The Byzantine Emperor (Alexius) asked Pope Urban for Christian knights to help him fight the Muslims Turks.
Because the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos and his Kingdom were being attacked by Muslim Turks who had taken large swaths of Byzantine land. Emperor Alexios was hoping western knights could help him retake his lands, which could only happen by command of Pope Urban II, therefore he needed to ask the Pope for assistance.
Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118) asked him for help against Muslim Turks.
There was not a Byzantine king. There was a Byzantine Emperor. The last Byzantine emperor was Constantine XI Palaiologos. He died in battle when Constantinople, the capital of the empire, fell to the Ottoman Turks.
At the request of the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus, Pope Urban II called for knights from western Europe to come and help the Byzantines drive the Seljuk Turks out of Palestine.
Seljuk Turks
Alexius I, Byzantine emperor, appealed to Christian Europe for military aid against the Muslim Seljuk Turks, who he was afraid were going to overrun his empire and perhaps even conquer Constantinople.
Although thwarted by Byzantine resistance during the rapid expansion of the 7th century, a Muslim nation (the Ottoman Turks) was finally able to capture The Queen of Cities (Constantinople) in 1453.
The push for the crusades came when the Byzantine emperor Alexius I asked the Europeans for help against the Selijuk Turks, who were muslims.
The push for the crusades came when the Byzantine emperor Alexius I asked the Europeans for help against the Selijuk Turks, who were muslims.
Alexios I Komnenos, Emperor of the Byzantine Empire, called upon Western European Christians to help him defeat the Seljuk Turks in what eventually became the First Crusade.
The Byzantine Empire had been growing steadily smaller and weaker for centuries, but it was finally defeated altogether by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.