Were the Crusades motivated primarily by religious factors? The Crusades were a series of military campaigns and wars between Christians and Muslims that lasted nearly 200 years. The main motivations for these crusades were to control the Holy Land in Jerusalem, including through the belief that all their sins would be forgiven, and to help others to the ailing Church in the East. Although there were other driving factors of the Crusades such as political and economic interests, the most important factor was religious interests and the defense of the Holy Land. One of the main purposes of the Crusades was to reconquer the city of Jerusalem, their Holy Land. The city of Jerusalem was important to both Christianity and Islam because it was the city that represented the center of their respective religions. Furthermore, during the 4th century, the city of Jerusalem was depicted on most maps as the center of the world. “The Jews regarded it (Jerusalem) as precious as Zion, the city of God, and as the place where King Solomon had built his great temple. Muslims associated it with the prophets who preceded their founder Muhammad and considered it their third holiest city, after Mecca and Medina (“The Divine Countryside” 57). “It was a meeting place for those who had been scattered, the goal of the great pilgrimage or Crusade, where God dwells among his people” (Mayer 136). Christian attacks against Muslims in the city of Jerusalem were futile as they simply lacked the armed forces to capture the city. The Crusades, from the Muslim perspective, “ultimately helped Islamic leaders impose religious unity and orthodoxy in a divided region” (“The Divine Campaigns” 59). Overall the Christians were unable to accomplish the main objective of their great pilgrimage... middle of paper... they had to cross the very hostile territory of Anatolia. The additional support from the Christian church was not only motivated by the religious factors that accompanied Byzantium's control, but also included the great source of wealth, power, and land controlled by the Byzantine Empire. Although helping the Byzantine Empire was not the main goal, the people of the Crusades still cared enough about helping keep their Christian religion alive throughout the world. Since these last Crusades began to lose their importance and religious motivating factor, the motivations for these last Crusades became corrupt, the motivations became greed for land, power and money. Even if the last crusades did not follow the foundations of the first and original crusade, there was always the underlying religious factor that still pushed everyone to fight for their own personal religion..