What is the best modern introduction to the Crusades? The
traditional answer would be Sir Steven Runciman’s three-volume A History of the Crusades. However, its
arguments have been largely revised by recent scholarship, and its celebrated
prose is perhaps beginning to show its age. Thankfully, a number of excellent histories
of the Crusades have been published in recent years. All of them are completely
abreast with modern scholarship, and all can justifiably lay claim to
having taken up Runciman’s mantle.
The first is The
Crusades: The War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge. In this lengthily
(it comes in at around 750 pages) but gripping book, Asbridge provides a grand
narrative of the conflict between Crusaders and Muslims in the Holy Land between 1095 and 1291. But – crucially – he
tells the story from both sides. For example, Part I: The Coming of the Crusades describes the origin of
Crusading, the First Crusade and the foundation of the Crusader States from the
viewpoint of Western Christendom. But Part
II: The Response of Islam switches dramatically to an Islamic perspective
and describes the rise of Zengi, Nur ad-Din and Saladin. The effect of this
method is that Asbridge not only gives us a compelling account of the Crusades
and Outremer; he also tells us how crusading was viewed by contemporary Muslims
and how it affected religion and politics in the near East.
The second is Holy
Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades by Jonathan Phillips. The work
is, as Phillips states in the introduction, ‘aimed squarely at the general
reader’. And this objective amply fulfilled: the book is extremely readable and
assumes no prior knowledge on the reader’s part. Holy Warriors differs from The
War for the Holy Land in several ways. First, it is more economic and comes
in at around 400 pages. Second – and linked to the first – Phillips doesn’t
provide us with a detailed, step-by-step history of the Crusades; rather, he
focuses on the key events in the history of the movement and makes them
understandable by centring his narrative on important (and often telling) individuals.
For example, in Chapter 2 Phillips deals with the subject of the ‘relations between Muslims and Franks
in the Levant [between] 1099-1187’ by giving the reader biographies of the
Damascene legist Al-Sulami, the prolific writer Usma ibn Munqidh and the
Spanish pilgrim Ibn Jubayr. Third, its geographical scope is broader: Phillips
takes a ‘pluralist’ approach and looks at crusades in Spain , Southern France and Eastern
Europe . Lastly, although Asbridge does touch upon the
subject, Phillips closes his work with an in-depth account of how the idea of
crusading has been utilised in the modern era – the discussion ranges from the
damning critiques of Enlightenment thinkers such as Gibbon and Voltaire, to Giuseppe
Mazzini’s use of crusading ideology as a means of drawing people to the Young
Italy group, to the appropriation of crusading imagery by Arab Nationalists and
Islamists, to George W. Bush’s infamous utterance on the south lawn of the White House.
The final book is God’s
War: A New History of the Crusades by Christopher Tyerman. This is the
longest work of them all: it comes in at 1023 pages, and the typeface isn’t
doing the myopic reader any favours. But it is by no means prolix. On the
contrary, the book is a dense and taut and brilliant overview of
crusading between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Indeed, it is no
exaggeration to say that the work is of interest to both the casual and the academic
reader: Tyerman’s accounts of crusade recruitment and preaching are superb, and
his discussion of the crusade of 1248-54 is the best known to me. Unlike Asbridge
and to a lesser extent Phillips, Tyerman’s ‘perspective is Western European.’ But
what the work lacks in perspective, it makes up for in detail and scope. We are
treated to expansive discussions of the origins of the idea of crusading; the Albigensian
Crusade; crusading in Spain; society in Outremer; crusading in the Baltic; the
crusade against the Hussities, etc. In the preface Tyerman declares that ‘it
would be folly…. to pretend to compete, to match, as it were, my clunking
computer keyboard with [Runciman’s] pen… to pit one volume, however
substantial, with the breadth, scope and elegance of his three.’ One is left thinking this may be undue modesty.
It is impossible to recommend one of these books over the
others. They are all excellent. But I hope my brief outline of their content
will help readers choose which is most suited to them.
