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Crusaders by Dan Jones

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Crusaders by Dan Jones

A major new history of the Crusades with an unprecedented wide scope, told in a tableau of portraits of people on all sides of the wars, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Templars.

For more than one thousand years, Christians and Muslims lived side by side, sometimes at peace and sometimes at war. When Christian armies seized Jerusalem in 1099, they began the most notorious period of conflict between the two religions. Depending on who you ask, the fall of the holy city was either an inspiring legend or the greatest of horrors. In Crusaders, Dan Jones interrogates the many sides of the larger story, charting a deeply human and avowedly pluralist path through the crusading era.

Expanding the usual timeframe, Jones looks to the roots of Christian-Muslim relations in the eighth century and tracks the influence of crusading to present day. He widens the geographical focus to far-flung regions home to so-called enemies of the Church, including Spain, North Africa, southern France, and the Baltic states. By telling intimate stories of individual journeys, Jones illuminates these centuries of war not only from the perspective of popes and kings, but from Arab-Sicilian poets, Byzantine princesses, Sunni scholars, Shi'ite viziers, Mamluk slave soldiers, Mongol chieftains, and barefoot friars.

Crusading remains a rallying call to this day, but its role in the popular imagination ignores the cooperation and complicated coexistence that were just as much a feature of the period as warfare. The age-old relationships between faith, conquest, wealth, power, and trade meant that crusading was not only about fighting for the glory of God, but also, among other earthly reasons, about gold. In this richly dramatic narrative that gives voice to sources usually pushed to the margins, Dan Jones has written an authoritative survey of the holy wars with global scope and human focus.

Dan Jones is the author of The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Built England, which was a #1 international bestseller and a New York Times bestseller, as well as Wars of the Roses, which chronicles the Plantagenets' fall and the Tudors' unlikely ascent, Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty, and Summer of Blood: England's First Revolution. He starred alongside George R.R. Martin in the Netflix series Secrets of Great British Castles, which he wrote and presented. Martin appears in the HBO documentary that delves into the true origins of Game of Thrones. Knightfall, an A&E drama about the Templars, used him as a historical adviser.

SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780525428312
ISBN 10 0525428313
Title Crusaders
Author Dan Jones
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Hardback
Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc
Year published 2019-10-01
Number of pages 464
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.