God's Wolf: The Life of the Most Notorious of all Crusaders, Scourge of Saladin

by Jeffrey Lee Narrated by Nigel Patterson

Overview

In a 2010 terrorist plot, Al-Qaeda hid a bomb in a FedEx shipment addressed to Reynald de Chatillon, a knight who had died centuries ago in the crusades. A reviled figure in Islamic history, often portrayed as the very epitome of brutality, Reynald remains as controversial-and as vividly present in the minds of many in the Middle East-as the story of the crusades themselves.



An epic saga set in the midst of a violent clash of civilizations, God's Wolf tells the story of Reynald's staggering rise from lowly soldier to prince of Antioch, one of the crusader kingdoms in the Near East. Jeffrey Lee argues that, despite his brutality, Reynald was a strong military leader and an effective statesman who defended his kingdom against attacks from Byzantines, Armenians, and Muslims. A tale of faith, fanaticism, and brutality, God's Wolf is the fascinating story of an exceptional crusader and a provocative reinterpretation of the crusader era.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"[Jeffrey Lee] brings a blockbuster sensibility to this slice of the 12th-century Levant, dropping his man in the mountains of the Holy Land and letting him go to work, swinging swords, wooing princesses, toadying to emperors and smearing his enemies in honey before chaining them to the battlements… Reynald was a crusader on steroids: audacious, adventurous and violent. He earned his reputation, and like him or loathe him, his story is worth retelling, more than eight centuries on."— Dan Jones The Sunday Times (UK)

"Always entertaining… There is nothing saintly, dull or life-denying about God’s Wolf. Reynald’s deliberate excesses are lovingly delineated; the shock value that was his hallmark runs undiluted through its easy and personal chronology… Reynald…is one of those giants of history who may repel but can never be forgotten."— Minoo Dinshaw The Spectator (UK)

"A cracking read."— Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

"A swashbuckling yet scholarly biography of the infamous 12th-century crusader Reynald de Chatillon."— Sebastian Shakespeare Tatler

"God’s Wolf is well written, well informed, and exciting; in fact, it hooked me in straightaway… It is by far the liveliest work I’ve read on the subject."— Patricia Crone, former professor of Islamic history, Institute for Advanced Study

"God’s Wolf is enormously readable. It is written in a very lively style and with vigour and pace… This is a very exciting book, both scholarly and at the same time accessible to a wider readership."— Carole Hillenbrand, professor of Islamic history, University of Edinburgh

Kirkus Reviews

2017-05-28
Elegant biography of a little-known Frankish crusader who is still a thorn in the sides of Islamists.South Africa-born, London-based journalist Lee uses the life of Reynald de Chatillon as a way to tell the story of the Second Crusade (1145-1149), a mostly disastrous affair for the Christians that paved the way for Saladin's subsequent sack of Jerusalem in 1187. Lee portrays Reynald—who was from Burgundy and responded as a young knight-errant to Abbot Bernard de Clairvaux's call to reclaim the city of Edessa—as the chivalric ideal. A younger son, Reynald had little recourse to economic betterment other than joining the military and hoping to secure riches and fame from the militant, expansionist Christian army spurred by the pope to reclaim the Levant from the Muslims. With his courtly manners and keen sense of potential glory, Reynald was nonetheless trained as a merciless killer, and he was enlisted to aid the defense of the crusader state of Antioch, where he caught the eye and sympathy of the widowed princess Constance, whom he married. Now as a prince of Antioch, Reynald had to continually defend the principality from Muslim raids, but he also invaded and sacked the Christian island of Cyprus "in a piratical fashion," gaining him the opprobrium of the Byzantium emperor and Muslims alike. Throughout, Lee graphically portrays the gory violence that dominated the era. Captured by the Turks after the battle of Marash in 1161, Reynald spent the next 15 years imprisoned in Aleppo, under the jurisdiction of Turkish leader Nur al-Din. During the last 10 years of his life, Reynald would chastise his nemesis Saladin from the Arabian Peninsula to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1187, he was captured in the Battle of Hattin and executed after refusing to renounce his faith. A vivid narrative that effectively delineates the era's courtly spirit and "nightmarish barbarity."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171360580
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	08/08/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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