Jones, Dan Kreuzfahrer

Der epische Kampf ums Heilige Land

The history of the Crusades is not the story of a few heroic knights riding from victory to victory with waving banners in the name of Christ, but one of the bloodiest chapters of humanity, experienced and suffered by countless (nameless) men and women of Muslim, Christian or Jewish faith. Dan Jones gives them a voice - with hitherto barely recognised sources, with the precision of the Cambridge historian and an impressive narrative force. The crusaders, who limped back to their home villages and laid dried palm leaves from the Holy Land on the altars of the churches, had triumphed in 1099: Jerusalem was in Christian hands. It was the preliminary climax of a dynamic that the Pope had ignited with a resolute appeal and the Byzantine emperor had fuelled with populist atrocity stories. The attacked were surprised by the brutality of the invaders, the invaders were overwhelmed by the beauty of the cities and the inhospitable climate and nature. However, the tide would turn several times during the Crusader period and disagreements would increase, not only between Christians and Muslims. What did the common faith count for when it came to gold and power? Dan Jones tells the story from the perspective of popes, kings and sultans, gives Arab poets, Byzantine princesses and Sunni scholars a voice and never forgets the ordinary people on both sides of the front lines: a fascinatingly diverse and deeply human picture of a bloody era.