In 1071 the Seljuk Turks destroyed the Byzantine army at the battle of Manzikert.They also conquered Palestine from the Fatimids of Egypt, giving them control of Jerusalem.
By the 1090s,the Seljuks were threatening Constantinople itself, and the Byzantine emperor Alexius wrote to Pope Urban II requesting military aid from Western Europe against them.As Seljuk rule in Jerusalem had made pilgrimages by Christians there much more difficult, dangerous, and expensive (the Fatimids had been relatively tolerant of Christian pilgrims), Urban used Alexius' letter as a pretext to preach a Crusade, a military expedition to liberate the Holy Land, in particular the holy Christian places in Jerusalem, from Muslim occupation and control.
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