The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (Saqi Essentials)

There is only one thing that made this a difficult read: the phonetic transliteration of Arabic names is lousy in the Kindle edition. Otherwise, Maalouf is masterful, superbly narrative and poignant as he alludes to the long and deep wounds of The Crusades upon Arab peoples and upon the perception of persecution that often accompanies fanatical mindsets in both East and West. Maalouf is erudite and cogent as he lays out the chronology of the convoluted and intrigue-laden events over a three or four hundred year period. He also demonstrates the fragility of peace and order in The Holy Land during this time period. This book is a rare gem as most texts I have read as an historian have been the Turkish, Western European and the Greek perspectives (my languages are Turkish, Latin and Greek). Uniquely, Maalouf demonstrates the intricacies of the tapestry of cultures present from India to Egypt to show us that there was no monolith of cultures on either side. I often read several historical books from differing perspectives simultaneously, as it tends to deepen my understanding of events. I recommend reading Robert Payne’s THE DREAM AND THE TOMB along side this book for a beautifully written and researched Western perspective of the eight crusades and the end of Christian occupation.

The Occident lives in a mindset where the Occident is the standard of all things, and anyone or anything that diverts from it is immediately classified as something other than “normal” or “natural”. When this authors proposed to write the history of the crusades - several decades ago - from the point of view of the normally described as enemies or impious or heretics or enemies of the faith, he broke through centuries of remarkable scholarship and what I must call a pacific and I disturbed understanding of the world by the Occident. This author has, however, produced such an amazing work that decades later he became one of the most important members of the Académie Française of the French language, which is no small achievement at all. All of this is to say that great works in History and Literature necessarily have to make us think and rethink a thousand times what we consider the normal and given understanding of the world. If nothing else, Amin Maalpuf has achieved this rare and remarkable status and his work is a must for any person who wants to really understand the world from a multicultural perspective.

Oddly, I purchased this book some time ago but only read it over these past two weeks-a shame because it is a wonderful book and one that has expanded my understanding of all that happened during the centuries of the Crusades. Maalouf's nicely condensed book is a joy to read with many passages from medieval Arab chroniclers and an ability to, for the most part, thread his [and our] way through mightily complex Near Eastern dynastic histories. I say for the most part because, particularly in Part Three, he gets mired in that political dynastic swamp alluded to previously. Fortunately he uses that historical patchy ground to launch into a discussion of the rise and dominance Saladin in this political morass. Maalouf, because he is writing from a broader perspective than most Western Crusade historians, has illuminated the Near Eastern stage at the time clearer than the histories that I have read during these past years. It's strange reading the Crusade histories from this other perspective because it is like looking at a picture that you thought was familiar to you only to discover that you've been looking through a kaleidoscope and it is a little unsettling. A person studies the Crusades through Western histories and their organization usually follows each Crusade from People's through Louis' Afracan debacles; Maalouf however, never mentions these separate crusades-in fact you read of Conrad's drowning death as an event that caused the collapse of a huge band of reinforcements coming to strengthen the seige of Acre. So these separate crusades that we in the West look upon as normal historiography are passed simply as new bands of reinforcements for events already taking place. If I can criticize Maalouf, and I'm wary of doing so, I would say that for this reader he failed to present a comprehensive picture of all that was taking place in the Near East; rather he gives the reader extraordinarily detailed accounts of the details of dynastic history among a myriad of conflicting city states nominally under an umbrella government but in reality acting totally alone and for their own interests. And this is why the Crusades had any success at all-not western religious valor but eastern disunity. Maalouf has written a great book and it has my highest recommendation.

Your jaw will be on the floor the entire time you're reading this book. It disposes of the dry expository style of most works of medieval history and instead takes on the narrative style of a novel. The unexpected twists of fate, spycraft, betrayals, assassinations, battlefield ingenuity, and unlikely alliances that make up the various kingdoms and city-states of the Middle East are laid out in a way where you'll genuinely get invested in these "characters" of history. You'll find yourself holding out hope that this time they'll stop the mysterious Frankish hordes, or rooting for Damascus over Aleppo or Acre over Jerusalem, only to suddenly have that hope smashed against the wall by marauding Turkish prince or a hashish-smoking Assassin from Iran. At the same time, Maalouf keeps his story completely based in hard research into *Arabic* primary sources of the time period, which is something only a tiny minority of the foremost "experts" on Middle Eastern history today ever even bother with. He maintains his credibility as a historian yet shows incredible prowess as a storywriter, seamlessly citing inline while encouraging the reader to be skeptical where appropriate. Writers like Ibn al-Athir become characters in and of themselves, contextualized into their own time periods and priorities as writers. Eurocentricity never once makes an appearance, keeping true to the title of the book by keeping you as informed or in-the-dark about the Europe of this period as the Muslims were then. Maalouf doesn't fall into a single racist trope about fanatical Muslims or anachronistic ideas of ethno-religious identity, ever the easy escape of the lazy Middle East expert. He does the hard work of showing you with hard fact the precise political motivations of every little prince of every little city, painting a beautiful picture of the region and time period that will leave you wishing for a TV adaptation of his work.

This remarkable work is a scholarly work which is so well written that it achieves the author's wish to write a history of the conflict between East & West as if it were a novel. The title is a trifle misleading. The author himself points out in his last paragraphs that, by the time the last last Western sovereign had been evicted fro m the Orient, the leaders of the Musical world had ceased to be Arabs. The original Arab leaders had been replaced by Kurds, Iranians (Persians), Turks and Mamluks, among others. The West became ascendant as it was evicted from the Orient, having harvested the riches of Arab civilisation and culture. Maalouf observes that Muslim culture had failed to learn valuable traits of Western civilization which would have benefited them. They commented on the legal structures of "Franj" (I.e. European) civilization, which the Muslim world lacked. Maalouf says clearly that he thinks the failure to adopt similar patterns kept the "Arab" (Muslim) world fragmented. Baghdad had been the intellectual & scientific Capitol of the civilized world. This is evidenced by the many scientific and mathematical cal terms of Arabic origin. Neil DeGrasse Tyson makes this point in "Cosmos," pointing out the number of astronomical terms of Arabic origin. Westerners think of the Crusades as religious wars which happened centuries ago, which we have moved beyond. The Muslim world is living in the Crusdes - they consider Western campaigns in their region to be continuations of the Crusades. They refer to non-Muslim invaders as Crusaders or as "Franj." To understand present day conflicts between the West and Islam it is essential to understand the history of those conflicts which began in the 13th Century and have continued, in different ways, ever since.

When I picked this book up I figured it would be an all out hate attack against the West and would prop up the East as being saintly. I was surprised though, because it was very little of that at all. In fact, most of the book revolved around the problems between the Arab emirs and sultans. It seems as though there political problems have not changed for hundreds of years, heck, it seems as though they were more screwed up than the Crusaders'. Obviously there was some bias. Whenever the Crusaders won the Muslims "fought valiantly" and whenever the Muslims won the Crusaders were "crushed." But, do realize that this is an arab's perspective and a fanatic christian would probably do a similar turn. It doesn't give a real concise history of the crusades because it seems that from the Arab's perspective, there isn't a numbering of crusades, rather, a constant threat of invasion. So, you would have to have a little knowledge of the crusades before reading this book so that one could distinguish between the 1st and 3rd crusade for instance. I did like how it went into a bit of detail on Reynald de Chatillon, the merciless hater of Muslims who doesn't seem to get a whole lot of mention in any of Western accounts of the Crusades that I have mentioned, but even then there were some discontinuities, for I had though the 3rd crusade was started with his attacking a caravan with one of Saladin's wives, yet Maaloof only makes not of an attack on a caravan. But, the author is fair and in the final piece, seems a bit reluctant to admit that while the Muslim east expended its energies to relieve the land of the "Franj" it in the same token lost much of what it made it a civilized land, in effect, passing their civilization onto the Franj in exchange, ironically, for the backwardness and religious fanaticism that was used to describe the first Frankish invaders in 1097. Overall, I recommend this to anyone who has some idea of the crusades and wants a different outlook. Its an easy read, not weighed down by too many facts though for the Western reader, the Arabic names seem to get confusing at times.

Everyone knows that the Middles Ages were barbarous times, but the Europeans come out of this account looking like downright savages. Don't get me wrong, the Arabs aren't presented as the ideal people of earth in the book, but their "Christian"-invader counterparts from Europe come off as filthy, greedy, opportunistic and brutal which, truth finally be told, they were. Maalouf even supplies a few recorded accounts of crusader cannibalism, where the enemy is cooked and eaten. Along with that are several Arab exchanges of heads in boxes. Gruesome. Maalouf has done his due diligence here. He starts with the state of the Arab world before the first Crusade, indicating the fractured state of the area and how one kingdom would not necessarily come to the aid of another. Everything takes off from there, with an account of all the Crusades, the Saladin, etc. If you've played Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings , seen Kingdom of Heaven: The Making of the Ridley Scott Epic (Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook) and read The Civilization of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History , then you'll be fully prepared for Maalouf to round out the story of the Crusades. And the author does it all without any sort of bias towards one side or the other. Concise, educational and entertaining all at the same time.

This book is essential reading for any student of medieval or Middle Eastern history. Breaking the monopoly Western society has held on telling the story of the Crusades, it reveals the Islamic perspective of this turbulent and bloody time period. To the Islamic states of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, the Crusaders were almost Viking-like figures, a horde of unwashed heathens come, seemingly from nowhere, to destroy the civilization it had taken their ancestors centuries to cultivate. To the Arabs and Turks, the Crusaders were not God's soldiers fighting a holy war, but were murderers and liars who had no comprehension of medicine or even personal hygiene, and who were not above resorting to cannibalism to stay alive. Part of what makes this well-researched and highly readable book so valuable is that it is not simply a piece of Islamic propaganda. The author is by heritage a Maronite, a Lebanese Christian whose ancestors provided some of the Crusaders' strongest allied contingents in the 12th Century. The author does not hijack this era for Islamic or Arab civilization - he observes their many flaws, also - notably political intrigue and disunity - and recognizes many cases of chivalrous behavior that transpired between the Crusaders and the Muslims as the 12th Century wore on. He extends his account past the conquests of Salah al-Din to describe the Arab perspective of al-Kamil's selling of Jerusalem to Emperor Frederick in 1229, the bitter Mongol wars of the mid 13th Century, and the final Mamluk conquest of Outremer in 1291. His chapter dealing with the last of these events is fittingly entitled `God Grant That They Never Set Foot There Again!' Do not buy this fascinating book expecting to read some fair, let alone politically correct, description of the tumultuous events of the late 11th, 12th, and 13th Centuries Middle East. Buy it expecting to have what you thought you knew about the Crusades challenged, and buy it expecting to hear `their' side of the story - an intriguing, and poignant twist indeed.

Un libro necesario hoy en dia para comprender mas el mundo arabe. Ademas se lee muy fácilmente y con un ritmo frenético. Lo recomiendo mucho

This is an alternative view of an era normally seen through western eyes. For such a detailed book it is amazingly easy to read. The parallels between the crusades and the present are fascinating. Put al-Qaeda in the role of the crusaders trying to destroy a culturally more advanced society. The arab mystification at the schism between eastern and western christianity and the violence between the two mirrors the schism between Sunni and Shia muslims today. The old man of the mountains sending out his assassins on suicide missions just as Osama Bin Ladin does today. Perhaps we can also find solutions in the past. The sect of the assassins was only destroyed when the arab world sickened of their violence and turned against them.

The book is a primary source book for theoretical and narrative historians and students. One problem with historiography ,especially for Asian historians,is that most materials are from the West and naturally Euro-centric. So making original Asian materials is of great value. Of course contemporary narratives also need textual criticism but this book gives life experiences and so can be given almost the value of epigraphic materials. I had always doubted the history of crusades I studied in school/college and had later developed my hypothesis that the phenomenon is comparable to the predatory Mongol invasions .That is, predatory invasions of poverty stricken martial societies plundering rich settled societies. This book gave me solid evidence for my hypothesis .i have made some inquiries about the social,martial,ideological,sacred organisation of Mongols but i am yet to come across such a sociological work about tribal/early feudal Latin Europe. Can somebody give some link? This book gives such details about the Anatolian/Syrian society. The book also supports my thesis that a wealthy creative civilization need not be one which is politically and militarily unified (the West Asian society of the period was rich and cultured and because of that had decentralized polities and civic politics).This becomes a disadvantage when confronted by less civilized societies which are militarily well organised.Reading about such details gave me insights and pleasure(example,about the cities of Aleppo,Tripoli etc). My knowledge about the roles the Italian city states,Catholic imperialism etc in this process was substantiated besides my suspicion that the Crusades were the the factor which created Islamic fundamentalism in the cultured societies of West Asia. And crusades made the West Asian Christians' lot precarious This a good addition to my reference library

Translated from the French, this book forgives no-one but does seek to set the record straight re The Crusades and the angst that we here in the west inherited as a result of our misguided efforts. Seeing the problem from the other side is crucial to understanding what fronts of diplomacy may be possible in the coming century, if at all. Not a light read, but worth it. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

The author has done an extraordinary amount of research to bring together this historic book essential for anyone wondering why we are where we are in relations between “middle eastern” and “western” cultures. Or more accurately between Christian and Muslim countries, especially those with radical Christians and radical Muslims. Interestingly the Israelis are considered crusaders by some. The Prologue gives an insight, if not picked up when reading each chapter, about the effects of the Crusades on current world politics; why did the Arab world decline in areas of human development such as science, philosophy, education, literature and the western world take over and become more civilised cultures (to some extent).