The Crusades

In the late eleventh century, the Pope calls Christians to holy war, and a huge army marches into the Muslim lands of the eastern Mediterranean. It takes Jerusalem, a city sacred to both faiths. For roughly the next two hundred years, Christians and Muslims fight over the Holy Land, each side convinced it serves God.

This is a single-volume narrative history of the Crusades, and it tells the story from both camps. Thomas Asbridge follows Christian and Muslim leaders, soldiers and thinkers alike, rather than treating one side as the backdrop for the other.

The cast includes Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, along with the Assassins, poet-warriors and religious visionaries. The action moves from the deserts of Egypt to the forests of Lebanon, and through Constantinople, Cairo and Damascus.

Asbridge builds the account on original research and a close knowledge of the Near East. He asks what led Muslims and Christians to embrace jihad and crusade, how the wars reshaped the medieval world, and why they still bear on events today. The pace is quick, the telling vivid, and the violence is shown in full.