The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land Paperback – March 8, 2011

In "The Crusades..." Thomas Asbridge achieves the rare feat of compiling most of the worthwhile knowledge on the Crusades into a single, albeit hefty, volume, without boring the reader. I was initially hesitant to purchase this book because, as a medical student, I figured a 700-page, scholarly-looking tome would end up getting shelved 30 pages in, in favor of some lighter nighttime reading material. Eventually, beset by the lack of high-quality books on The Crusades available on the Kindle, I finally decided to give it a try. It was a great decision; I found "The Crusades" to be a fantastic and engrossing read.Asbridge manages to engage the reader not by presenting a mere overview of events - as is the case in God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades; an excellent read, but one that gives only a cursory glance towards details - but by constructing a masterfully entertaining narrative. The Crusades are a fascinating story; the quality of any book on the subject is determined by the author's skill at collating the information, not on the subject matter. And Asbridge excels at organizing this enormous corpus; he's also the rare wordsmith (why use proximity when propinquity is so... close at hand?) who is also a gifted storyteller, balancing the proper amount of detail necessary to gain an educated academic understanding of the subject with the needs of a narrative to flow smoothly. I can't emphasize this enough - in another author's hands, this level of detail might be uncomfortable and one might feel as though they are slogging through the book, and that's what makes the book so rewarding. I feel as though I've gained an extraordinary amount of knowledge without having to put up with the run-on sentences and unclear and jumbled thought processes often found in serious academic histories.Asbridge also manages to frame the subject extraordinarily well. I've read several other books on The Crusades, and listened to a full lecture course on the subject from The Great Courses. I found unanswered questions answered, and I felt that Asbridge covered everything quite well and fairly. Asbridge shows no tendency towards bias on either end of the spectrum, and equal time is devoted to both the concepts of Crusade and that of Jihad - something I found very interesting. In fact, the level of detail presented on the Muslim side surpasses anything I've seen anywhere else. There are almost no details on the non-canonical or even heretical crusades, but this is appropriate - this book is the history of the war for the holy land, not the history of Crusading. The initial evolution of the idea of crusading, the typical motives of the crusaders, and the military realities in both the Muslim and Christian world are given sufficient attention so that no portion of the core story of the Wars feels "orphaned" from reality. But there is definitely a conscious effort to keep the book within its bounds, and there is no detailed discussion of Richard's troubles on the home front, for example. Enough to keep you informed, yes - but you're not buying a biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine or John.In sum, it would be inappropriate to label this book an overview of events. While not exhaustive in its detail, you'd be hard pressed to find any better bang for your page on the entire topic of the Crusades, from start to finish. I would urge any student of history who is considering this book to give it a shot. "The Crusades" would make a both a fantastic introduction and a fitting capstone to any exploration of The Crusades.

The book is well written and is a great insight into the topic of the Crusades. The book focuses heavily on the early crusades, particularly the first, second, and third, which is understandable as they are the ones that people want to know about. While a lot people are pretty aware of the military engagements fought during the crusades, many are not aware of the political climate of the time, which the book does a great job of explaining. The book also excels in providing great analysis of the battles fought, something that a lot of books and history courses in schools, like ancient world history, don't often focus on. The book covers a lot of material while still keeping you interested in the narrative. Asbridge's work makes for a great gateway book for new or casual readers but if you are looking for a book that will go into great detail and expand your existing knowledge, I highly suggest you look somewhere else.

I’m impressed with how enjoyable this book is to read. I never learned much about the Middle East, so I wanted something to educate myself a little. Half way through this brick, I am still engaged and working my way through the rise of Saladin.I highly recommend this. It’s informative, readable and feels balanced in perspective.

“The Crusades: Th Authoritative History of the Wars for the Holy Lands” By Thomas AsbridgeThis is the single best book I have found to date on the Crusades in the Levant.The Crusades were not limited to the Levant. Crusades were also conducted on the Iberian Peninsula, Western Africa and in Poland. These are mentioned in this book for reference only to other events occurring at the time of the Crusades to the Levant.The Crusades (hereafter limited to the Middle East or Levant) were extremely complex series of events mixing religious, political, personal and military factors into what essentially could be called a tragedy for the Western World. No one knows how many lives were lost over the two centuries of the Crusades from 1096 to its conclusions in 1291 but it was several million. It is almost certain that historical sources on numbers of people in any event were exaggerated.The First Crusade was initiated by Pope Urban II although, clearly his predecessor, Pope Gregory VII established the beginnings of the support for it. There was no urgent cause for the Crusades: Jersalem and the Holy Lands were in the hands of the Muslims for several hundred years. The relationships between Eastern Christians and the Islamic believers of the region was in stasis. Thus the Crusades were wars of agression created by the Roman Catholic Church.In order to build support for the wars, the Church created a theory that individuals on the Crusades could receive forgiveness for their sins by vowing to “take the cross” and journeying to conduct war to retake Jerusalem from Islam. Later the Chruch would create indulgences and other constructions to propel nobles and their subjects to the Crusades. These constructions would plague the Church in later centuries and eventually lead to the schism of the Reformation.To reach the Levant, Crusaders had to march through the Balkans and Byzantium. Since the first Crusades were ill planned and lack sufficient logistics, the Crusaders and camp followers were reliant on foraging to survive. The people the Balkans, who first welcomed the Crusaders, reacted with retribution on the Crusaders. This, of course, created problems for later Crusaders. When the Crusaders reached Constantinople, the Greek Christians of Byzantium were none to happy to support the disruptive Crusades. The other way to reach the Levant was by ship and this became the preferred path in later Crusades although it was more expensive.The only Crusade that had a modicum of success was the First Crusade in that it acheived its goal of securing Jerusalem for the Western Christians. While this Crusade had multiple disasters, it did have the advantage of finding the Islamic world weakened by internecine strife between the Shia and Sunni as well as a new invasion force from the Seljak Turks.But the First Crusade was futile as the Crusaders had no where near enough Christian people willing to live their lives in the Levant and as well defend Jerusalem from the Islamic armies set against it. This was compounded by the politics of different groups within the Crusaders to support each other at critical times. In addition the Muslims gained strength thoughout the period. As a result later Crusades all ultimately failed.What is probably the best part of this book is the description of the rise of Nur al Din followed by Saladin and the Mamluks in unifying the Levant to finally drive out the crusaders. It is my belief that while many people know of the Crusades, very few know the what caused the Crusades to fail.Without understanding how the Muslim world changed in the two centuries of the Crusades, I don’t believe anyone can rationalize the Crusades. Certainly, the Europeans did not as they continued to blame Crusade failures on God’s wrath for the sinners and the sins committed during Crusades.While this book does have adequate maps supporting the text, I used Google Maps to both understand where the major battles were as well as to understand the terrain the battles were fought on. It is a tremendous asset to someone interested in military history of the Crusades to use both the terrain and the satellite views to augment the text.In the Conclusions of this book, the author warns about parallelizing the Crusades with more recent histories elsewhere. However, when one compares the events of the two centuries of the Crusades, one can find many parallel situations to current history in the Middle East. For examples, Israel has boundaries closely matching the lands held by the Christians during the Crusades. This is no accident as the topography largely dictates defendable boundaries. The Shia and Sunni split in Islam still exists and continues to influence regional politics. However, thus far, no Islamic leaders have risen in the Middle East to compare to Nur al Din, Saladin or Baybars.I highly recommend this book to anyone wishing a better understanding of the Crusades and to those who wish to know the origins of the geopolitical history of the area.