Rating: 
Summary: Changed my life
Review: Most valuable book I have ever read on why the world (and especially the Middle East) is as it is. Impossible to understand Gulf War, jihad, Palestinian politics without the information in this book. Entertaining and a good antidote for the jive you may have been fed in high school, Sunday school, and the daily paper. Recommended to all without exception.
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Summary: Reads like a novel
Review: Not a bad book, that paints muslims colourfully as a poor little people constantly crushed by evil christians. It starts in 1099 with first crusade. and shows how cruel and evil crusaders were. But our dear Amin Maalouf forgets a "little" detail. For about 300 years muslims were conquering Europe and this was just an answer. In 732 muslim army tried to conquer France and was (thankfully) stopped by Charles Martel at Tours. Muslims conquered Spain, Asia Minor, attacked Byzantine empire. Poor little peacefull muslims, arent they? THEY ARE NOT. And this books is not objective in any way.
Rating: 
Summary: NOT BAD, BUT NOT OBJECTIVE
Review: Not a bad book, that paints muslims colourfully as a poor little people constantly crushed by evil christians. It starts in 1099 with first crusade. and shows how cruel and evil crusaders were. But our dear Amin Maalouf forgets a "little" detail. For about 300 years muslims were conquering Europe and this was just an answer. In 732 muslim army tried to conquer France and was (thankfully) stopped by Charles Martel at Tours. Muslims conquered Spain, Asia Minor, attacked Byzantine empire. Poor little peacefull muslims, arent they? THEY ARE NOT. And this books is not objective in any way.
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Summary: A must-have for a complete look at the Crusades.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Must
Review: Once I started reading this book, I couldn't stop. It is extremely well written and researched. It proves that the human greed and lust of power is the origin of the crusade and all the fighting that went along in that era on both sides. Also it shows that the muslim world back then was basically divided into little kingdoms which were ruled by lusty Emirs and Sultans and such, and not united as some Islamic history books claim. Religion was a tool during that period of history. Good work by Amin.
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Summary: Exactly what the title says
Review: Several years ago, at a Middle East symposium on a local college campus, I heard a Palestinian speaker compare the coming of the Israelis to the Crusades. That took me aback, because the Jews were slaughtered by the Crusaders. To this day, Jews remember the Crusaders as persecutors. Why then, I wondered, would this Palestinian speaker equate Israelis with the Crusaders? I found the answer in this book: He did not see Israelis as Jews, he saw them as invading Europeans. In European Christian folklore, the Crusaders are portrayed as pious knights-in-shining-armor, selflessly marching off to rescue the Holy Land from the "infidels." But to the Arabs and Jews who lived in the Middle East, the Crusaders, or "Franks" as they called themselves back in the 11th century, were ruthless barbarians who raped, pillaged, and murdered entire populations as they marched across the land like a hoard of devouring locusts. Even more horrifying, the Crusaders sometimes roasted and ate the bodies of their enemies. (Both sides recorded this. See chapter 3, "The Cannibals of Ma-arra.") Although this book focuses on the Arab viewpoint, it does give brief accounts of what happened to the Jewish communities also. Some readers may be surprised to learn that there were Jews living in Jerusalem and other Middle Eastern cities in the eleventh century. It is a commonly held misconception that there were no Jews in the Holy Land between the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 and the establishment of the modern state of Israel. In reality, the only time that Jerusalem was ever "Jew-free" was during the Crusades, when the "good Christians" slaughtered them along with the Muslim population. The horrors of the Frankish invasions known as "Crusades" live on in the Arab collective memory, and this explains why any kind of Western presence in the Middle East is resented by the Arab world today. It also explains why the Muslim community was so deeply offended when President Bush referred to his war on terrorism as a "crusade." Believe me, this book will forever change the way you hear that word.
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Summary: Another Perspective, Interesting and Refreshing
Review: So many books are written about the Crusades. So many books that are so dull. You can literally go to any public library, find the medieval history section, spin around three times and find a very dull, very lengthly book on the Crusades. Maalouf's book is interesting and dare I say it refreshing. There are literally hundreds of accounts from the western perspective of the sacking and pillaging a particular city. It is nice to see accounts revealed from those being sacked and pillaged and how unpleasant they found it.
Maalouf reveals the arabic perspective of the Crusades from a selected period 1096 - 1291. There were several, mostly abysmal attempts before and a few attempts after. This book is a vital companion to anyone studying the Crusades. Maalouf does not pull any punches either revealing both how the Franks lined up and an slaughtered innocents as well as how the various Arab princes constantly played one another against each other in order to expand or preserve their particular realm. He also reveals how the Jewish communities were butchered along with the Muslim (the Crusaders did not distinguish the two since neither were Christian). This book reveals much of what goes on in the Arab mind today and why the West is perceived the way it is. Read this book to get an alternative perspective on a dark part of world history that is all to often glossed over in American public school programs.
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Summary: Reads like a novel
Review: Some reviewers criticize this book as not being objective but it was never meant to be. This book is an attempt to approach the crusades from an Arab perspective by relying on Arab historians of the period. Maalouf does a magnificent job at making a historical narrative very entertaining and easy to read.
Maalouf, a Christian Lebanese who grew up in a country torn by religious war, presents a vivid desciption of the horrors of the Crusades.
This book is very useful to understanding the Middle East today in its relationship with the West.
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Summary: In response to attacks on 'objectivity'...
Review: The arguments against this book are surprisingly vehement, but they seem to ignore one very large and glaring detail about it: the title. This book is not meant to paint an objective, all-encompassing view of the struggle between Islam and Christianity from the eighth-century onward. It is merely painting a picture of contemporary responses to the Crusades in the Muslim world of the time. Does it endorse them? No. Does it use them on some kind of attack of Christianity? No. As was stated before, the author is a Christian. So that little attack collapses rather easily, doesn't it? We have a wealth of information the Christian response to Islam's rise. Look at the thousands upon thousands of volumes on Byzantium, the Papacy, and the Frankish Empire. In fact, we're so used to having the picture painted as 'evil Islam attacks defenseless Europe' that the Crusades almost axiomatically become 'justice' rather than what they were, which was an exercise in barbarity. And that isn't just barbarity against Muslims. It was barbarity against EVERYONE different. Crusaders murdered countless numbers of Jewish people on their march to the east, and even eventually ended up sacking and destroying the Orthodox Byzantine Empire in 1204 (Fourth Crusade). At the behest of the scheming Venetians, no less, who wanted a Latin Emperor. Muslim civilization counted among its strong points an extremely refined and advanced culture that was shocked by the unbelievable animal cruelty of the Crusaders. I am not attacking Christianity nor defending the invasions of Islam into Europe. But it is hardly fair to compare the Muslim rule in Spain, which was one of the most advanced and tolerant nations on the face of the planet, with the butchery of the Crusades. A glance at the title tells us where the strength of the book lies. It shows us what it felt to be Muslim during the Crusaders. It gives us the same breadth of knowledge and then provides the corresponding reaction. I thought it was incredible, and for anyone who isn't stuck in a mindless, self-righteous arrogance that has to paint Islam as evil, I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Objective Hell! But a MUST READ
Review: The best effort I've ever seen at putting the reader in Arab shoes. It's not objective - read the title, it's not INTENDED to be objective. It's the Arab viewpoint, and it's grand. Perhaps the subtler lesson is that the Arab viewpoint is not a simplistic view of Arab victims and Western criminal aggression. It's far more nuanced; the Arabs of the day and of today were and are perfectly aware of the effects of internecine politics on their ability to stand up to the Afranj. What one might mistake for objectivity is the surprising discovery that the subjective viewpoint of the Arabs is complex and does not absolve them of all responsibility for their travails. What Maalouf succeeds best at is planting the reader squarely in a world centered around Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo. Much as the Western depictions of the Mongols and Huns gain resolution as the events draw nearer to Europe's heart, the Afranj begin as a nebulous barbaric horde passing Constantinople, and become real people with real personalities as they approach Jerusalem, establish roots, and become part of the Middle Eastern political reality. One of the most successful attempts I've seen at portraying a familiar historical event from an unfamiliar perspective.
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