The Crusades Through Arab Eyes

by Amin Maalouf, Amir Abdullah (Read by)

Overview

European and Arab versions of the Crusades have little in common. For the Arabs, the 12th and 13th centuries were not a time for glorious conquest, rather they were years of sacrifice and privation spent in repelling a brutal and destructive invasion by hordes of Western barbarians.

When, under Saladin, a powerful Muslim army -- inspired by prophets and poets -- succeeded in destroying Crusader kingdoms, it was the greatest victory ever won by a non-European society against the West. The memory of it still lives in the minds of Arabs today.

"Maalouf's story of the Crusades vividly portrays a society rent by internal conflict and devasted by alien warriors. Those two traumatic centuries of Middle Eastern history shaped Arab and Islamic attitudes toward the West, and in many ways still do." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798228009202
Publisher:	Tantor
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

AMIN MAALOUF was director of the weekly international edition of the leading Beirut daily an-Nahar, and was also editor-on-chief of Jeune Afrique.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part One: Invasion (1096-1100)
1. The Franj Arrive
2. An Accursed Maker of Armour
3. The Cannibals of Ma'arra

Part Two: Occupation (1100-1128)
4. Tripoli's Two Thousand Days
5. Turban-Clad Resistance

Part Three: Riposte (1128-1146)
6. The Damascus Conspiracies
7. An Emir Among Barbarians

Part Four: Victory (1146-1187)
8. Nur al-Din, the Saint-King
9. The Rush for the Nile
10. The Tears of Saladin

Part Five: Reprieve (1187-1244)
11. The Impossible Encounter
12. The Perfect and the Just

Part Six: Expulsion (1244-1291)
13. The Mongol Scourge
14. God Grant That They Never Set Foot There Again!

Epilogue
Chronology
Glossary

Editorial Reviews

This welcome addition to the numerous volumes on the Crusades is a well-written and absorbing history by a Lebanese journalist for the general reader. It makes extensive use of contemporary Arab sources to examine the Crusade era from the Arab viewpoint. The Arabs found the Franks duplicitous, brutal, and unrefined. However, in contrast to the Franks, few Arabs learned their adversary's language or showed interest in their culture, an observation Bernard Lewis treats more fully in his Muslim Discovery of Europe ( LJ 9/1/82). Maalouf interprets the Crusades as a turning point in Arab-Muslim history. Parochialism in the Muslim Middle East and the current division between the West and the Middle East are dated to this prolonged period of hostile contact. Recommended for public and academic libraries. J. Anthony Gardner, California State Univ. Lib., Northridge

Library Journal

"The Crusades Through Arab Eyes may be warmly recommended to lay-readers and students alike."
—The Times Literary Supplement (London)

From the Publisher