<P> Following the defeat at Manzikert in 1071, Muslims had taken half of the Byzantine Empire's territory, and such strategically and religiously important cities as Antioch and Nicaea had only fallen to Muslims in the decade before the Council of Piacenza . Moreover, the harrowing accounts of the Turkish invasion and conquest of Anatolia recorded by such Eastern Christian chroniclers as John Skylitzes, Michael Attaleiates, Matthew of Edessa, Michael the Syrian and others, which are summarized by Vryonis, seem to contradict Asbridge's broad picture of equanimious "coexistence" between the Christian and Muslim worlds in the second half of the 11th century . </P> <P> Thomas Madden represents a view almost diametrically opposed to that of Asbridge; while the crusade was certainly linked to church reform and attempts to assert papal authority, he argues that it was most importantly a pious struggle to liberate fellow Christians, who, Madden claims, "had suffered mightily at the hands of the Turks". This argument distinguishes the relatively recent violence and warfare that followed the conquests of the Turks from the general advance of Islam, the significance of which is dismissed by Runciman and Asbridge . Christopher Tyerman incorporates both arguments in his thesis; namely, that the Crusade developed out of church reform and theories of holy war as much as it was a response to conflicts with the Islamic world throughout Europe and the Middle East . In Jonathan Riley - Smith's view, poor harvests, overpopulation, and a pre-existing movement towards colonizing the frontier areas of Europe also contributed to the crusade; however, he also takes care to say that "most commentators then and a minority of historians now have maintained that the chief motivation was a genuine idealism". </P> <P> Peter Frankopan has argued that the First Crusade has been fundamentally distorted by the attention paid by historians to western (Latin) sources, rather than Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Arabic and Hebrew material from the late 11th and 12th centuries . The expedition to Jerusalem, he argues, was conceived of not by the Pope but by the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, in response to a dramatic deterioration of Byzantium's position in Asia Minor and also as a result of a state of near anarchy at the imperial court where plans to depose Alexios or even murder him were an open secret by 1094 . The appeal to Pope Urban II was a desperate move to shore up Emperor and Empire . Frankopan goes further, showing that the Crusade's primary military targets in Asia Minor - Nicaea and Antioch - required large numbers of men with experience of siege warfare; precisely the sort recruited by Urban during his preaching in France in 1095 - 6 . </P> <P> The idea that the crusades were a response to Islam dates back as far as 12th - century historian William of Tyre, who began his chronicle with the fall of Jerusalem to Umar . Although the original Islamic conquests had taken place centuries before the First Crusade, more recent events, or atrocities, committed by the Muslims in their occupation of the Levant, would have been fresh in the minds of the European Christians of the time . For example, in 1009 the Church of the Holy Sepulchre had been destroyed by the Fatimid Caliph al - Hakim bi-Amr Allah; Pope Sergius IV supposedly called for a military expedition in response, and in France, many Jewish communities were even attacked in a misdirected retaliation . Despite the Church's rebuilding after al - Hakim's death, and pilgrimages resuming, including the Great German Pilgrimage of 1064--1065, pilgrims continued to suffer attacks from local Muslims . Liberating the Sepulchre is often presented as motivation for the crusaders . In addition, the even more recent Turkish incursions into Anatolia and northern Syria were certainly viewed as devastating by Eastern Christian chroniclers, and it is plausible they were presented as such by the Byzantines to the Pope in order to solicit the aid of European Christians . </P>

How does the word crusade get its name