Crusaders: The Complete History

A detailed history of the Crusades, narrated by the bestselling author of "Templars" and "Plantagenets" Dan Jones. For over 1000 years, Christians and Muslims lived side by side, sometimes in peace and sometimes at war. But when in 1099 Christian armies captured Jerusalem, the most infamous period of confrontation between the two religions began. Expanding the usual time frame, Jones looks back to the roots of Christian-Muslim relations in the 8th century and traces the impact of the Crusades to the present day. He also broadens the geography of events, taking the reader to Spain, North Africa, southern France, and the Baltic countries, where the "enemies of the Church" also lived. By telling the stories of individual participants in the Crusades, Jones presents these centuries of conflict not only from the perspective of popes and kings but also through the eyes of an Arab-Sicilian poet, a Byzantine princess, a Sunni scholar, a Shia vizier, a Mongol general, and ordinary Christian monks.