سادة العالم

It is the year 1250, and the Islamic world is caught between two millstones. Córdoba fell to the Castilians years ago, leaving Granada the last Arab kingdom in al-Andalus. King Louis IX has launched his crusade against Egypt. The Ayyubids and the Mamluks are tearing at one another over power.

But the true danger is coming from the east: the vast, undefeated Mongol army, advancing like a snake toward sleeping prey — while the Assassins and the Knights Templar watch from the margins, waiting to see how it falls. To whom, in the end, will the title belong: masters of the world?

سادة العالم is the first volume of سلسلة العقد الأسود, a historical adventure series by the Tunisian writer Sami Mokaddem, published by Pop Libris in its روايات الجيب التونسية (Tunisian pocket novels) line. Written in Arabic for a young-adult readership, it sets real thirteenth-century history against a thread of the fantastical, and opens a series that has since run to at least seven volumes.