The Crusades From The Perspective Of Byzantium And The Muslim World

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.

Coinciding with the 900th anniversary of the Crusades, this book is the first general introduction to some of the wider aspects of the history of the Crusades. Prepared by Carole Hillenbrand, a leading authority with a world-wide reputation, The The Crusade is unique in covering the Crusades from the Muslim perspective; it is also a timely reflection on how the phenomenon of the Crusades influenced the Muslim world, then and now--militarily, culturally, and psychologically. The Crusades discusses a group of themes designed to highlight how Muslims reacted to the alien presence of the Crusaders in the heart of traditional Muslim territory. Ideological concerns are examined, and the importance of the concept of jihad is assessed in the context of the gradual recovery of the Holy Land and the expulsion of the Crusaders. There are also chapters devoted to an analysis of the warfare--arms, battles, sieges, fortifications--on the basis of written sources and extant works of art. Also extensively discussed is the complex issue of the interaction between Muslims and Crusaders in a social, economic, and cultural setting. The epilogue traces the profound impact of the Crusades on Muslim consciousness up to the present day. The Crusades is also lavishly illustrated with 500 black-and-white pictures and two full color-plate sections.

A concise history of the crusades - whose chief goal was the liberation and preservation of the 'holy places' of the middle east - from the first calls to arms in the later twelfth century to the fall of the last crusader strongholds in Syria and Palestine in 1291. This is the ideal introductory textbook for all students of the crusades. Professor Richard considers the consequences of the crusades, such as the establishment of the Latin east, and its organisation into a group of feudal states, as well as crusading contacts with the Muslim world, eastern Christians, Byzantines, and Mongols. Also considered are the organisation of expeditions, the financing of such expeditionary forces, and the organisation of operations and supply. Jean Richard is one of the world's great crusader historians and this work, the distillation of over forty years' research and contemplation, is the only one of its kind in English.

The first great city to which the Crusaders came in 1089 was not Jerusalem but Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Almost as much as Jerusalem itself, Constantinople was the key to the foundation, survival and ultimate eclipse of the crusading kingdom.

Examines the effects of the Crusades from a variety of perspectives.

'Asbridge can't help but tell a ripping yarn, often breezily dramatic, whipping the narrative along' The Times A superb and definitive one-volume account of the Crusades, the impact of which still resonates to this day. In the eleventh century, a vast Christian army, summoned to holy war by the Pope, rampaged through the Muslim world of the eastern Mediterranean, seizing possession of Jerusalem, a city revered by both faiths. Over the two hundred years that followed this First Crusade, Islam and the West fought for dominion of the Holy Land, clashing in a succession of chillingly brutal wars, both firm in the belief that they were at God's work. The Crusades tells the story of this epic struggle from the perspective of both Christians and Muslims, reconstructing the experiences and attitudes of those on either side of the conflict. Mixing pulsing narrative and piercing insight, it exposes the full horror, passion and barbaric grandeur of the crusading era. ‘A dramatic and powerful look at both sides of the story’ Sunday Times 'A compelling narrative... A masterful conclusion' Observer

For many centuries, the history of the crusades, as written by Western historians, was based solidly on Western sources. Evidence from the Islamic societies that the crusaders attacked was used only sparingly – in part because it was hard for most westerners to read, and in part because much of it was inaccessible even for historians who did speak Arabic. Carole Hillenbrand set out to re-evaluate the sources for the crusading period, not only looking with fresh eyes at known accounts, but also locating and utilizing new sources that had previously been overlooked. Her work involved her in conducting extensive evaluations of the new sources, assessing their arguments, their evidence, and their reasoning in order to assess their value and (using the critical thinking skill of analysis, a powerful method for understanding how arguments are built) to place them correctly in the context of crusade studies as a whole. The result is not only a history that is more balanced, better argued and more adequate than most that have gone before it, but also a work with relevance for today. At a time when crusading imagery and mentions of the current War on Terror as a ‘crusade’ help to fuel political narrative, Hillenbrand's evaluative work acts as an important corrective to oversimplification and misrepresentation.

The interaction between Byzantium and the Latin West was intimately connected to practically all the major events and developments which shaped the medieval world in the High and Late Middle Ages – for example, the rise of the ‘papal monarchy’, the launch of the Crusades, the expansion of international and longdistance commerce, or the flowering of the Renaissance. This volume explores not only the actual avenues of interaction between the two sides (trade, political and diplomatic contacts, ecclesiastical dialogue, intellectual exchange, armed conflict), but also the image each side had of the other and the way perceptions evolved over this long period in the context of their manifold contact. Twenty-one stimulating papers offer new insights and original research on numerous aspects of this relationship, pooling the expertise of an international group of scholars working on both sides of the Byzantine-Western ‘divide’, on topics as diverse as identity formation, ideology, court ritual, literary history, military technology and the economy, among others. The particular contribution of the research presented here is the exploration of how cross-cultural relations were shaped by the interplay of the thought-world of the various historical agents and the material circumstances which circumscribed their actions. The volume is primarily aimed at scholars and students interested in the history of Byzantium, the Mediterranean world, and, more widely, intercultural contacts in the Middle Ages.