Mamluks and Crusaders: Men of the Sword and Men of the Pen brings together a series of studies, based mainly on medieval Arabic sources, of Middle Eastern history and society in the late Middle Ages. Several of these studies deal with the confrontation between the Mamluks and the Crusaders. Others deal with aspects of Mamluk society and culture in Egypt and Syria from the 13th to the early 16th centuries. There are articles on such matters as Crusader feudalism and Mamluk iqta', Crusader and Mamluk currency, the last years of the Crusader states, Mamluk faction fighting, the size of the Mamluk army, the image of the Crusaders and other Europeans in Arabic popular literature, a neglected source on the sex life of the Mamluks, the ritual consumption of horse meat by Mamluks and Mongols, the table talk of the Mamluk Sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri, the deployment of gunpowder and firearms in the Middle East, gangsterism in Cairo and the shared interest of Ibn Khaldun and al-Maqrizi in the occult. Finally, several studies deal with questions of historiography, in both Crusader and Mamluk studies.

This volume brings together a series of studies, based mainly on medieval Arabic sources, of Middle Eastern history and society in the late Middle Ages. Several of these studies deal with the confrontation between the Mamluks and the Crusaders. Others deal with aspects of Mamluk society and culture in Egypt and Syria from the 13th to the early 16th centuries. There are articles on Crusader feudalism and Mamluk iqta', the last years of the Crusader states, Mamluk faction fighting and the size of the Mamluk army, the image of the Crusaders in Arabic popular literature, the sex life of the Mamluks, the ritual consumption of horse meat by Mamluks and Mongols, the deployment of gunpowder and firearms in the Middle East, and the shared interest of Ibn Khaldun and al-Maqrizi in the occult. Finally, several studies deal with questions of historiography, in both Crusader and Mamluk studies.

The period from about 1100 to 1350 in the Middle East was marked by continued interaction between the local Muslim rulers and two groups of non-Muslim invaders: the Frankish crusaders from Western Europe and the Mongols from northeastern Asia. In deflecting the threat those invaders presented, a major role was played by the Mamluk state which arose in Egypt and Syria in 1250. The Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies has, from 1917 onwards, published several articles pertaining to the history of this period by leading historians of the region, and this volume reprints some of the most important and interesting of them for the convenience of students and scholars.

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.

A major new history of the Crusades with an unprecedented wide scope, told in a tableau of portraits of people on all sides of the wars, from the author of Powers and Thrones. For more than one thousand years, Christians and Muslims lived side by side, sometimes at peace and sometimes at war. When Christian armies seized Jerusalem in 1099, they began the most notorious period of conflict between the two religions. Depending on who you ask, the fall of the holy city was either an inspiring legend or the greatest of horrors. In Crusaders, Dan Jones interrogates the many sides of the larger story, charting a deeply human and avowedly pluralist path through the crusading era. Expanding the usual timeframe, Jones looks to the roots of Christian-Muslim relations in the eighth century and tracks the influence of crusading to present day. He widens the geographical focus to far-flung regions home to so-called enemies of the Church, including Spain, North Africa, southern France, and the Baltic states. By telling intimate stories of individual journeys, Jones illuminates these centuries of war not only from the perspective of popes and kings, but from Arab-Sicilian poets, Byzantine princesses, Sunni scholars, Shi'ite viziers, Mamluk slave soldiers, Mongol chieftains, and barefoot friars. Crusading remains a rallying call to this day, but its role in the popular imagination ignores the cooperation and complicated coexistence that were just as much a feature of the period as warfare. The age-old relationships between faith, conquest, wealth, power, and trade meant that crusading was not only about fighting for the glory of God, but also, among other earthly reasons, about gold. In this richly dramatic narrative that gives voice to sources usually pushed to the margins, Dan Jones has written an authoritative survey of the holy wars with global scope and human focus.

"In The Race for Paradise, Paul M. Cobb offers an accurate and accessible representation of the Islamic experience of the Crusades during the Middle Ages. Cobb overturns previous claims and presents new arguments, such as the idea that the Frankish invasions of the Near East were something of a side-show to the broader internal conflict between Sunnis and Shi'ites in the region. The Race for Paradise moves along two fronts as Cobb stresses that, for medieval Muslims, the contemporaneous Latin Christian expansion throughout the Mediterranean was seen as closely linked to events in the Levant. As a consequence of this expanded geographical range, the book takes a broader chronological range to encompass the campaigns of Spanish kings north of the Ebro and the Norman conquest of Sicily (beginning in 1060), well before Pope Urban II's famous call to the First Crusade in 1095. Finally, The Race for Paradise brilliantly combats the trend to portray the history of the Crusades, particularly the Islamic experience, in simplistic or binary terms. Muslims did not solely experience the Crusades as fanatical warriors or as helpless victims, Cobb writes; as with any other human experience of similar magnitude, the Crusades were experienced in a great variety of ways, ranging from heroic martyrdom, to collaboration, to utter indifference."--Publisher information.

'A nuanced and sophisticated analysis... Exhilarating' Sunday Telegraph Nine hundred years ago, one of the most controversial episodes in Christian history was initiated. The Pope stated that, in spite of the apparently pacifist message of the New Testament, God actually wanted European knights to wage a fierce and bloody war against Islam and recapture Jerusalem. Thus was the First Crusade born. Focusing on the characters that drove this extraordinary campaign, this fascinating period of history is recreated through awe-inspiring and often barbaric tales of bold adventure while at the same time providing significant insights into early medieval society, morality and mentality. The First Crusade marked a watershed in relations between Islam and the West, a conflict that set these two world religions on a course towards deep-seated animosity and enduring enmity. The chilling reverberations of this earth-shattering clash still echo in the world today. '[Asbridge] balances persuasive analysis with a flair for conveying with dramatic power the crusaders' plight' Financial Times

Claiming that many in the West lack a thorough understanding of crusading, Jonathan Riley-Smith explains why and where the Crusades were fought, identifies their architects, and shows how deeply their language and imagery were embedded in popular Catholic thought and devotional life.

‘The author brings together a wealth of information which has, until now, only been available in highly specialized academic journals and scholarly books’ – David Nicolle 'An astonishing array of themes and characters’ – John Man The Mamluks were, at one distinct point in history, the greatest body of fighting men in the world and the quintessence of the mounted warrior – reaching near perfection in their skill with the bow, lance and sword. Their story embraces many of the great themes of medieval military endeavour: the Crusaders and the deadly contest between Islam and Christendom, the Mongols and their vision of World Dominion, Tamerlane the Scourge of God and the rise of the Ottoman Empire whose own slave soldiers, the Janissaries, would be the Mamluks' final nemesis. They entered the Islamic world as unlettered automatons and through a total application to the craft of the warrior they became more than soldiers. After a bloody seizure of power from their masters, the descendants of Saladin, they developed a martial code and an honor system based on barracks brotherhood, a sophisticated military society that harnessed the state's energies for total war and produced a series of treatises on cavalry tactics, martial training, mounted archery and scientific and analytical approaches to warfare that more than compare to Sun Tzu's Art of War, the Western Codes of Chivalry and the Bushido in their complexity, beauty of language and comprehensive coverage of the bloody business of war. Their story embraces many of the great themes of medieval military endeavour: the Crusaders and the deadly contest between Islam and Christendom, the Mongols and their vision of world dominion, Tamerlane and the rise of the Ottoman Empire whose own slave soldiers, the Janissaries, would be the Mamluks' final nemesis.