Crusaders: The Complete History

A detailed history of the Crusades told by the bestselling author of «The Templars» and «The 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 frames, Jones looks back to the origins of Christian-Muslim relations in the 8th century and traces the influence 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 «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 perspectives 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 commander, as well as ordinary Christian monks.