I found this book to be very informative. Clearly, I've held some misconceptions regarding the Crusades. What I particularly found intriguing was that bit written about Muslim Ibn Jubayr who traveled across the Mediterranean while on his way to Mecca in the early 1180's. During his journey he found that the Muslims were far better off in those lands controlled by the Crusaders than they were in Muslim ruled lands, and that Muslims preferred to live in the Crusader realms as those lands were more orderly and better managed.

Ibn Jubayr wrote: "Whose lands were efficiently cultivated. The inhabitants were all Muslims. They live in comfort with the Franks - may God preserve them from temptation! Their dwellings belong to them and all their property is unmolested. All their regions, patrolled by the Crusaders in Syria are subject to the same system: The land that remains, the villages and farms, have remained in the hands of the Muslims. Now, doubt invests the hearts of a great number of these men when they compare their lot to that of their brothers living in Muslim territories. Indeed, the latter suffer from the injustices of their co-religionists, whereas the Franks act with equity."

This was a fascinating and rather moving inverted view of events which are very familiar from the Western perspective. The Arabic perspective might as well never have existed for all we normally see of it. This is an anomaly in its own right, as the Muslim world into which the Crusaders came crashing in the 11th Century was, with China, the globe's most learned and most literate culture. This translation of Maalouf's Arabic-language account corrects this bias somewhat by drawing on the rich variety of Muslim sources to present the view from Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus.

The translation is wonderfully readable and a real page-turner. The Arabs allegedly have a real passion for language that cannot fully be conveyed in English, but the translator seems to have made an excellent job of trying. Maalouf's perspective is very much that of the Arab world, but I found that he avoided too biased an account and does not rail against the Crusaders or their religion the way one might expect. This is a rather balanced and professional account.

The Crusades, of course, brought horrors enough even given a balanced account, especially since Maalouf includes as part of the Crusades the Mongol incursions and genocide. The Franks appear to have bargained with the Mongols, some of whose prominent personages were Nestorian Christians, in an attempt to catch the Muslims in a pincer movement from East and West. This was a surprise to me, albeit not a great one.

The Crusaders come across as by turns fanatically religious and entirely cynical. Only ten years after the fall of Jerusalem, Frankish armies met on the field as enemies, one city allied with Seljuk Turks and another allied with Arabs. Christian and Muslim against Christian and Muslim. The Franks seem to have been rapidly integrated into the intrigues and betrayals of business-as-usual in this divided world, despite their pretensions of superiority.

The Muslims themselves were betrayed, then as today, by division. It took decades to respond effectively to the invasion because one potentate would not leave his city unguarded to commit an army. He was literally more scared of a Dolchstoss from his fellow Muslim rulers than of the invaders. A rising tide of pious outrage from the Muslim populace and the emergence of a few salient personalities, especially Nur ud-Din and Salah ud-Din, finally led to an effective response and the expulsion of the Franks from much of their conquests. The Franks did not help themselves by also making enemies of all other factions without discrimination, persecuting or oppressing Orthodox, Nestorian, Armenian and Syrian Christian, Jew and Muslim alike.

Maalouf finishes off with a commentary about the parlous state of the Arabic world in the late 20th Century when he was writing. It is a striking change of fortunes that the once most scientifically and medically advanced culture outside, perhaps, the Far East has today fallen under the heel of various tinpot dictators, apparently irreparably divided against itself, partly occupied by foreign troops and - most worryingly - rejecting as the work of evil foreigners any hint of the liberal, secular and scientific advances which characterise its competitors. Why does the political opposition the Arab world largely reject modernisation as foreign and evil? Why, in a nutshell, is the political opposition in the Arab world mainly driven by fundamentalist Islam?

Maalouf suggests that this is the legacy of the Crusades. Superior in every way except military potency, the Arabs were humiliated by what they saw as their inferiors. When they succeeded in responding, they did so as a result of a renaissance in religiosity which existed as a popular groundswell before it achieved power over the state. To this day, Islam is associated with popular revolt against corrupt power. To this day, the West is seen as militarily potent and culturally backward - Enlightenment values and all. If so, the rise of Islamism is probably no transient fashion, and may signal a shift that will work its way up to the level of governments in decades to come.

Maalouf's thesis appears to me to be plausible, and the stakes these days are high enough to make it worth considering.

If you are interested in the history of the Crusades, you really must read this book, without which you will not enjoy an important perspective.

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.

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.

This is a wonderful book and easy to read, not bogged down with a lot of academic jargon. The perspective is a fresh one, because most people in the West are inundated with Western views of things. Much of the tension between the Western world and the Muslim world is due to the vastly different views of reality the different cultures have. One of the fascinating parts of the book points out that there were Arab observers who did begin to realize this. One, whose name was Usamah, was sent as an emissary to the Crusaders by his sultan. He was appalled at the "barbarian" behavior of the Franj (the Arab term for "Crusader"-coming from the word "Frank") regarding their justice system. He came to this conclusion when he saw disputes being resolved by "trial by ordeal" i.e. "he who is in the right will be the strongest in a fight between disputants", or someone accused of a moral crime would be thrown into water. If he was innocent he would sink but if he was guilty he would float. This was in utter contrast to the Muslim and Jewish systems of jurisprudence of the time which were based on evidence and argument before judges.
Usamah also noted how Western science and medicine were inferior to those of the Muslim world. However, on the other hand, Usamah noted that the Frankish king did not have unlimited power, unlike Muslim rulers, and he could not overrule a decision made by the nobles. Another Muslim visitor to the Franj was named Ibn Jubayr and he noted that the majority of the population of the regions controlled by the Franj were Muslims and they were generally treated fairly by their Christian rulers and they had rights recognized even when they were mere peasants, which Muslim peasants living under Muslim rule did not enjoy. Muslim justice was more rational, but Muslim governance was arbitrary compared to that the of the Crusaders.
Ibn Jubayr concluded that the Franj must be defeated because their fairer treatment of their Muslim population would serve as an inducement for the Muslim masses to support them instead of their own rulers! (Arab/Muslim propaganda against Israel and the West today is often using the same arguments).
Maalouf, at the end of the book draws important conclusions from these observations. Although the Muslims miltarily won the wars of the Crusades, and the West lost them, it was the Muslim East that went into long-term decline in the wake of their victory, while the "infidel" West entered a long period of growth and development. As a consequence of their victory, the Muslim world felt it should cut off contact with the dynamic thought present in the West and they should hunker down into a defensive isolation in order to maintain their "purity".
Maalouf also points out that the Muslim world was never, to this day, able to develop orderly governmental institutions that provide for continuity. When one of the Franj kings died, his successor was usually picked (usually a son) in an orderly way. Such "divine right of kings" did not exist in the Muslim world, and, as anachronistic as it sounds to modern ears, the concept lead to a much greater degree of stability in the West than in the Muslim world, where few dynasties lasted more than 2 or 3 generations before a coup or assassination replaced one ruler with a stronger, or more clever one. Even the legendary Salah ed-Din failed to create a long-lasting dynasty. This has left a legacy of political weakness the Arab world is still struggling with (e.g. the attempt to create a stable, and somewhat democratic regime in Iraq). Maalouf is out of tune with the rising tide of Islamic extremism sweeping the Middle East so his call for soul-searching based on the conclusions he reached in writing this book seems to be falling on deaf ears. Yet, Maalouf himself fell victim to the closed-mindedness he decries in the book when he includes a map of the modern Middle East in which the name of the country of Israel does not appear. Still, this important book should be read by anyone interested in the history of the Middle East.

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.

Amin Maalouf's THE CRUSADES THROUGH ARAB EYES is an outstanding work of history writing. Like most Americans, I regarded the Crusades as a long-ago episode in the distant past whose major significance was that it indirectly led to the discovery of the New World. How naive we are! Maalouf's excellent book shows that the experience was so traumatic for the Arab world that after nearly a thousand years it STILL exerts a strong influence on Arab sensibilities. Understanding the importance of the Crusades for the Arab world gives a much stronger insight into the events unfolding today in the Middle East. (As a result of our ignorance, we unknowingly alienated a large part of the Arab world by calling the initial campaign against Saddam Hussein "Operation Crusade.") I feel lucky to have come across Maalouf's book. There's nothing pedantic about this great adventure story in which the stakes are high and the characters are larger than life. His exciting narrative clearly tells a story covering couple of centuries of cataclysmic events in a way that is easy to understand despite the enormous cast of characters, who each had different motives for their actions. There are battles, sieges, assassinations, and political intrigue swirling around the region we know today as the Middle East. It was not a contest for domination between two groups, but among many: Arabs, Turks, the Catholic West, the Orthodox East, and the Mongol hordes! All the major personalities in this struggle are vividly evoked, especially Saladin, a complex and charismatic figure whose triumphs and blunders Maalouf gives equal weight. A previous reviewer recommended photocopying the glossary of Arabic terms and keeping it handy while reading. I second that suggestion. I also have to add a word of praise for the book's English translator, Jon Rothschild. The prose flows very easily. I was never aware that I was reading a translation. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It made me want to do even more reading on the subject. Five stars.

Amin Maalouf is a good French-Lebanese writer, and this, a translation from the original French, reads very well.

The occasional reviewer who says that it is one-sided is a bit unfair. It is a history of the Crusades from one point of view, as Maalouf says, and as the title makes clear. In writing the book, he says in the introduction, he has deliberately relied almost exclusively on contemporary Arabic sources. Even so, his account is fairly even-handed in that respect. Sometimes he does write as if he is cheering and jeering at the appropriate places in the story, but all even-handed historians, such as Runciman, make it clear that the Crusaders were on the whole a pretty barbaric bunch. Also although Maalouf describes Crusader-Muslim alliances as "bizarre", he makes it clear that as the Crusader kingdoms become stable, they played a role that often cut across religious lines, and few leaders on either side were consistent allies to their co-religionists, nor consistent enemies to those of another faith.

Also, at the end, after detailing the huge amount that the Europeans learnt in science, technology, art, culture, medicine and so on from the Muslim world, he then considers a few things that the Muslim world even at the time could have learnt from the otherwise less advanced west, if they had wished to.

However, the strength of the book doesn't come from its even-handedness. A good history book can be as biased as the writer wants it to be in tone, so long as it is factually accurate. Maalouf's account substantially agrees with (for example) Runciman's history, but fills it out by explaining the debates, the conflicts and the plans that the Muslims had in response to the invasion.

The single perspective of the narrative would be a weakness if someone were to take this as the last word, or the most complete account of the Crusades. At times it reads almost like Hamlet without the prince, as the driving force of the narrative, necessarily, is the Crusaders themselves. Maalouf's account of them is very thin, especially when it comes to explaining their motivations, the plea for help of the Byzantine emperor, the preaching of Peter the Hermit, the mass hysteria, the hopes and the fantasies and so on. This is not really a weakness of the book, but just something you should bear in mind. Whatever the grounds for your interest in the Crusades, you would need to read an account of how it all came about. Runciman's history is the traditional standard work, and still well regarded, although some newer ones have also earned respect. Maalouf however, will add much vital information that Runciman doesn't cover, however limited Maalouf's book would be considered in itself.

The great strengths of Maalouf's book come when he is explaining the political and social context of the Middle East at the time. His explanation of the divisions between Turkish military commander and Arab civilian, burgher and villager, qadi and officer, Sunni and Shia, Greek and Armenian, Muslim and Jew gives you a deeper understanding of the Crusades than you would have if you only read other sources. He also explains the Assassins in a way that treats them not as an exotic curiosity, but an important social movement.

This book will enrich whatever else you have read about the Crusades. Although many of the original Arabic texts have now been translated, his overview and narrative is based on a wide variety of Arabic sources, and gives a broad understanding of what the Muslims thought of the event, and how they reacted to it.

A good story that portrayed the Crusades from the eyes of the people who were in defense of their nation. Going to school in America, I heard of the Crusades through European eyes and on History Channel specials (back when they used to show things about history) I seen the unbiased sides from both the Western and Islam nations. This book talks more about the politics involved in the various Islamic nations in the Middle East and the trouble it took just to rouse an army up to face this European invasion. It got a bit stale at times, but quickly got interesting which is why I give it 4 instead of 5 stars. A good read for those who are interested in Islamic history.

This was an incredible book. I enjoy reading first hand accounts of history, without the boring academic drudgery. This book is full of the accounts of arabic and middle eastern viewpoints from that time period. It increased my knowledge and respect for the non western inhabitants of outremer. There is one instance where a crusaders wife comes into Saladin's camp and begs him to give her her young daughter back. She had been captured as a non combatant and sold into slavery by Saladins warriors. The mother had lost her husband and the child was the only thing left she had. After hearing her out, Saladin began crying and gave his men silver and told one of his aides to take the woman to the slave market and buy her daughter back! Incredible.

The quality of this book speaks for itself, if it is written from the non-Western perspective of the crusades, but manages to score an average of 4,5 of 5 stars from 74 primarily US reviews prior to mine. Especially as the overall sentiment in these reviews stays virtually the same, pre 9-11, immediately post 9-11, during the Bush Crusades and after them.

The book has been written in 1983 in French, translated into English in 1984 and published in the US in 1985. As such, the book would need an update, not only concerning the Bush Crusades, but also about the information that the wannabe assasin of Pope John Paul II in 1981 wasn't the Muslim Turk Mehmet Ali Agca by himself, but a ploy: The puppet master was in the Soviet polit bureau, via Bulgarian and East German secret service ploys. The author Amin Maalouf was born in Lebanon and migrated to France in 1976, during the Lebanese (religious) civil war. He's an Arab Christian.

The book is not meant to inform on the European political, religious, financial and other motivations for the crusades, but starts with the troops arriving in Muslim territories. Hence, it is also not concerned with the prior Muslim conquest of the previously Christian territories. Which in turn had been European-invaded empires by the Romans and Greek, the Jews before that, then the Egyptians, prior to that the Akan and prior in turn the San (Bushmen). But even they were invading "Neanderthal" territory. So please, to anyone: Don't assume, "you" were there originally... (I left out some Asian invaders.) I hoped to find out anything at all about the Christian Nubian empires (either one or all of Nobadia, Makuria, Alwa), which were left alone till then, but got invaded by the Muslims as revenge for helping the Europeans in one of the crusades. Only Abyssinia (today's Ethiopia) remained exempted from the jihad. Not a word even of their existence. So, here's a message: There's a third perspective, one which is even more difficult to find any information of... (Please leave a comment on any known source.)

The title of the book makes the non-Western perspective clear, however, it isn't entirely correct either. But then again, book titles rarely are as the authors often do not have any control over the titles, changed for commercial reasons by the publishers. The author is Arab - not Muslim -, the main sources are historic Arab historians, yet the perspective is written from non-Arab leaders as well, such as Turks, Kurds, Persians, Egyptians. But also Armenians and other local Christians. In addition, it is not about "the crusades", as that would imply all of them. "Of course", it's only about those, which were directed against the Eastern Muslim territories. Not those against Muslim territories in Iberia, not those against Christian "heretics" such as the Waldensians within Europe, not those against European Jews (which were automatic part of any crusade), not those against European "pagans", such as the original Baltic Prussians, which for political reasons some Germans adopted the name from, and not those crusades, which didn't make it to the desired Muslim destinations, such as the Shepherds Crusades and also not the Children's Crusade, as the few surviving kids who really made it to the destination, were enslaved before they could leave the ships. By reading this book's view, you won't get a feeling of "crusades" either, but of one single 200-year-war, with several reinforcements - not numerically listed - of European troops. Who are called "Franj". Referring to all of them, such as the French, Italians, Germans, English etc. The same as all Muslims are headed under "Arabs" in the English title. Differentiations were made towards the "Rum" (pronounce similar to Roome), the Byzantine Christians and of course all the local minority Christians. The German title, translated into English, is more polemic, but more precise at the same time: "The Holy War of the Barbarians".

Most reviewers point out that the book is NOT polemicly subjective against Westerners in contrast to an adulation of the Muslims. I find it even intriguing that the author refrains from listing the civilizing effect on Europe, the crusades had (and earlier Muslim invasions of Iberia and later ones of Eastern and Central Europe). Before the crusades, Europeans didn't have essential items such as sugar and shoes (instead honey and rag/fur wrappings). Not to mention hygiene, which was lost after the Roman empire. The book does mention medicine and a reviewer criticizes that as arbitrary quoting by the author. However, it is historic fact that the Muslims re-introduced medicine into Europe. For one thing, it was considered heretic in Europe to dissect corpses, making it impossible for "doctors" to know, how humans look like inside. It is often said, the Muslims got sophisticated medicine originally from the Romans and Greeks. Part of it, however, all of them received medicine from ancient Black Egyptians. In fact, the latter were able to diagnose fine bone crackings/fractures, something TODAY'S Westernes (nor anybody else) haven't the faintest idea, how they did that without x-rays. Some reviewers think the mentioned cannibalism of some crusaders has to be reproduced historic Muslim propaganda. Not so. There are Western sources, by the crusaders themselves. As the leaders were not able to prevent the masses - not soldiers - travelling with them to engage in that, as they had no control over them anymore. For an elaboration read the 1957 Western book The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (Galaxy Books). I would like to note that it is amazing how little the author engages in what might be considered biased. For example, he is stating, referring to the last medievil Franj invasion of Egypt: "Never again would the Occidentals attempt to invade the land of the Nile." But in 1798, the Franj returned under Corsican Napoleon. In the 19th century, the UK occupied Egypt, in the 20th century warring resumed, with Israel. Yet, the author isn't using history for tempting more contemporary issues.

I ordered this book along with one on the Crusades from the Christian perspective (or the 'Western' perspective) hoping to get each side of the story, so to speak.

In picking up both books I was a bit apprehensive wondering whether or not they would be overly one-sided. For example, I was not looking for a piece of 'slam' journalism justifying the Middle East's current ills on the invasions of Crusaders 1000 years ago. This book is certainly not that. Mr. Maalouf painstakingly takes the stories of the Crusades, written by Arab chroniclers, court attendants of the Sultans, and other historical records written during the Crusades themselves, and gives you the story of the Crusades through Arab eyes.

What I found very refreshing about Mr. Maalouf's writing is that he simply didn't rely on the writings as the end all to tell the story, when it was clear that the contemporaneous writings aren't telling the whole story. At times when accounts don't seem credible, or when two accounts differ substantially (such as over the number of deaths at a battle), Mr. Maalouf looks past the hyperbole and rhetoric that can often accompany such tales and notifies the reader that the conflicts exist, or that agreement over such details has not been reached. He then generally takes the effort to research city populations, and army sizes, etc. to come to a satisfactory answer to the question posed. As you can imagine, there are accounts of "10,000" people slaughtered - when we know, now, that the town probably was not big enough to hold more than a couple thousand. Mr. Maalouf goes out of his way to bring you the truth, and not just the rhetoric of the day.

Another thing I truly enjoyed about this account was that the author went out of his way to put the words and writings of the chroniclers in their proper context, which, as you can imagine, makes a big difference, especially for Westerners who may be unfamiliar with Muslims/Arab tradition and the Middle Eastern makeup of the time. For example, before, during, and after the Crusades, the Middle East was wrought with fighting not just between Muslims and Christians, but also between other Muslims (Shia vs. Sunni, Kurd v. Arab v. Persian v. Turk, etc.), and from with other non-Muslim and non-Christan foes (Arabs v. Mongols). The sultans were battling each other. The different sects were battling each other. The Turks and the Persians were encroaching on Arab lands, as were the Byzantines and the Mongols. The Crusaders were attacking Jerusalem. During some points, some Muslim groups even allied themselves with the Crusaders to fight other Muslim groups. Thus, each chronicler (the Crusades lasted hundreds of years) wrote in a different time with a different attitude towards the peoples and places. Some wrote during relative peace, when Christian and Arab coexisted, while some wrote during all-out war. Some wrote when the tensions between Muslims themselves were high, some when there was relative accord. Some chroniclers wrote during periods of Muslim domination, and some wrote during times where it seemed inevitable the Christians would control the Middle East and Islam would die out. Mr. Maalouf ably ties all of the stories together, explaining the different attitudes among chroniclers.

All in all, an excellent book. It is eye-opening, not because it tells some one-sided story as interpreted by today's Muslims, but because it really gives you an understanding about how the people felt then. It truly does tell the story through their eyes - the Arabs of 1000 years ago.

Oh, and it is a "quick" read. That is, nothing in this book bogs down the reader or requires you to grab other books for explanation.

This is a good book and a great read. However, it is often read as a "real" history book, which it is not by a long shot, and probably was not intended as such either - Amin Malouf is a very political author, after all. Malouf has written an elegant text as well worth reading as many other introductory books to the crusades. It is telling, however, that the passage most often quoted from "The Crusades through Arab Eyes", Usama ibn Munquidhs 12th-century negative third-hand commentary on "frankish" medicine, has been cut and pasted by Malouf from its original context, omitting the autobiographer's original first-hand positive assessment of the newcomer's medical arts. That example is hardly the only one it the book that makes it readily apparent that Malouf is not a historian and lacks a lot of in-depth knowledge of the period he describes (or worse, has decided to omit details he does not find support his take on things). I read this book much as I read Malouf's other works of historical fiction, but I would not treat it as a real history book.

This is a good companion to a serious study of the Crusades. It gives a lot of interesting info on the state of the arab muslim world in the time period, and the effect the invasion of the Franks had on Islamic identity and political cohesion. The parallels to modern times are inescapable, especialy as regards the seemingly absolute inability of the arab muslim world to unite around a single leader for longer than that leaders lifespan, and sometimes not even that long. What it does accomplish is to humanize the inhabitants of the levant during the crusades, abolishing the "richard lionheart"/ chivalrous knights ideal westerners may still carry. Heat, dirt, disease, terror, death, these were the daily companions of the Crusades, and thier gifts to the people of the eastern mediterranean coast.

This book explains the crusades as primarily political invasions, without much true spirituality involved for many participants. He shows, interestingly, that many Christians were better treated under Muslim rulers than under the rule of Europeans. You will benefit from seeing how there were good people on all sides of the conflicts, as well as the bad.
An important part of this book, is the Epilogue. In this summary, a comparison is made of the "Franj-administered" and "Occidental-administered" territories, with emphasis on the rights and responsibilities of rulers and subjects. There is a lot of wisdom in this comparison, and should be studied well by those attempting to envision institution-building in the future. Especially when any act of violence against the western lands or westerners can be portrayed in Arab media simply as vengeance for expeditions in 1191AD. For reviews of similar books, see the resources pages at civilsociety at seedwiki. Thanks.

Contrary to absent_minded_prof's assertion, anyone who's read popular non-academically oriented histories of the Middle East (those aimed at laymen instead of college students) is well aware that Arab and Turkish historians dutifully recorded the events of their day. What we have not had, however, is a chronicle of these histories translated into English and presented in a straightforward way for the average person to digest.

Amin Maalouf does an excellent job at presenting these events in a chronologically accurate context, and does a very good job at introducing the various Arab and Turkish factions who found themselves under attack by the "Frankish" horde. Maalouf is less adept at differentiating these European barbarians and leaves some questions unanswered because the original Arab historians didn't seem to care, either. Who are these Franks, exactly? Why did they come? What, exactly, was it they wanted, and for whom? This lack of curiosity about the "barbarians" from abroad is a major recurring theme in Islamic history, but Maalouf lets it pass without comment.

Where the book excels is putting together a picture of a Muslim Middle East whose rulers are more interested in fighting other Muslim princes than they are in repelling Christian invaders, and we also learn how and why the center of power changed hands between the Arabs and Turks, and how the inexorable decline of the Byzantine Empire started in earnest.

This book has little to do with George Bush, but everything to do with Osama bin Laden. Contemporary events bear only a shadow of relation to the Crusades, but a reader will be left with a healthy curiosity regarding the history of the Middle East, Christianity, and Islam.

We have here an average history addition to Crusader history. What makes it interesting is that we get a feel of the other side.

What we have is a relatively small group of Christians in a region full of Arabs. It is amazing that they lasted as long as they did probably as unlike the Western leaders deeply involved in the Crusades many Arabs leaders had many other issues rather then the crusaders to think about. So often they were willing to make deals with the Crusaders.

Immediately it is clear how much is missing from the books on the crusaders now available, as it seems that much material available from the Arab side is missing from them.

Worth a read.

This book had some pretty decent historical references that were enjoyable to read. Some of the referenced material can be found from other texts written by western authors. This book however, had a greater density of arab references of the times than you would find in most crusader period books.

The most compelling part of this book was the authors own analysis and commentary on the subject. Very well written and organized. It is a must read for someone who is a student of this period.

Have the Junior Bush administration/ neo-con policy makers read this clearly written book? They should - Informed policies are always a good idea. Really interesting and exciting read. The historical antagonism between the Muslim / Christian world is clarified.. One is not surprised at the rejection and anger of the faux-pas word:"Crusade." used prior to the present illegal wars. Poets and historians quotations given are still are apt today. All of Maalouf's books are excellent. Nobel Prize? READ IT. Thank you, Sarah Meyer of Index Research. [...]

Have the Junior Bush administration/ neo-con policy makers read this clearly written book? They should - Informed policies are always a good idea. Really interesting and exciting read. The historical antagonism between the Muslim / Christian world is clarified.. One is not surprised at the rejection and anger of the faux-pas word:"Crusade." used prior to the present illegal wars. Poets and historians quotations given are still are apt today. All of Maalouf's books are excellent. Nobel Prize? READ IT. Thank you, Sarah Meyer of Index Research. [...]

As a former history major and teacher I am very familiar with the history of the Crusades from the Western point of view. They have been portrayed in literature, movies, and history. They have been glamorized and vilified by Westerners for centuries. Reading Amin Maalouf's rendering of this familiar story from the view-point of Arab chroniclers was like looking through Alice's looking glass at a world that is backwards from the one we know. Here we don't have just Crusaders, advernturers, or even the evil conquerors that deconstructionists portray, but invaders, barbarians, and enemies of God Himself.

This book is a must read for everyone who is concerned about events in the Middle East today. It sheds light on a crucial time in history that affects the psyche of Muslims who are living right now. Especially helpful is the epilogue in which Maalouf explains how the collective memory of the Crusades colors the way many Middle-easterners see the West. It is not riveting, but very readable considering it is a translation. I enjoyed it and learned a lot.

In 1009 the Fatimid caliph al Hakim ibn Amr Allah sacked the pilgrimmage hospice in Jerusalem and destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This act, which is not mentioned in Amin Maalouf's THE CRUSADES THROUGH ARAB EYES, provided an excuse for the First Crusade. Did the rectification of this wrong justify the behavior of the Christian crusaders in the Holy Land? That is the question which must be answered by those who read this book. Perhaps some of the stories Maalouf relates-- such as those regarding the cannibalism of the Westerners (pp. 39-40) are apocryphal. But it is true, as we know from other sources, that the Crusaders massacred Jews and their fellow Christians of the Eastern Orthodox sect as well as Muslims of every age and both sexes. Yet at first, the Muslim world could do nothing against such brutal invaders. Maalouf well chronicles how it foundered for many decades under the government of unworthy and constantly quarreling rulers. This made it easy at first for the Crusaders to pursue a policy of divide and conquer. An extreme example of the divisions in the Muslim world was the sect of the Assassins, a distant ancestor of Al Quaeda. These fanatics, who were detested by most other Muslims, were sworn to creep up secretly and murder any person whom their leader directed them to, even if it meant their own death. Indeed, there was even a word for people willing to undertake such suicide missions-- fida'i, or suicide commando-- the ancestor of today's suicide bomber. And like most terrorist groups today, the Assassins had a history of allying themselves with the Westerners, to such an extent that they were regarded by the rest of the Muslim world as closet Christians, or batinis.

After many decades of foundering without adequate leadership, the Muslim world was finally blessed with a series of leaders who were capable and responsible enough to lead it to victory over the Crusaders. These culminated in the rise of Saladin, who ruled a great empire encompassing Egypt, Syria and Arabia. Before besieging Jerusalem in 1187, Saladin offered its Christian conquerors everything they had a right to demand: "the city would be handed over without combat; those inhabitants who desired to leave could do so, taking their property with them; the Christian places of worship would be respected; in the future, those who wished to visit the city as pilgrims would not be molested." (p. 196) Saladin was offering to right the wrong done by his predecessor in 1009. They refused. Even after he took the city by force, Saladin did not kill the Christians and respected their places of worship. Of course, having chosen to fight, they had to pay a ransom for their freedom, but Saladin allowed many of the poorer members of the population to leave without paying anything and also allowed his brother al Adil to buy a thousand of the poor as slaves so that he could free them.

One must say that the criticism Maalouf makes of Saladin, that he allowed too many Frankish knights to escape to Tyre, where they could receive reinforcements, is well justified. As the author says, "Of course, there is no reproaching the sultan for the magnaminity with which he treated the vanquished. In the eyes of history, his repugnance for needless bloodshed, his strict respect for his commitments, and the touching nobility of his acts of compassion are as valuable as his conquests. Nevertheless, it is incontestable that he made a serious political and military error." (p. 204) This ultimately cost him the battle for Acre. When that city fell to Richard the Lionheart, Saladin sent a messenger to negotiate terms for the release of the Muslim prisoners. To quote the author once again, "But the Englishman was pressed for time. Determined to take advantage of his success to launch a sweeping offensive, he had no intention of bothering about captives, any more than had the sultan four years earlier, when the Frankish cities were falling into his hands one after another. The only difference was that when Saladin wanted to avoid being burdened with prisoners, he released them, whereas Richard preferred to have them killed." (p. 210) Whe both sides reached a stalemate over Jerusalem, Saladin offered a peace proposal, which among other things enabled the Christians to come unarmed to make their pilgrimages to the holy city, though it remained in Muslim hands. In 1192, Richard finally accepted this proposal, which became the Treaty of Ramla. Ironically, it was Saladin who fnally enabled the Christians to recapture their only legitimate objective in the holy land-- the right of pilgimmage-- and Richard, who twice marched on Jerusalem without attempting to capture it, to the despair of his men, who did the most to impede their attainment of this objective.

It is very important to have a book detaling the crusades from the arab or muslim point of view. But is also sheds sometime on the entire problem with the crusades and all clashes between Islam and CHristendom. From Lepanto to the Johad that almost took Paris to the siege of vienna, to the Ottoman colonization of Europe or te European clonization of Africa to the Muslim slave trade in Africa there are rarely if ever books using Arabic sources. This is not because they do not exist, it is because Western authors choose to use thier own slef hating hyperbole rather than read what actually happaned. Most books on the crusade in fact tell most of the story from the arabic point of view but dont use Arabic sources, they simply decided as post modern authors that the crusades are 'bad' and therefore they must be judged as such. Little attempt is made ever to understand the motives of the crusaders, or their humanity, or the fact tha they were doing nothing different to Muslims that had been done t Christians since 632 AD. Instead authors have decided that while Saladin remains 'pure and honorable' a trait he was given by crusader writers, the crusaders are 'currupt' and 'immoral' and 'savage' and that they are only in the deed for money.

So it is worthwhile to have a book using the Arab sources from the Arab point of view, no matter the polemics the Arabic judgement of the crusades is the one adopted by the west anyway, so it might as well be read strait from the propogandists mouth than passed off as scholarhsip as most books on the crusades are.

Seth J. Frantzman

I will not lie to you. At times this is a boring book. Yet you are not allowed to have a strong opinion on what goes on in the Middle East these days, or claim an understanding of what this jihad, the holy war, is, unless you've read this book. Or any other book that tells the same tale. I think you'll have a hard time finding one that does so.

For some reason, the Arabs in the Middle East still have the events from almost a thousand years ago in fresh memory. You need to understand this if you ever want to get at the rationalé for the extremists of the region. This exceptional memory (myself, I can hardly remember what I did last year) is from a period of many violent and ruthless clashes between Arab muslims, European crusaders (the Francs) and, in the end, Mongol raiders. It was all recorded by excellent Arab writers of the time. Amin Maalouf has been kind enough to read through this whole collection of texts, and concentrate it in this book. I think he could have cut it by some 50 percent more, but at least half the book actually makes a lot of sense to have read. (The rest is just unneccessary repetitions of the useful bits, only with more names and years thrown in.)

As I write this, there's a terrible war going on in Lebanon, with the Israelis making it painfully obvious why you should pick on someone your own size. A thousand years ago, as described in this book, the muslims in present day Israel, Lebanon and Syria only had a couple of things to defend themselves with. Archers, and lumps of oil put on fire to be thrown at the enemy. And today? All they have to defend themselves with are some modern archers, namely the Katyusha rockets, and of course oil. They're not throwing the oil at the attackers any more. Actually, instead they simply threaten to keep the oil away from them. It is funny how sometimes time does not seem to change things much at all.

So, non-muslims (Christians, atheists and all other with opinions on the Middle East) should read this, to understand what "the others" are so upset about. And muslims with incredibly long memories should read this, to realize that hey, this started a heck of a long time ago, so maybe it's time to let bygones be bygones. After all, surely no religion can be worth all this trouble and suffering.

I will not lie to you, this is, at times, a boring book. Yet you are not allowed to have a strong opinion on what goes on in the Middle East these days, or claim an understanding of what this jihad, the holy war is, until you've read this book. Or any other book that tells the same tale, but I think you'll have a hard time finding one that does so.

For some reason, the Arabs in the Middle East still have the events from almost a thousand years ago in fresh memory. You need to understand that if you ever want to get at the rationalé for the extremists of the region. This exceptional memory (myself, I can hardly remember what I did last year) is rooted in a period of many violent and ruthless clashes between the Arab muslims, the European crusaders (the Francs) and, in the end, the Mongol raiders. It's all recorded by excellent Arab writers of the time, and Amin Maalouf has been kind enough to read through the whole collection of texts, and concentrate it in this book. I think he could have cut it by some 50 percent more, but at least half the book actually makes a lot of sense to have read. (The rest is just unneccessary repetitions of the useful bits, just with more names and years thrown into it.)

As I write this, there's a terrible war going on in Lebanon, with the Israelis efficiently demonstrating why you should pick on someone your own size. A thousand years ago, as described in this book, the muslims in present day Israel, Lebanon and Syria, only had a couple of things to defend themselves with. Archers, and blobs of oil that they put on fire and threw at the enemy. And today? The only things they have to defend themselves with are some modern archers, namely the Katyusha rockets, and of course oil. Now not by throwing it at the attackers, but instead keeping the oil away from them. It is funny how sometimes time does not seem to change things much at all.

So, non-muslims (Christians, atheists and all other with opinions on the Middle East) should read this, to understand what "they" are so upset about. And muslims with incredibly long memories should read this, to realizes that hey, this started a long time ago, maybe it's time to let bygones be bygones. After all, no religion can be worth all this trouble and suffering.

I am generally impressed with this book on the crusades, an oft looked over point of view, even though they were the other half of the conflict. Understanding how the emirs functioned not only in normal society, but in war as well as succession issues sheds a lot of light on how the crusades happened and why the Franj were successful.

My only criticisms are small. The book was most certainly written for the layman. There is no references throughout the book. When he quotes he italicizes. And when he is quoting someone of some length, he always starts the paragraph off, and then inserts an italicized name of who the author is in the body of the paragraph. Very amateurish and it does tend to interrupt the flow of the quotes. And finally, the author seems to have fallen under the spell in his epilogue that he claims Muslims to this day have fallen under. That of Saladin. I don't doubt that Saladin was a great ruler. He was one of the greats of all rulers in our past. But Saladin could do no wrong in Maalouf's eyes. Everything presented, everything he quoted was idolizing him, even going so far as to say how much of a "brute" and bad man King Richard was, Saladin's greatest Franj opponent, in order to show Saladin's magnanimity. The two men are more like each other than Maalouf gives off.

Besides these points the book is a good read, one that someone who is looking into the crusades would do well by reading. Don't put as much faith into Maalouf's usage of myth's and propagandist sources, since most historians know to discount those as not true (for example, Maalouf proceeds to tell how bad the Franj were by using Muslim propaganda of the time, saying they took Muslim leaders and paraded them in front of a fire in which a Muslim was roasting on a spit. Then the Franj proceeded to eat the Muslim in order to scare the nobles of the city into not fighting them; such usage of myths and Muslim propaganda as a source are not legitimate). All in all, a fun read, one I am glad to have read.

3.75 stars.

A superbly written book. While there are many excellent books written about the Crusades, they invariably have a Eurocentric slant. Even if not necessarily giving a 'Crusader good, Saracen bad' message, such books mainly concern themselves with the goings-on of the Frankish forces.

This book is unusual in that it is one the very few that peeks into the Other camp to get a glimpse of the Crusades from their point of view. Most of the sources quoted throughout the book are Arab chroniclers who had lived at the time of the various campaigns and had witnessed the events first-hand.

It is not, in my opinion, a mirror-image of events as one reviewer puts it; and it certainly does not propound a 'Arabs good, Franks bad' view despite the connotation of the title. References to massacres of women and children by the Franks are countered equitably (paradoxically, to this reviewer) by how well the Franks treated local subjects in areas they held.

Instead, I found this book to be an enlightening examination of the internal politics and non-religious considerations in the strategies of key Arab personalities which led to the various Arab wins and losses.

An excellent book for the general reader. To those who wish to delve into a thicker tome, I suggest Carole Hillenbrand's "The Crusades - Islamic Perspectives", although the perspectives may not be through Arab eyes.

A very well researched book that covers the Arab side of the story for the first 5 or 6 crusades, this book goes into detail about the political struggles of the individual cities, fiefdoms and tribes as the fighting and maneuvering between the various Arab leaders left them unwilling to organize and repel the Christian invaders. Good insight into Saladin, and although this book uses quotes and research from contemporary writers it does not spend much time on the lifestyle, feel or daily existence of the Arab fighters or people of those times. A definite must read for fans of the crusades for the viewpoint, but lacks a flavor of or insight to the life of the defenders of those lands at that time in history

Of all the material that I have read on Crusades/Crusaders, this books is perhaps the most eloquent and very balanced assessment of that time period.

First and foremost this is an excellent read. If more books were like it more people would read and learn about history.

A great eye opener for those of us educated in the West on the great and noble knights of the Crusades. Without being long winded the strength of the book is that it uses the words of those historians that were contemporary with the events. Maalouf fills in details about the place and time the historian was writing from. Of course all historians have their own bias and this book helps bring to light the Occidental vs. Oriental viewpoints.

Of the many revelations book shows makes, for me, the degree to which Islamic Empire (not merely the Arab empire) was fractured and suffered from infighting as the Europeans did was fancinating - and revealed why both sides were much less effective and unified as armies. The biggest surprises were how much "Crusading" (plundering) took place in Egypt adding strength to the saying "Follow the Money." If your view the nobleness of the Crusades and Knighthood is sacred to you ... do not read this. Buy Ivanhoe.

This is a short book, filled with information. Maalouf keeps his chronicle under 300 pages, not by omitting key elements, but by trimming his narrative voice and focusing, instead, on the words from the Arab crusade historians, themselves. By quoting the chroniclers of the realm, Maalouf fleshes out the story of the Muslim people that lived on "the other side" of the crusades. Rather than just showing the battles, blow by blow, Maalouf lets the reader inside the Muslim mind for a more complete image. This voyage inside the Muslim viewpoint also invites the reader to learn more about the petty jealousies and competition that reside there. By spotlighting this often overlooked side of the crusades, Maalouf has made what has been referred to by other academics as an important contribution to the study of the crusades.

Unfortunately, Maalouf's history lacks continuity and the linear narrative format that makes this kind of chronicle more enjoyable to read. Maalouf's side ventures into regional history, while very illuminating and relevant to the task at hand, distract the reader and the continuity suffers as a consequence. His information is well researched, but the presentation suffers when it has to struggle against the narrative for the reader's interest.

However, this book is so valuable for the viewpoint it presents. When looking at the other reviews, I wonder what book they read. Maalouf's story is actually well-balanced. He may portray the crusaders as bumblers, but he doesn't show the one-sided conflicts some other readers seem to defending against.

This is a short book, filled with information. Maalouf keeps his chronicle under 300 pages, not by omitting key elements, but by trimming his narrative voice and focusing, instead, on the words from the Arab crusade historians, themselves. By quoting the chroniclers of the realm, Maalouf fleshes out the story of the Muslim people that lived on "the other side" of the crusades. Rather than just showing the battles, blow by blow, Maalouf lets the reader inside the Muslim mind for a more complete image. This voyage inside the Muslim viewpoint also invites the reader to learn more about the petty jealousies and competition that reside there. By spotlighting this often overlooked side of the crusades, Maalouf has made what has been referred to by other academics as an important contribution to the study of the crusades.

Unfortunately, Maalouf's history lacks continuity and the linear narrative format that makes this kind of chronicle more enjoyable to read. Maalouf's side ventures into regional history, while very illuminating and relevant to the task at hand, distract the reader and the continuity suffers as a consequence. His information is well researched, but the presentation suffers when it has to struggle against the narrative for the reader's interest.

However, this book is so valuable for the viewpoint it presents. When looking at the other reviews, I wonder what book they read. Maalouf's story is actually well-balanced. He may portray the crusaders as bumblers, but he doesn't show the one-sided conflicts some other readers seem to defending against.

This is a short book, filled with information. Maalouf keeps his chronicle under 300 pages, not by omitting key elements, but by trimming his narrative voice and focusing, instead, on the words from the Arab crusade historians, themselves. By quoting the chroniclers of the realm, Maalouf fleshes out the story of the Muslim people that lived on "the other side" of the crusades. Rather than just showing the battles, blow by blow, Maalouf lets the reader inside the Muslim mind for a more complete image. This voyage inside the Muslim viewpoint also invites the reader to learn more about the petty jealousies and competition that reside there. By spotlighting this often overlooked side of the crusades, Maalouf has made what has been referred to by other academics as an important contribution to the study of the crusades.

Unfortunately, Maalouf's history lacks continuity and the linear narrative format that makes this kind of chronicle more enjoyable to read. Although Madden displays a sort of tunnel vision in his attempt to keep the reader focused on the road ahead in the telling, Maalouf's side ventures into regional history, while very illuminating and relevant to the task at hand, distracts the reader and the continuity suffers as a consequence. His information is well researched, but the presentation suffers when it has to struggle against the narrative for the reader's interest.

However, this book is so valuable for the viewpoint it presents. When looking at the other reviews, I wonder what book they read. Maalouf's story is actually well-balanced. He may portray the crusaders as bumblers, but he doesn't show the one-sided conflicts some other readers seem to defending against.

The crusades were a defensive move in reaction to hundreds of years of violent jihad that spread Islam by force to the heart of Europe. True, the battles were bloody but that is they way they waged warfare back then. For a more accurate view read Robert Spencers Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam.

I bought the book for my daughter for a college class. She is very satisfied with it's condition and the speed at which it arrived.

Everyone thinks of themselves as the center of the universe. How could it really be otherwise? Our need to survive and thrive is primal, so we see things through our own eyes first, others a distant and difficult second. This principal telescopes out to include our family, our province or state, our country and finally our culture. This is why, whether the writer has been "pro-Christian" or "pro-Arab", the historical treatment of the Crusades that have been available in English have come from a Christian or Western perspective.

That is why I felt this book was so enjoyable. What would it have felt like to have been an Arab during the Crusades? How did they perceive the vast numbers of violently fanatic pilgrims sweeping like a tide in from the West? What was going on in the Arab world just prior to and during the strange, blood-filled pilgrimage (this very question reveals one of the interesting insights the book provides: neither Christian nor Muslim thought of this movement as a "crusade." Participants considered themselves "Pilgrims of the Faith," which added to the initial Arab confusion and horror. What kind of Pilgrimage was this?

This book allowed me the rare opportunity to see my own culture and history as the strange and unknown "other." I am glad I read it. I have read several books about the Crusades before reading this one and was not fully aware how powerful a thing "perspective" can be.

When looking over the reader reviews of this book, I was nearly put off by the strident, insistent tone of some of them. I don't like being instructed to read something for my own good. By the same token, though, I think this book affords the Western reader with the oppurtunity to learn something they might not have known before. And isn't that the thrill of non-fiction?

Did you know that the pale complexions, blue eyes, and clean-shaven faces of the Christian knights often made Arab children cry? These things were so unknown to them. It is in these kinds of details, subtle yet mind-twisting, that I found this book so enjoyable. -Mykal Banta

The Crusades, to the Muslim world, were not as defining or as monumental in importance as they were to the Europeans ("Franj"), as Maalouf clearly illustrates in his masterful _The Crusades Through Arab Eyes_". They were, however, an interesting juxtaposition between Islamic East and Christian West. It is precisely these differences that make this such a compelling read.

To Westerners, images of the Crusades typially evoke "vailiant" knights struggling to free Jerusalem. As Maalouf vividly illustrates, these images are not only inaccurate, but unfair to those the Europeans sought to "liberate." I regret that more detail was not provided regarding the "Islamicisation" of the Europeans during their occupation, but the book is Arab-oriented.

Another difficulty I had in reading the book was the lack of maps; while I have a passing familiarity with the general geography, many of the events related would have been clearer had there been some clear reference.

In the final analysis, it is certainly a worthwhile read for those interested in the time period, and as a great way of "getting one's feet wet" regarding the history of East-West relations in the Near East.

The title of this review is exactly how the book is. This book is an incredibly easy read while still managing to cover the complexity of the crusades. At the same time it is entertaining - which makes this book truly stand out from other workds on Crusades. Don't be misled by the title - this book is NOT a diatribe by Arabs against Christians - the author of the book is an Arab Lebanese Christian so this should pacify any fears about a strong "Arab bias" in the book.

The book however is definitely through the "Arab eyes" in that the action, drama and political manouvering are explained from the seats of Arabs those days. The home turf of the crusaders is not covered in detail, e.g., the famous leader like Richard the Lionheart is given about 25 pages of coverage in the book and only when he enters present day Israel. So don't expect details about the in-depth politics of main-land europe. The coverage given to European politics is given in broad strokes, in major colors and without indepth detail. What the author has mentioned however is accurate.

If you want to learn something, open your eyes to the significant events that took place hundreds of years ago and be entertained in the process - there is no book better than this on the market! A definite 5 star recommendation.

A previous reviewer mentions that A Maalouf failed to record certain historical events and that he had read a great deal on the crusades and thus found this a poor read.

I wounder if the reviewer had read the Kamil fi-Tariq by ibn al-Athir which is what a large part of the crusades through Arab eyes is based upon. Amin Maalouf has used Arabic sources and that is the supreme value of the book. While we in the west have read of the history of the crusades from the veiwpoint of western sources (be they Latin, Greek etc) Amin Maalouf is basing his almost entirely upon Arabic ones. While the reader may complain that this is an unballanced method the same could be said for 95% of the literature available to us in the English language with regards to the crusades seeing as it is doubtful that an English writer on the crusades would have bothered to read the works of ibn al-Athir, ibn Khalikan or others; rather this book seeks to ballance out our knowledge of the crusades with Arabic sources to couterweight those we already have.

Therefore certain points of history while of great importance to the west may have been of little significance to the Arabs. In order to read this book we first need to put aside our Eurocentric vewipoint of the world which sees world events only in their level of significance to the west in order to appreciate the value of this work.

It is fairly short, thus only covers major events but does cover some of the events most significant to Arab or Muslim readers (The conquest of Anatolia by the Turks and some of the bloody battles that took place there) the first encouters with the crusaders in Palestine, the loss of Jerusalem and it's recapture and while praising Saladin also points out some of his faults)

This exellent book is well worth a read for anyone wishing to have a ballanced knowledge of the crusades from both sides, western and eastern.

Maalouf's idea is a good one: write a history of the Crusades from the perspective of the Muslims. However, as a work of history, this book is poor. Having ready other material on this time period, I can tell you that Maalouf skips many crutial points in his narrative and makes accusations with little to no historical evidence.

I'll give two examples. First, during his narrative of the Third Crusade, Maalouf makes it seem that little happened between the siege of Acre and Richard's departure. He makes little mention of the attempts on Jerusalem and makes no mention of the stunning Christian victories at Arsuf and Jaffa. Second, in his brief description of the Fourth Crusade, Maalouf makes the accusation that the Venetians plotted from the very beginning to overthrow the Byzantine Empire and that they controlled Alexios IV. First, there is little to no historical evidence in existance to back up such a claim. Second, there was no way the Venetians could have anticipated the amazing turns of fate that lead to the taking of Constantinople. Oh and the town in Hungary that the Fourth Crusade attacked... that was Zara, not Zadar.

I could go on and on about the lack of documentation in the book, but it's just not worth it. For those that are interested in the time period, I would suggest two other books:

Warriors of God
by James Reston Jr.

The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople
by Johnathan Phillips

Both of these are well documented, well written and fairly balanced.

Attacked by Mongols - the Tartars - in the east and by Franj the Europeans - in the west, the Muslims had never been in such a critical position. God alone could still rescue them.

The book takes you back in time repeating these events from the arab point of view - the slaughters they witnessed, the destruction and uprooting of their lands, etc.

A great read for anyone and everyone no matter whether you're into history or not.

Like many other reviewers, I picked up this book fearing it might be another "white devil screwed us over, thanks a lot Europe" kind of narrative. On the contrary, the reader will find no such thing. For one, Amin Maalouf is never afraid to explain the faults of the Arab leaders both militarily and personally - in fact, halfway through the book you'll wonder when the Muslims are gonna get their act together! An interesting part is at the very end when Maalouf points out that it WASN'T the West's fault the Arab world declined after the Crusades. From pages 261-264 he discusses how the Arab governments were poorly designed to handle transition of power - resulting in many civil wars and internal strife - while the European form of government was much more organized, hence why the Christians continually held their Middle Eastern provinces intact while the Muslims fought each other just for leadership positions. Maalouf also points out that while the Crusaders took what was good about Muslim society and made it their own (thereby improving their own way of life) the Muslim world did the exact opposite: closing their doors from what was good about Western life and even becoming much more isolated, defensive, and sterile and "even today we can observe a lurching alienation between phases of forced Westernization and phases of extremist, strongly xenophobic traditionalism." (page 265)

The book itself is a great read for any one interested in the Crusades, even if you've already read a good bit on the subject. Starting with the failed Crusade of Peter the Hermit, it goes on to the much larger effort to capture Jerusalem, the scuffles along the border between the "Occidentals" and the Muslim rulers, all the way to Saladin finally unifying the region and taking Jerusalem back for Islam, and even stretches on into the Mongol invasions. Maalouf's narrative often switches from purely facts to getting into the personality and character of the individual leaders and historians, and does so quite well. As a result I found myself reading this like I would any great action/fantasy adventure. From the charismatic Shirkuh to the determined Shams al-Dawla to Saladin himself, the history of the Arabs in the Crusades is a cast of character almost worthy of its own mini-series!

As pointed out by other reviewers, this book is pretty much entirely from the Arab point of view, and almost exclusively from Arab historians. To explain the latter first, it is true that many personal accounts and historical text are taken from Arab sources, but to compare it to Al-Jazeera is a bit extreme. At the end of the book in "Notes and Sources" Maalouf explains who these people were, what they did, and whether or not they were right or wrong or if other sources agree with them. It should also be noted he looks to many western/European scholars for Crusade facts and interpretation, such as the claim of cannibalism done by Crusaders (he quotes on page 39 a direct letter to the Pope from Christian officers, and cites Chrsitian scholars who have written the incident). But of course, who better to use as the eyes to see the Crusades through than the ones who saw it and are indeed Arab? This brings me to my next point, which is why this book is almost exclusively from the Arab point of view. I believe part of this was the point of the book - it is called "The Crusades through Arab Eyes." I've very rarely come across anything this detailed about the Crusades that exclusively deals with the Muslim side. More often than not, the Muslims are merely stated on equal with the Christians and more emphasis is put into events, or the account is taken entirely from the Christian point of view. The latter is all too real when one learns about the Crusades in history class - just as Maalouf presents the Christians as some mighty army that erupted from Europe and moved into the Middle East, so too did we learn about the Muslims in school merely as that culture that was in the way in the conquest of the Holy Land.

It is true that I would have liked to have learned more about certain topics, including the battles with the Mongols and the clashes between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, (the section on Richard is nearly brushed over) what we have here is good enough even for a one-time read. I would heartily suggest this book for any one interested in either military history, the Crusades, or Muslim history. It's well worth it.

Amin Maalouf attempts to present the Crusades from an Arab perspective, and he's done a brilliant job.

Relying on Arab historians' eye-witness, first-hand accounts (most of the time, at least), Maalouf presents to the readers the other side of the 'popular story'.

I would certainly recommend this book to those who are interested in reading about Christian confrontation with the East, Islam and the Arabs. Also, to those who are interested in topics, such as "clash of civilizations".