The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (Saqi Essentials) Paperback – April 29, 1989

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.

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.

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.