Parution : Paul M.Cobb, “The Race for Paradise. An Islamic History of the Crusades”, juillet 2014, Oxford University Press.
The Race for Paradise
An Islamic History of the Crusades
About this Book
- A cultural encounter that shaped Muslim experiences of Europeans until the close of the Middle Ages – and beyond
- Based almost exclusively upon Muslim sources
- A dramatically different story from the Christian one we know from the European chronicles
In 1099, when the first crusaders arrived triumphant and bloody before the walls of Jerusalem, they carved out a Christian European presence in the Islamic world that remained for centuries, bolstered by subsequent waves of new crusades and pilgrimages. But how did medieval Muslims understand these events? What does an Islamic history of the Crusades look like? The answers may surprise you.
In The Race for Paradise, we see medieval Muslims managing this new and long-lived Crusader threat not simply as victims or as victors, but as everything in-between, on all shores of the Muslim Mediterranean, from Spain to Syria. This is not just a straightforward tale of warriors and kings clashing in the Holy Land – of military confrontations and enigmatic heros such as the great sultan Saladin. What emerges is a more complicated story of border-crossers and turncoats; of embassies and merchants; of scholars and spies, all of them seeking to manage this new threat from the barbarian fringes of their ordered world.
When seen from the perspective of medieval Muslims, the Crusades emerge as something altogether different from the high-flying rhetoric of the European chronicles: as a diplomatic chess-game to be mastered, a commercial opportunity to be seized, a cultural encounter shaping Muslim experiences of Europeans until the close of the Middle Ages – and, as so often happened, a political challenge to be exploited by ambitious rulers making canny use of the language of jihad.
Readership: All those interested in the history of the Crusades, the history of the Muslim world, and relations between the West and Islam.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue: Saladin Nation
1: The Abode of Islam
2: The Frightened Sea
3: Prey For the Sword
4: Tasting Our Might
5: Giving Lie To The Devil
6: Wolves and Lions
7: Let Them Be Our Eulogists
Afterword: Buried Horsemen
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Author information
Paul M. Cobb, Professor of Islamic History, University of Pennsylvania
Paul M. Cobb is Professor of Islamic History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous books and studies, including a translation of the Arabic memoirs of a Muslim eyewitness to the Crusades published as The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades (2008). A recognized authority on relations between Islam and the West during the Middle Ages, he has travelled widely throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He divides his time between teaching in Philadelphia and farming in his home town of Amherst, Massachusetts.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Hassan Bouali (6 octobre 2014). Parution : Paul M.Cobb, “The Race for Paradise. An Islamic History of the Crusades”, juillet 2014, Oxford University Press. Diwan. Consulté le 28 mars 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/nq5b