[Junior]

The Christians did not control those areas originally. The Crusades were fought nominally to "free the Holy Land" from the infidels (Moslems). The Holy Land was also not initially a Christian possession, but was controlled by numerous local powers until the coming of the Moslems to the region. Note, the Moslems did not forbid Christians from making pilgrimages to the area, but the fact that infidels controlled the holy sites of Chritendom was intolerable.

On a political note, the Pope parlayed the Moslem occupation of the Holy Lands into an effort to unite the fragments of Christendom, and, as a consequence, to remove, or at least reduce, the influence of Byzantium and its Eastern Orthodox version of Christianity.

[Cronos]

The Holy Land was also not initially a Christian possession, but was controlled by numerous local powers until the coming of the Moslems to the region

The holy land was part of the Roman (undivided) Empire and then part of the Eastern Roman Empire until the slammie conquest.

[yankeedame]

In the 7th cent., Jerusalem was taken by the caliph The Christians did not control those areas originally. The Crusades were fought nominally to "free the Holy Land" from the infidels (Moslems). The Holy Land was also not initially a Christian possession, but was controlled by numerous local powers until the coming of the Moslems to the region. Note, the Moslems did not forbid Christians from making pilgrimages to the area, but the fact that infidels controlled the holy sites of Chritendom was intolerable.

Well, yes and no...

"Pilgrimages were not cut off at first, but early in the 11th cent. the Fatimid caliph Hakim began to persecute the Christians and despoiled the Holy Sepulcher. Persecution abated after his death (1021), but relations remained strained and became more so when Jerusalem passed (1071) from the comparatively tolerant Egyptians to the Seljuk Turks....

"Late in the 11th cent., Byzantine Emperor Alexius I, threatened by the Seljuk Turks, appealed to the West for aid. This was not the first appeal of the kind... Direct impetus was given the crusade by the great speech of Pope Urban II ...[who] exhorted Christendom to go to war for the Sepulcher..."

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site quoted:
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0857642.html