The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (Saqi Essentials)

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 The original Arab leaders had been replaced by Kurds, Iranians (Persians), Turks and Mamluks, among others.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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This book presents the history of the crusades from the viewpoint of the Arabs and other peoples of the middle east. On reading this book, what one realizes is the brutality of the experience. While it is expected that war will bring with it brutality, it is surprising to read of this brutality being dealt out in the name of Christianity, not only on Muslims but also on other Christians. One of the most shocking incidents in one of the initial battles of the crusades is when a poorly supplied and starving Christian army storms a Muslim city and proceeds to boiling men and roast children and begin devouring them to ward of their hunger. This incident is backed up by Christian sources as well. You can imagine that such display of violence would scar a region for centuries. I really recommend reading this book in order to get an idea what people in the middle east are thinking in these troubled times. While those of us in the west may have forgotten what happened during the crusades, it is something which people in the region think about constantly, and their view of western actions in the region are colored by this experience. By reading this book, you may have a chance to change your perspective and see things through the eyes of others. In addition, this is perhaps one of the most well-written histories I've read in a while. The style is not academic, so anyone will find this an easy read and will get caught up in the story. This is a must-read.