The Crusaders

From the bestselling author of The Templars. 'Voyages, battles, sieges and slaughter: Dan Jones's tumultuous and thrilling history of the crusades is one of the best' SUNDAY TIMES. 'A powerful story brilliantly told. Dan Jones writes with pace, wit and insight' HELEN CASTOR. 'A fresh and vibrant account of a conflict that raged across medieval centuries' JONATHAN PHILLIPS. Dan Jones, best-selling chronicler of the Middle Ages, turns his attention to the history of the Crusades – the sequence of religious wars fought between the late eleventh century and late medieval periods, in which armies from European Christian states attempted to wrest the Holy Land from Islamic rule, and which have left an enduring imprint on relations between the Muslim world and the West. From the preaching of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II in 1095 to the loss of the last crusader outpost in the Levant in 1302-03, and from the taking of Jerusalem from the Fatimids in 1099 to the fall of Acre to the Mamluks in 1291, Crusaders tells a tale soaked in Islamic, Christian and Jewish blood, peopled by extraordinary characters, and characterised by both low ambition and high principle. Dan Jones is a master of popular narrative history, with the priceless ability to write page-turning narrative history underpinned by authoritative scholarship. Never before has the era of the Crusades been depicted in such bright and striking colours, or their story told with such gusto. PRAISE FOR THE TEMPLARS: 'A fresh, muscular and compelling history of the ultimate military-religious crusading order, combining sensible scholarship with narrative swagger' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE. 'Dan Jones has created a gripping page-turner out of the dramatic history of the Templars' PHILIPPA GREGORY. 'The story of the Templars, the ultimate holy warriors, is an extraordinary saga of fanaticism, bravery, treachery and betrayal, and in Dan Jones they have a worthy chronicler. The Templars is a wonderful book!' BERNARD CORNWELL. 'Told with all Jones's usual verve and panache, this is a dramatic and gripping tale of courage and stupidity, faith and betrayal' MAIL ON SUNDAY. 'This is another triumphant tale from a historian who writes as addictively as any page-turning novelist' OBSERVER. 'The Templars is exhilarating, epic, sword-swinging history' TLS. 'Jones carries the Templars through the crusades with clarity and verve. This is unabashed narrative history, fast-paced and full of incident... Jones tells their story extremely well' SUNDAY TIMES.

The Crusades is an authoritative, accessible single-volume history of the brutal struggle for the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. Thomas Asbridge—a renowned historian who writes with “maximum vividness” (Joan Acocella, The New Yorker)—covers the years 1095 to 1291 in this big, ambitious, readable account of one of the most fascinating periods in history. From Richard the Lionheart to the mighty Saladin, from the emperors of Byzantium to the Knights Templar, Asbridge’s book is a magnificent epic of Holy War between the Christian and Islamic worlds, full of adventure, intrigue, and sweeping grandeur.

Illustrated with 160 photographs, paintings, artworks and maps, The Crusades is a fascinating and accessible history from the first ill-fated expedition to the Christian Reconquista of Spain in the 15th century.

The struggle between Islam and the Crusaders comprised a dialogue of cultures on a broad geographic scale and a wide expanse of time, a perennial seesaw of conquest in the West as in the East. Father Burns' pioneering work on Valencia has demonstrated that the inner reality of this sustained confrontation lies as much in the colonial interims as in the battles. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A lively reimagining of how the distant medieval world of war functioned, drawing on the objects used and made by crusaders Throughout the Middle Ages crusading was justified by religious ideology, but the resulting military campaigns were fueled by concrete objectives: land, resources, power, reputation. Crusaders amassed possessions of all sorts, from castles to reliquaries. Campaigns required material funds and equipment, while conquests produced bureaucracies, taxation, economic exploitation, and commercial regulation. Wealth sustained the Crusades while material objects, from weaponry and military technology to carpentry and shipping, conditioned them. This lavishly illustrated volume considers the material trappings of crusading wars and the objects that memorialized them, in architecture, sculpture, jewelry, painting, and manuscripts. Christopher Tyerman’s incorporation of the physical and visual remains of crusading enriches our understanding of how the crusaders themselves articulated their mission, how they viewed their place in the world, and how they related to the cultures they derived from and preyed upon.

Based on the latest scholarship by experts in the field, this work provides an accessible guide to the Crusades fought for the liberation and defense of the Holy Land—one of the most enduring and consequential conflicts of the medieval world. The Crusades to the Holy Land were one of the most important religious and social movements to emerge over the course of the Middle Ages. The warfare of the Crusades affected nearly all of Western Europe and involved members of social groups from kings and knights down to serfs and paupers. The memory of this epic long-ago conflict affects relations between the Western and Islamic worlds in the present day. The Crusades to the Holy Land: The Essential Reference Guide provides almost 90 A–Z entries that detail the history of the Crusades launched from Western Europe for the liberation or defense of the Holy Land, covering the inception of the movement by Pope Urban II in 1095 up to the early 14th century. This concise single-volume work provides accessible articles and perspective essays on the main Crusade expeditions as well as the important crusaders, countries, places, and institutions involved. Each entry is accompanied by references for further reading. Readers will follow the career of Saladin from humble beginnings to becoming ruler of Syria and Egypt and reconquering almost all of the Holy Land from its Christian rulers; learn about the main sites and characteristics of the castles that were crucial to the Christian domination of the Holy Land; and understand the key aspects of crusading, from motivation and recruitment to practicalities of finance and transport. The reference guide also includes survey articles that provide readers with an overview of the original source materials written in Latin, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, and Syriac.