Muslims and Crusaders: Christianity's Wars in the Middle East, 1095-1382, from the Islamic Sources.

• Author: Gada, Muhammad Yaseen
• Position: Book review

Muslims and Crusaders: Christianity's Wars in the Middle East, 1095-1382, from the Islamic Sources

By Niall Christie

UnitLondon and New York: Routledge, 2014, xl + 186 pages, $41.00, ISBN: 9781138022744.

Much has been written on the Crusades --one of the most astounding events the medieval world ever witnessed. However, what has been written on the subject often gives only one side of the story, as the books written so far have often shown little interest towards the people--the Muslims--against whom the Crusades were waged. Filling this gap, the current book attempts to present the Crusades "from the viewpoint of the Muslim people of the Levant," and aims to provide a supplemental and counterbalancing work to the body of literature that narrates the story of the crusading period from the European point of view, thus "enabling reader[s] to achieve a broader perspective on the period than they might do otherwise" (p. 1). Muslims and Crusaders is comprised of nine chapters, mainly devoted to describing the Muslim response to the Crusades.

Niall Christie at the outset describes the limitations of his work, which, being short, can only offer a brief introduction to the major topic of the Muslim side of the Crusades. Therefore, the book focuses succinctly on Muslim responses to the Crusades in the Levant during the "core" period of crusading (p. 3).

Christie traces a picture of the Muslim world before and on the eve of the Crusades. He describes a power vacuum that extended from Syria to Egypt. Internal struggles and disunity were further exacerbated when a number of strong Muslim leaders died in a span of just four years 1090-1094; the year 1094 was named as the year of the deaths of leaders and caliphs (chapter two). Under these apathetic conditions, one would not have expected any sort of response to the Crusaders, who embarked for the First Crusade in 1095. However, Christie argues that a number of Muslim sources reveal that the first Muslim who had a clear understanding of the aims and objectives of the crusaders, was the famous Damascus preacher and theologian, 'All ibn Sulami. Although some religious scholars clearly understood the objectives of the Franks, it is not known how the politico-military elites reacted to their initial appearance, and for this reason, Christie argues, we have to rely on later Muslim works (p. 21) and interpretation of historical facts. For example, all Muslim historians who treat the period have recorded with...