Brief history of the Knights Templar

Abstract

In the eleventh century, pilgrimages to sacred places, especially Rome, Santiago de Compostela and the holy places in Jerusalem, were a deeply rooted custom.
In those years the Holy Land was under the rule of the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad who, despite professing the religion of Islam, had no problem in respecting and favoring Christian pilgrimages to their domains because of the significant income they represented.
In the middle of the century, the warlike and intolerant Seljuk Turks, a dynasty that did not maintain the openness and tolerance of the Islamic religion, seized the entire region. This fact served to unleash a series of religious wars whose visible purpose was the rescue of the holy places for Christianity.
Ultimately, the true causes of the Crusades were economic, social and political; religious motivations were no more than a pretext to launch thousands of believers into a meaningless adventure.