The Crusader Storm

<p><b>'Bold, vital and urgent . . . Blows the old parochial Western accounts clean away' SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB<br><br>'Refreshing and astutely judged . . . immensely enjoyable' JONATHAN PHILLIPS<br><br>A spectacular new panoramic history of the Crusades.</b><br><br>From their foundation in 1097 to Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem almost a century later, the Crusader States transformed the Middle Eastern world. In an era shaped by many conflicts, this was not simply a war between Christianity and Islam, but an epic contest among multiple rival empires, dynasties and cultures.<br><br><i>The Crusader Storm</i> unfolds through a kaleidoscope of perspectives: a Byzantine renegade, a crusader princess, a Turkish matriarch, a young Arab nobleman, a Syriac archbishop, Saladin's leading commander and the vizier of Egypt. Between them, information, technologies and ideas - as well as weapons - crossed borders at astonishing speed as their societies fought, allied and traded. Their entangled fates reshaped not only the Middle East, but the medieval world itself.<br><br>Drawing on sources from Arabic, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Latin and Hebrew traditions, Nicholas Morton's enthralling panorama transforms our understanding of the Crusades - revealing them not as a single clash of faiths, but as a dynamic era of war, commerce, innovation and exchange that defined the course of history.</p>