History of the Crusades.

the Crusades. episodes.

Episode 7, the First Crusade Roman numeral 3.

Hello again.

Firstly, before we start this week's episode,

I'd like to apologize to all the iTunes listeners

who had trouble downloading episode six.

My daughter uploaded the episode successfully to our host site and our website after school

last Friday, but then a glitch occurred while iTunes was accessing

the episode from the host site. By the time you were listening to this, I hope the glitch

has been fixed and apologies to all those who

experienced a delay in getting the episode from iTunes or who received it twice.

I'm crossing my fingers that this doesn't happen again.

Right. By the end of last week's episode, the leaders of the Crusading armies had sworn oaths of allegiance to the Emperor Alexius,

promising to hand back any conquered cities or territory formerly belonging to the Byzantine

Empire, while in return Alexius promised to assist the

Crusaders by providing them with supplies and advice.

Alexius was able to provide a lot of useful information about the enemy they would be facing.

As we discovered back in episode 2, the Islamic states at this time were deeply divided between the Sunni and the Shia sects.

The Sunni sect had its power base in Baghdad and controlled territory across Iran, Iraq, Syria and Asia

Minor. The Shia sect revolved around Cairo and ruled Egypt. They were constantly battling each other for supremacy

and the extent of their division was such that it was considered more likely for the

...