THANKS to all posters, there are some wonderful
pics in this thread.
Cant help thinking that the Crusades had a big effect
on church architecture in Europe.
The first crusade began in 1095 and in
1099 Jerusalem was captured.
Those crusading knights must have been a formidable fighting machine... and pretty ruthless too... that was quite an achievement for an army so far from home.
The result of their victories was that they opened up trade between Europe and the middle east, they also stopped the aggressive march of Islam into the west and the Christian Byzantium Empire.
What they learned architecture wise stimulated the building of Gothic Cathedrals in France and northern Europe.
Arabic learning in science, glass making, optics, algebra etc was taken into Europe and further aided the advancement of Western Europe.
Europe was getting control of the sea and the trading lines. The crusades can be seen as Western expansion into the Middle East.