CAROLE HILLENBRAND, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999). Pp. 704. $125.00 cloth.

Abstract

This book is a comprehensive survey of the history of the Crusades—comprehensive, that is, from the standpoint of the sources left by the Crusaders' enemies. The author sets out to reconstruct for a Western audience what the available Muslim sources (for the most part, in Arabic) tell us about the Crusading phenomenon: how the Muslims viewed and responded to the challenge presented to them by the European Christian holy warriors who suddenly appeared on the Near Eastern scene at the end of the 11th century. In this respect it is not unlike Amin Maalouf's The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, although compared to the earlier volume the present book is simultaneously less narrative and more exhaustive, even encyclopedic.