Encountering Islam on the First Crusade torrent

Encountering Islam on the First Crusade - Nicholas Morton [pdf]

The First Crusade (1095-9) has often been characterised as a head-to-head confrontation between the forces of Christianity and Islam. For many, it is the campaign that created a lasting rupture between these two faiths. Nevertheless, is such a characterisation borne out by the sources?

Engagingly written and supported by a wealth of evidence, Encountering Islam on the First Crusade offers a major reinterpretation of the crusaders' attitudes towards the Arabic and Turkic peoples they encountered on their journey to Jerusalem. Nicholas Morton considers how they interpreted the new peoples, civilizations and landscapes they encountered; sights for which their former lives in Western Christendom had provided little preparation. Morton offers a varied picture of cross cultural relations, depicting the Near East as an arena in which multiple protagonists were pitted against each other. Some were fighting for supremacy, others for their religion, and many simply for survival.

'... essential reading for those interested in what the first crusaders thought of their enemies. ... Morton's approach to his research is methodical and meticulous, making careful and comprehensive use of the sources, but without being unadventurous or plodding ... The result is a thorough, wide-ranging, incisive study that opens up new lines of research, poses thought-provoking challenges to conventional wisdom, and offers novel and convincing interpretations of the source material. I recommend it highly to students and scholars of the crusades, as well as interested laypersons.' - Niall Christie, The Medieval Review

Hardcover: 328 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (July 28, 2016)