The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (Saqi Essentials)

I was motivated to read this book after seeing the movie "Kingdom of Heaven" and becoming curious about the Crusades from the "other side's" point of view. This book delivers the desired content in such a well-documented, clear, and well-written manner that it reads like a historical thriller, while deriving its authenticity and accuracy by leaning heavily on source material from chroniclers who were writing at the time of these events. The background information about Muslim and Arab culture, religion, and history is sorely lacking in the American educational system, and should be mandatory reading for anyone seeking to be informed about the current state of our relations with the Middle East.

I found this book moving, informative, and constantly surprising. I have already personally recommended it to a number of people of Christian, Muslim, and other faiths. It would also make an excellent discussion book for a book club, as well as a springboard for further, in-depth study.

I cannot recommend this book too highly!

For the most part, I enjoyed this look at the Crusades from the Arab perspective. It was balanced, in that while the heroes were clearly the Muslims and the "bad buys" were the European invaders, Maalouf let us see the foibles of the Muslim rulers, the power struggles and the back stabbing (sometimes literally) between the various sultans and emirs who were trying to gain their own advantages while working to expell the Frankish invaders (or sometimes working WITH the Crusaders). At the end of the book, Maalouf also gives a brief account of the advantages of the West and the failings of the Muslims, even though the Muslims did ultimately succeed in getting the Crusaders off their land. Some may argue that the book is biased against the West, but then again, who were the invaders, anyway? I think, given the fact that it's told from a Muslim perspective, it's fairly balanced. I'd like to see a fundamentalist Christian be so fair! My only complaint is that I would have liked to have seen more of an explanation of why the Crusaders were there in the first place, but perhaps that is for another historian to tell. Overall, I recommend this book for any student of medieval history or religion, especially those who want more than a Eurocentric view.

I picked this book out due to a general lack of in-depth books on the crusades from the muslem/arabian perspective. I was initially pleased but I was hoping for a more scholarly work. It is very intersting and entertaining but lacks analysis. I would not recommend this book for hardcore scholars (although its wonderful for bedtime reading) but definately for those with a more casual interest.

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.

I highly recommend this book. Of more than 200 books I bought in the last two years, I never finished one in one day or read every single word of it. This one was so easy and interesting to read that I read it in one day and word-by-word! Of course, I am biased, as this era of history interests me. But the author takes credit for making this book interesting, with easy language, and well-placed comparative quotations. You can pick any 3 consecutive pages of this book and make an interesting movie out of it! The author's notes at the end of the book are interesting but simplistic. He asks and hints why the Arabic civilization deteriorated though it won the Crusade wars -I would call it Muslim Civilization and not Arab! I have already bought several copies of "The Crusades Through the Arab Eyes" to give to my friends as Christmas gifts!

Everyone thinks of themselves as the center of the universe. How could it really be otherwise? Our need to survive and thrive is primal, so we see things through our own eyes first, others a distant and difficult second. This principal telescopes out to include our family, our province or state, our country and finally our culture. This is why, whether the writer has been "pro-Christian" or "pro-Arab", the historical treatment of the Crusades that have been available in English have come from a Christian or Western perspective.

That is why I felt this book was so enjoyable. What would it have felt like to have been an Arab during the Crusades? How did they perceive the vast numbers of violently fanatic pilgrims sweeping like a tide in from the West? What was going on in the Arab world just prior to and during the strange, blood-filled pilgrimage (this very question reveals one of the interesting insights the book provides: neither Christian nor Muslim thought of this movement as a "crusade." Participants considered themselves "Pilgrims of the Faith," which added to the initial Arab confusion and horror. What kind of Pilgrimage was this?

This book allowed me the rare opportunity to see my own culture and history as the strange and unknown "other." I am glad I read it. I have read several books about the Crusades before reading this one and was not fully aware how powerful a thing "perspective" can be.

When looking over the reader reviews of this book, I was nearly put off by the strident, insistent tone of some of them. I don't like being instructed to read something for my own good. By the same token, though, I think this book affords the Western reader with the oppurtunity to learn something they might not have known before. And isn't that the thrill of non-fiction?

Did you know that the pale complexions, blue eyes, and clean-shaven faces of the Christian knights often made Arab children cry? These things were so unknown to them. It is in these kinds of details, subtle yet mind-twisting, that I found this book so enjoyable. -Mykal Banta

I ordered several books on the Crusades for a research project I conducted last year, and this may have been the most interesting. Maalouf describes the book as a "true life novel," and he does indeed succeed in depicting the characters, European and Middle Eastern, in all their bumbling, hopeful, fracticious, murderous, and occasionally heroic or far-seeing humanity. The main body of the book is divided into six parts entitled "invasion," "occupation," "riposte," "victory," "reprieve," and "expulsion," and each section is full of freshly personal details. In part this is the story of a religious invasion and its repulsion, in part, of the education of a group of European semi-barbarians, and in part, a mixing of two cultures both with something to learn from the other.
At the end is added an interesting epilogue in which Maalouf offers lessons to be learned, about pluralism and prosperity and about openness to ideas from other societies. As a scholar of East Asia, I immediately recognized in his arguments the contrary stories of Japan and China in the 20th Century.
No one should take this book as the story of the Crusades; Maalouf is in part trying to balance the more common "Western" viewpoint. He begins the story with the "invasion" of the "Franj;" but of course that invasion was, from the point of view of the Franks, a counter-offensive. But within the limits the author has set, this is an excellent, helpful and fascinating piece of historical reconstruction.
author, Jesus and the Religions of Man

This book is one of my favourites. In addition to reiterating the usual historical facts concerning the crusades, Maalouf manages to remain an objective and excellent writer. His objectivity is evident in the fact that instead of idolizing, or vilifying, either side in the conflict; he presents the facts as seen from BOTH sides. Maalouf is of the few people who have managed to transcend the Middle Eastern/Western perspective. His value as a writer is that he emerges with an insider's understanding of both. That understanding allows him to be far more extensive in his research material than many other writers have been. As a result, both sides of the conflict are equally represented. Finally, this book is a genuine "good read", its well written and very involving. I finished it in two days. For anyone interested in an equally well scripted dialogue on the crusades, check out the BBC's 4 part series. ;)

It is sad that only a major political catastrophe has put this book on the map again. For "The Crusades Through Arab Eyes" was written more than twelve years ago. It is very unfortunate that in the preceding years the publications of award-winning author Amin Maalouf, who writes in French, have not received attention they deserve in the English-speaking world. For also in his other books he introduces the Islamic world from a very different angle than the one provided by most Western media and sensationalist writers, who have jumped on the post 9/11 bandwagon.
The Lebanese Amin Maalouf is uniquely well positioned to portray the encounter between the West and the neighboring Islamic world. His country straddles a 'vault line' between two culture zones -- to the terminology of Samual Huntington -- and the journalist Maalouf has personally experienced the tragedy of people being segregated or, worse, violently clash along such a line. No longer able to engage in his profession he has been forced to go into exile in France.
In spite of such a traumatic experience he has not given up on what seems to have become his mission as a writer: to point out that there is much more that unites us than that divides us. But then on the other hand, no dispute can turn out so vicious as a family feud.
Amin Maalouf cleverly employs the theme of the crusades to make the reader aware of how these alien invaders were regarded by the diverse population of the Near East (contrary to the generally held impression, the inhabitants of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria were and are a veritable ethnic mosaic). He holds up a mirror, so the speak, in which Westerners can see how they came across to people, who in many regards were more cultured, cosmopolitan, and probably much more tolerant, than these uncough warriors from Europe's back-of-beyond. In fact they were the keepers of the Judeo-Christian and Hellenistic legacies that constitute the very building blocks of our own Western civilization.
Against this grander scheme of things, the book is also a vignette of a vibrant medieval culture, thus offering a window on a fascinating world that has unfortunatelly disappeared. By examining Levantine society on a micro-level, Maalouf makes its people spring to live. The demonized "Saracens" of Christian crusader lore now come first and foremost across as fellow human beings. In fact, once settled in the Holy Land, many of the European knights and noblemen quickly became an integral part of that stimulating cultural melting pot.
Apart from "The Crusades through Arab Eyes", readers should read some of Maalouf's other informative and entertaining books on Islamic and Middle Eastern history, like "Samarkand", "Leo Africanus" and "The Rock of Tanios". They will come away with an image of an entirely different Middle East than the one currently dished out.

Amin Maalouf attempts to present the Crusades from an Arab perspective, and he's done a brilliant job.

Relying on Arab historians' first-hand, eye-witness accounts (most of the time, at least), Maalouf presents to the readers the other side of the story. This is a certainly subjective account. It's not about telling the truth as much as it is about telling a different, more personal account of what had happened then.

I would recommend this book to those who are interested in reading about the Christian encounter/confrontation with the East, Islam and the Arabs. Also, to those who are interested in topics, such as the "clash of civilizations".