The Crusader Storm

Bold, vital and urgent . . . Blows the old parochial Western accounts clean away SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB

Refreshing and astutely judged . . . immensely enjoyable JONATHAN PHILLIPS

A spectacular new panoramic history of the Crusades.

From their foundation in 1097 to Saladins conquest of Jerusalem almost a century later, the Crusader States transformed the Middle Eastern world. In an era shaped by many conflicts, this was not simply a war between Christianity and Islam, but an epic contest among multiple rival empires, dynasties and cultures.

The Crusader Storm unfolds through a kaleidoscope of perspectives: a Byzantine renegade, a crusader princess, a Turkish matriarch, a young Arab nobleman, a Syriac archbishop, Saladins leading commander and the vizier of Egypt. Between them, information, technologies and ideas - as well as weapons - crossed borders at astonishing speed as their societies fought, allied and traded. Their entangled fates reshaped not only the Middle East, but the medieval world itself.

Drawing on sources from Arabic, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Latin and Hebrew traditions, Nicholas Mortons enthralling panorama transforms our understanding of the Crusades - revealing them not as a single clash of faiths, but as a dynamic era of war, commerce, innovation and exchange that defined the course of history.