The Crusades
The Crusades

Author: Carole Hillenbrand

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 726

ISBN-13: 9780415929141

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This comprehensive work of cultural history gives us something we have never had: a view of the Crusades as seen through Muslim eyes. With breathtaking command of medieval Muslim sources as well as the vast literature on medieval European and Muslim culture, Carole Hillenbrand has produced a book that shows not only how the Crusades were perceived by the Muslims, but how the Crusades affected the Muslim world - militarily, culturally, and psychologically. As the author demonstrates, that influence continues now, centuries after the events. In The Crusades the reader discovers how the Muslims reacted to the Franks, and how Muslim populations were displaced, the ensuing period of jihad, the careers of Nur al-Din and Saladin, and the interpenetration of Muslim and Christian cultures. Stereotypes of the Franks in Muslim documents offer a fascinating counter to Western views of the infidel of legend. For readers interested in the Middle Ages, military history, the history of religion, and postcolonial studies, The Crusades opens a window onto a conflict we have only viewed from one side. The Crusades is richly illustrated, with eighteen color plates and over five hundred line drawings and black and white photographs.

The Book of Contemplation
The Book of Contemplation

Author: Usama ibn Munqidh

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2008-07-03

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 0141919175

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The volume comprises lightly annotated translation of a key medieval Arabic text that bears directly on the Crusades and Crusader society and the Muslim experience of them.

Muslims and Crusaders
Muslims and Crusaders

Author: Niall Christie

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-04-02

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1351007343

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Muslims and Crusaders combines chronological narrative, discussion of important areas of scholarly enquiry and evidence from Islamic primary sources to give a well-rounded survey of Christianity’s wars in the Middle East, 1095–1382. Revised, expanded and updated to take account of the most recent scholarship, this second edition enables readers to achieve a broader and more complete perspective on the crusading period by presenting the crusades from the viewpoints of those against whom they were waged, the Muslim peoples of the Levant. The book introduces the reader to the most significant issues that affected Muslim responses to the European crusaders and their descendants who would go on to live in the Latin Christian states that were created in the region. It considers not only the military encounters between Muslims and crusaders, but also the personal, political, diplomatic, and trade interactions that took place between the Muslims and Franks away from the battlefield. Engaging with a wide range of translated primary source documents, including chronicles, dynastic histories, religious and legal texts, and poetry, Muslims and Crusaders is ideal for students and historians of the crusades.

The Race for Paradise
The Race for Paradise

Author: Paul M. Cobb

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-07-24

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 0191625248

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In 1099, when the first crusaders arrived triumphant and bloody before the walls of Jerusalem, they carved out a Christian European presence in the Islamic world that remained for centuries, bolstered by subsequent waves of new crusades and pilgrimages. But how did medieval Muslims understand these events? What does an Islamic history of the Crusades look like? The answers may surprise you. In The Race for Paradise, we see medieval Muslims managing this new and long-lived Crusader threat not simply as victims or as victors, but as everything in-between, on all shores of the Muslim Mediterranean, from Spain to Syria. This is not just a straightforward tale of warriors and kings clashing in the Holy Land - of military confrontations and enigmatic heroes such as the great sultan Saladin. What emerges is a more complicated story of border-crossers and turncoats; of embassies and merchants; of scholars and spies, all of them seeking to manage this new threat from the barbarian fringes of their ordered world. When seen from the perspective of medieval Muslims, the Crusades emerge as something altogether different from the high-flying rhetoric of the European chronicles: as a diplomatic chess-game to be mastered, a commercial opportunity to be seized, a cultural encounter shaping Muslim experiences of Europeans until the close of the Middle Ages - and, as so often happened, a political challenge to be exploited by ambitious rulers making canny use of the language of jihad.

The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World
The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World

Author: Angeliki E. Laiou

Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780884022770

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The essays in this volume demonstrate that on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean there were rich, variegated, and important phenomena associated with the Crusades, and that a full understanding of the significance of the movement and its impact on both the East and West must take these phenomena into account.

Arab Historians of the Crusades (Routledge Revivals)
Arab Historians of the Crusades (Routledge Revivals)

Author: Francesco Gabrieli

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-10-15

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1135176078

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The recapture of Jerusalem, the siege of acre, the fall of Tripoli, the effect in Baghdad of events in Syria; these and other happenings were faithfully recorded by Arab historians during the two centuries of the Crusades. First published in English in 1969, this book presents 'the other side' of the Holy War, offering the first English translation of contemporary Arab accounts of the fighting between Muslim and Christian. Extracts are drawn from seventeen different authors encompassing a multitude of sources: The general histories of the Muslim world, The chronicles of cities, regions and their dynasties Contemporary biographies and records of famous deeds. Overall, this book gives a sweeping and stimulating view of the Crusades seen through Arab eyes.

The Crusades Through Arab Eyes
The Crusades Through Arab Eyes

Author: Amin Maalouf

Publisher: Saqi

Published: 2012-07-15

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0863568483

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European and Arab versions of the Crusades have little in common. For Arabs, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were years of strenuous efforts to repel a brutal and destructive invasion by barbarian hordes. Under Saladin, an unstoppable Muslim army inspired by prophets and poets finally succeeded in destroying the most powerful Crusader kingdoms. The memory of this greatest and most enduring victory ever won by a non-European society against the West still lives in the minds of millions of Arabs today. Amin Maalouf has sifted through the works of a score of contemporary Arab chroniclers of the Crusades, eyewitnesses and often participants in the events. He retells their stories in their own vivacious style, giving us a vivid portrait of a society rent by internal conflicts and shaken by a traumatic encounter with an alien culture. He retraces two critical centuries of Middle Eastern history, and offers fascinating insights into some of the forces that shape Arab and Islamic consciousness today. 'Well-researched and highly readable.' Guardian 'A useful and important analysis adding much to existing western histories ... worth recommending to George Bush.' London Review of Books 'Maalouf tells an inspiring story ... very readable ... warmly recommended.' Times Literary Supplement 'A wide readership should enjoy this vivid narrative of stirring events.' The Bookseller 'Very well done indeed ... Should be put in the hands of anyone who asks what lies behind the Middle East's present conflicts.' Middle East International

Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West
Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West

Author: Daniel G. König

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2015-11-05

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 0191057010

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Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West provides an insight into how the Arabic-Islamic world perceived medieval Western Europe in an age that is usually associated with the rise and expansion of Islam, the Spanish Reconquista, and the Crusades. Previous scholarship has maintained that the Arabic-Islamic world regarded Western Europe as a cultural backwater at the periphery of civilization that clung to a superseded religion. It holds mental barriers imposed by Islam responsible for the Muslim world's arrogant and ignorant attitude towards its northern neighbours. This study refutes this view by focussing on the mechanisms of transmission and reception that characterized the flow of information between both cultural spheres. By explaining how Arabic-Islamic scholars acquired and processed data on medieval Western Europe, it traces the two-fold 'emergence' of Latin-Christian Europe — a sphere that increasingly encroached upon the Mediterranean and therefore became more and more important in Arabic-Islamic scholarly literature. Chapter One questions previous interpretations of related Arabic-Islamic records that reduce a large and differentiated range of Arabic-Islamic perceptions to a single basic pattern subsumed under the keywords 'ignorance', 'indifference', and 'arrogance'. Chapter Two lists channels of transmission by means of which information on the Latin-Christian sphere reached the Arabic-Islamic sphere. Chapter Three deals with the general factors that influenced the reception and presentation of this data at the hands of Arabic-Islamic scholars. Chapters Four to Eight analyse how these scholars acquired and dealt with information on themes such as the western dimension of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths, the Franks, the papacy and, finally, Western Europe in the age of Latin-Christian expansionism. Against this background, Chapter Nine provides a concluding re-evaluation.

Encountering Islam on the First Crusade
Encountering Islam on the First Crusade

Author: Nicholas Morton

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-07-14

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1316721027

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The First Crusade (1095–9) has often been characterised as a head-to-head confrontation between the forces of Christianity and Islam. For many, it is the campaign that created a lasting rupture between these two faiths. Nevertheless, is such a characterisation borne out by the sources? Engagingly written and supported by a wealth of evidence, Encountering Islam on the First Crusade offers a major reinterpretation of the crusaders' attitudes towards the Arabic and Turkic peoples they encountered on their journey to Jerusalem. Nicholas Morton considers how they interpreted the new peoples, civilizations and landscapes they encountered; sights for which their former lives in Western Christendom had provided little preparation. Morton offers a varied picture of cross cultural relations, depicting the Near East as an arena in which multiple protagonists were pitted against each other. Some were fighting for supremacy, others for their religion, and many simply for survival.

Shadow of the Swords
Shadow of the Swords

Author: Kamran Pasha

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-06-22

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 1416580700

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An epic saga of love and war, Shadow of the Swords tells the story of the Crusades—from the Muslim perspective. Saladin, a Muslim sultan, finds himself pitted against King Richard the Lionheart as Islam and Christianity clash against each other, launching a conflict that still echoes today. In the midst of a brutal and unforgiving war, Saladin finds forbidden love in the arms of Miriam, a beautiful Jewish girl with a tragic past. But when King Richard captures Miriam, the two most powerful men on Earth must face each other in a personal battle that will determine the future of the woman they both love—and of all civilization. Richly imagined, deftly plotted, and highly entertaining, Shadow of the Swords is a remarkable story that will stay with readers long after the final page has been turned.