Background
Byzantium & The Near East
Main articles: Muslim conquests, Great Seljuq Empire, Byzantine–Seljuq wars and Arab–Byzantine wars
After 636, when Muslim forces defeated the Eastern Roman/Byzantines at the Battle of Yarmouk, the control of Palestine passed through the Umayyad Dynasty,[43] the Abbasid Dynasty,[44] and the Fatimids.[45] Toleration, trade, and political relationships between the Arabs and the Christian states of Europe ebbed and flowed until 1072 when the Fatimids lost control of Palestine to the rapidly expanding Great Seljuq Empire.[46] For example, the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, only to have his successor allow the Byzantine Empire to rebuild it.[47] The Muslim rulers allowed pilgrimages by Christians to the holy sites. Resident Christians were considered people of the book and so were tolerated as Dhimmi, and inter-marriage was not uncommon.[48] Cultures and creeds coexisted as much as competed, but the frontier conditions were not conducive to Latin Christian pilgrims and merchants.[49] The disruption of pilgrimages by conquering Seljuq Turks prompted support for the Crusades in Western Europe.[50]
The Seljuq dynasty at its greatest extent, in 1092.
The Byzantine Empire was resurgent from the end of the 10th century, with Basil II spending most of his 50-year reign on campaign, conquering a great amount of territory. He left a growing treasury, at the expense of neglecting domestic affairs and also ignoring the cost of incorporating his conquests into the Byzantine Ecumene. None of Basil’s successors had any particular military or political talent, and governing the Empire increasingly fell into the hands of the civil service. Their efforts to spend the Byzantine economy back into prosperity only resulted in burgeoning inflation. To balance the increasingly unstable budget, Basil’s large standing army was dismissed as unnecessary, and native thematic troops were cashiered and replaced by foreign mercenaries. Following the defeat of the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the Seljuq Turks had taken over almost all of Anatolia, and the Empire descended into frequent civil wars.[51]