Nicholas Morton is an Associate Professor in Middle Eastern history at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, and has been teaching Medieval - Middle Eastern History, especially the history of the Crusades, since 2008.

In the first part of our conversation on the CRUSADES, we talk about the conditions in medieval Europe at the turn of the 11th century, the religious ideas that made the prospect of a holy war possible in the first place... as well as the first military expedition that ventured to the Holy Land and it's completely unexpected success, that culminated in the eventual conquest of Jerusalem.