islam United

Edessa’s fall in 1144 shocked Europe. Bernard of Clairvaux thundered, “The cross! Take up the Lord’s cause!” Kings Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany obeyed.

But the march east was a disaster. In Anatolia, Conrad’s Germans withered under Seljuk ambushes. “The mountains themselves conspire against us,” a knight gasped. Louis’s army too staggered, starving and harried.

In Damascus, Muslim rulers who once quarreled began to unite. Nur ad-Din’s call echoed: “Let us drive the Franks into the sea.” For the first time, Islam answered with one voice.

The Second Crusade collapsed in shame. Papal banners brought no victory, only division. The cosmic struggle for Jerusalem remained unresolved.

French and German knights ambushed by Turkish horse archers in the Anatolian mountains ambushed French and  German knights.

But a generation later, Jerusalem itself would fall to Saladin, and the Third Crusade would pit Richard the Lionheart against Islam’s greatest general.

The Third Crusade: Richard and Saladin

Jerusalem fell again in 1187—this time to Saladin. His triumph at Hattin shattered the Crusader host. Unlike 1099, he spared the city’s people.

Europe roared back. Richard the Lionheart, Philip II of France, and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa took the cross. Frederick drowned; Philip quarreled and left. Richard pressed on.

At Arsuf, his knights charged. “For the Cross!” they cried. Saladin’s men countered, “For Allah, defend the faith!” The clash raged, but both leaders came to respect each other’s valor.

Richard never entered Jerusalem. Twice he marched near, twice he turned back. “I see the Holy City,” he sighed, “but God denies me its gates.”

For Sitchin’s readers, this was not only a duel of kings but of guardians contending over the Anunnaki’s ancient station at the Temple Mount.

If Richard and Saladin embodied honor, the next crusade revealed only greed: Christian against Christian at Constantinople.

The Fourth Crusade: Christians Against Christians

In 1204, Venetians steered the Crusade not to Jerusalem but Constantinople. “Pay your debts in gold or blood,” they warned.

Crusaders stormed the Byzantine capital. “This is not the Holy City!” cried a priest. “Gold is gold,” snarled a soldier, “God will forgive.”

Domes cracked, relics stolen, the Eastern Empire crippled. Domination consumed itself—Christian against Christian, the holy war unmasked as plunder.

The Fifth and Sixth Crusades: Negotiation Over Blood

At Damietta in Egypt, crusaders starved, trapped by Nile floods. “The very river fights us!” one shouted as Saracen horsemen struck. Defeat followed.

Years later, Emperor Frederick II tried a different path. “I will honor your faith if you yield Jerusalem,” he told Muslim leaders. A treaty returned the city without battle.

Some called it betrayal. Others saw partnership—proof that words could succeed where swords failed.

For Sitchin, Frederick’s diplomacy hinted at a deeper awareness: domination could never secure the Anunnaki’s beacon city.

The Seventh and Eighth Crusades: The Saint in Chains

King Louis IX of France led two crusades. In Egypt, he was captured. In chains he prayed: “Lord, I am yours in defeat as in triumph.” A guard muttered, “This Frankish king kneels even in captivity.”

Freed by ransom, Louis tried again. In Tunisia, plague struck him dead. Crusader zeal died with him.

Domination yielded only futility—armies broken by sand, river, and disease. Yet Louis’s stubborn piety showed a flicker of devotion beyond conquest.

The Templars in the Temple

We close where the cycle began—Jerusalem, 1099. Crusaders stormed its walls, and the Knights Templar claimed the Temple Mount.

“God wills it!” they cried, raising red-cross banners above Solomon’s platform. Smoke curled as civilians wept below.

Here domination triumphed in fire, yet the Templars believed they guarded more than holy relics. Sitchin reminds us: beneath the Dome of the Rock lay the Anunnaki’s landing pad, a control center of gods returned. The true treasure of the Crusades was not gold but power over Earth itself.

References

• Zecharia Sitchin, The End of Days (New York: Harper, 2007), esp. pp. 181–205.

• Ibn al-Qalanisi, Chronicle of Damascus, translated 1932, pp. 156–160.

• Thomas Asbridge, The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (HarperCollins, 2010).

• Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History (Yale University Press, 2005).

• Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (Belknap Press, 2006).

Keywords

Crusades, Pope Urban II, Deus vult, Clermont, Zecharia Sitchin, Anunnaki, Nibiru, Temple Mount, First Crusade, Jewish massacres Mainz Worms Cologne, Ibn al-Qalanisi, Seljuk Turks, Fatimid Caliphate, Edessa, Bernard of Clairvaux, Louis VII, Conrad III, Nur ad-Din, Richard the Lionheart, Saladin, Battle of Arsuf, Frederick Barbarossa, Philip II, Constantinople sack, Venetians, Damietta, Nile flood, Frederick II treaty Jerusalem, Louis IX, plague Tunisia, Knights Templar, Dome of the Rock, Solomon’s Temple, domination consciousness, partnership consciousness