\paperw4260 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \f1 \fs24 There were two main objectives that prompted the West to embark on the Crusades: preservation of the alliance with Byzantine Con
stantinople and the conquest of Jerusalem. For two centuries and over five Crusades û from 1099 to 1291 û bloody battles were fought over the possession of the Holy City, sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Peace treaties such as the one drawn
up between the Kurdish commander Saladin and Richard the Lion Heart in 1192 had little effect, and the title of ô\b \cf2 \ATXht11802 Rex Hierosolymorum\b0 \cf0 \ATXht0 ,ö King of Jerusalem, that Emperor Frederick II assumed in 1228 did not last long. In
those tumultuous centuries the city of Constantinople was a flourishing crossroads of the trade between East and West. The place where the representatives of the Maritime Republics were based, it remained essentially untouched until the Fourth Crusade i
n 1204, when the Crusaders themselves sacked and destroyed the city. But a new power was knocking at the gates of Constantinople: the Ottoman Turks. They took their name from their first \b \cf2 \ATXht10501 emir\b0 \cf0 \ATXht0 , Osman, who had set up hi
s capital at Bursa, not far from the Bosphorus.\par
