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INFIDEL KINGS AND UNHOLY WARRIORS
Kirkus Reviews (Print)
June 1, 2014, Sunday
Faith, Power, and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad
NONFICTION
A dramatic review of Mediterranean history in the Middle Ages.Catlos
(Religious Studies/Univ. of Colorado; The Victors and the Vanquished:
Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050-1300, 2004, etc.)
intentionally veers away from earlier treatments of the age of the
Crusades by focusing on the entire Mediterranean region as a diverse
and interconnected region.
The author moves from west to east as he examines this complex
world through the stories of various individuals. He begins in Spain
with Abu Ibrahim Isma'il, a Jew who rose to the highest ranks of a
Muslim-dominated empire. Catlos then profiles Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar,
the legendary Christian soldier better known as El Cid. Moving
to Italy, the author discusses King Roger II, whose kingdom was
religiously and ethnically diverse. In Cairo, Catlos introduces Bahram
Pahlavuni, an Armenian Christian who ruled an Islamic empire. Finally,
the author examines Reynaud de Châtillon as an archetypal Frankish
crusader. These people, and a wide host of others, come alive in the
author's energetic prose. Rather than recounting dry history, Catlos
tends to set his stage with imagined scenes of real people dealing
with their landscapes, historic circumstances and even climates. A
touch of dry humor pervades his writing as well. From beginning to end,
readers are struck by the intensely violent nature of this time period,
a characteristic that spanned all religions and regions.
Though warfare was a given, violence was also deeply personal, and
the higher one climbed in any power structure, the more likely they
were to be executed or assassinated. "[A]s integrated and cosmopolitan
as these societies may have appeared," writes the author, "they were
built on relationships of power in which the threat of violence was
ever present."A vivid history of "the collaboration and integration
of the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian peoples of the Mediterranean
that laid the foundation for the modern world."
Publication Date: 2014-08-26 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Stage: Adult ISBN: 978-0-8090-5837-2 Price: $27.00 Author: Catlos,
Brian A.
Kirkus Reviews (Print)
June 1, 2014, Sunday
Faith, Power, and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad
NONFICTION
A dramatic review of Mediterranean history in the Middle Ages.Catlos
(Religious Studies/Univ. of Colorado; The Victors and the Vanquished:
Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050-1300, 2004, etc.)
intentionally veers away from earlier treatments of the age of the
Crusades by focusing on the entire Mediterranean region as a diverse
and interconnected region.
The author moves from west to east as he examines this complex
world through the stories of various individuals. He begins in Spain
with Abu Ibrahim Isma'il, a Jew who rose to the highest ranks of a
Muslim-dominated empire. Catlos then profiles Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar,
the legendary Christian soldier better known as El Cid. Moving
to Italy, the author discusses King Roger II, whose kingdom was
religiously and ethnically diverse. In Cairo, Catlos introduces Bahram
Pahlavuni, an Armenian Christian who ruled an Islamic empire. Finally,
the author examines Reynaud de Châtillon as an archetypal Frankish
crusader. These people, and a wide host of others, come alive in the
author's energetic prose. Rather than recounting dry history, Catlos
tends to set his stage with imagined scenes of real people dealing
with their landscapes, historic circumstances and even climates. A
touch of dry humor pervades his writing as well. From beginning to end,
readers are struck by the intensely violent nature of this time period,
a characteristic that spanned all religions and regions.
Though warfare was a given, violence was also deeply personal, and
the higher one climbed in any power structure, the more likely they
were to be executed or assassinated. "[A]s integrated and cosmopolitan
as these societies may have appeared," writes the author, "they were
built on relationships of power in which the threat of violence was
ever present."A vivid history of "the collaboration and integration
of the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian peoples of the Mediterranean
that laid the foundation for the modern world."
Publication Date: 2014-08-26 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Stage: Adult ISBN: 978-0-8090-5837-2 Price: $27.00 Author: Catlos,
Brian A.