The crusades through Arab eyes
(Book)

"Translation of: Les croisades vues par les Arabes."--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-276) and index.

"European and Arab versions of the Crusades have little in common. For the Arabs, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were not a time of awakening from medieval slumber, but years of strenuous efforts to repel a brutal and destructive invasion by barbarian hordes. When, under Saladin, a powerful Muslim army -- inspired by prophets and poets -- succeeded in destroying Crusader kingdoms, it was the greatest and most enduring victory ever won by a non-European society against the West. The memory of it still lives in the minds of Arabs today. Amin Maalouf has combed the works of contemporary Arab chroniclers of the Crusades, eyewitnesses and often participants in the events. In this intriguing and entertaining book, he retells their story, giving us a vivid portrait of a society rent by internal conflict and shaken by a traumatic encounter with an alien culture. He retraces two critical centuries of Middle Eastern history and offers fascinating insights into the forces that shape Arab and Islamic consciousness today. Maalouf concludes with an epilogue raising a provocative question: Why was it that soon after this great victory, the Arab world sank into decline, while the epicenter of world history shifted to Western Europe? His answer suggests that the West had the advantage of a principle of social cohesion lacking in the Arab world, and that relations between the two civilizations are stamped, even now, by the effects of a titanic struggle that ended seven centuries ago."--From the dust-jacket flaps.

Text in English translated from the French.