Sacred Swords: Jihad in the Holy Land, 1097-1291

In 1071 Muslim Turks crushed the Byzantine Emperor’s Anatolian army at Manzikert. The Crusades, the West’s response to this catastrophe, are well known as are the names of the European nobles who fought in them. The names and deeds of many of the Crusaders’ opponents in the Holy Land are often unfamiliar to Western readers.

Using primarily Muslim sources, Sacred Swords reconstructs the politics of the Levant on the eve of the First Crusade and places it in the wider context of the Muslim wor...