Mayall, Simon The House of War

The Struggle between Christendom and the Caliphate

From the capture of the holy city of Jerusalem in the 7th century AD by Caliph Umar to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the end of the First World War, Christian popes, emperors, and kings, as well as Muslim caliphs and sultans, were engaged in a 1,300-year-long struggle for political, military, ideological, economic, and religious supremacy. Simon Mayall, a renowned expert on the history of the Middle East and the Crusades, focuses his new history on some of the most significant armed conflicts in human history: the capture and recapture of Jerusalem and the collapse of the Crusader states; the fall of Constantinople; the sieges of Rhodes and Malta; the assault on Vienna and the culmination of the Ottoman advance in Europe; culminating in the Allied capture of Jerusalem in the First World War, the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the dissolution of the Sultanate and Caliphate, and the emergence of modern Europe and the modern Middle East. The House of War offers a comprehensive, wide-ranging narrative that encompasses the broad historical and religious context of this period while focusing on some of the most important, pivotal sieges and battles, as well as the political and military protagonists who determined their outcomes and consequences.