A spectacular new global history of the Crusades.

Many forces shaped the Middle East at the time of the Crusades, more than just religious warfare. This was an extraordinarily complex region, home to many empires, cultures, and religions, their interactions bringing about seismic changes. Information, stories, technologies, intellectual ideas, weapons, and architectural techniques - they all changed hands with astonishing speed as these societies fought, traded, conducted diplomacy, married, vented hatreds and established friendships.

Nicholas Morton's panoramic new account explores the territories established by the crusaders from their first foundation in 1097 to the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, exploring how they both disrupted and integrated into this dynamic landscape. Rather than framing events from just one or two perspectives, the narrative unfolds through a kaleidoscope of viewpoints: a Byzantine renegade, a crusader princess, a Turkish matriarch, a young Arab nobleman, a Syriac archbishop, Saladin's leading commander, and the vizier of Egypt. Their lives reveal both the complex nature of this era's conflicts and the sheer extent to which these entangled cultures influenced one another, and the region's future history.