Sign-In
Cart
Crusades: Civilizations of the Middle East
Paperback
Series: Civilizations of the Middle East, Book 3
Medieval & Renaissance HistoryGeneral Military History
ISBN13: 9789190115640
Publisher: Hui Wang
Published: Nov 15 2025
Pages: 248
Weight: 0.55
Height: 0.52 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
Crusades: Civilizations of the Middle East, PART ONE, plunges you into a world where faith, ambition, and human courage crash together on an enormous stage. When I first set out to write this book, my aim was simple: to bring readers up close to the people who lived behind history's headlines - not to idolize them as marble figures in a textbook, but to show them as flesh-and-blood leaders whose choices reshaped continents. Think of Pope Urban II and Godfrey of Bouillon; Baldwin of Boulogne and Tancred; Bohemond of Taranto; and later figures like Imad ad-Din Zengi and his successor, Nur ad-Din - all threads in a long, tangled tapestry of conflict and ambition.
Walk with me through chapters such as Faiths in Conflict, Urban II and the Birth of the Crusade, and The First Wave to the Holy Land, and you'll be beside the men and women who set the First Crusade in motion. You'll sense Charlemagne's distant legacy still echoing across European courts, feel the tense aftershocks of Canossa and the broader investiture struggle, and witness the incandescent instant when Urban II's call sent thousands toward Jerusalem. My hope is that you come away feeling the era's raw energy - the cheering and the terror, the hope and the conviction that the world was changing under everyone's feet.
The story sharpens as the Crusader armies push into the East. I take you inside the Siege of Nicaea, the moment when Baldwin and Tancred split from the main force and followed very different ambitions, the brutal, grinding struggle at Antioch, and the desperate, almost mystical search for hope that produced the Holy Lance. You'll feel the hunger, the rivalries, and that stubborn, dangerous momentum that drove princes forward even as everything threatened to collapse. Each chapter throws you up against decisions that might have saved thousands-or doomed them.
Later chapters bring a new cast of power players: Bohemond on one of his last great gambles; the military orders-the Templars and the Hospitallers-rising into power in the crusade's aftermath; and Imad ad-Din Zengi, whose seizure of Edessa in 1144 sent shockwaves through Christendom. From there the road runs straight into the Second Crusade, when kings marched, empires shuddered, and Damascus became the eye of a gathering storm. Figures such as Queen Melisende, Louis VII, Conrad III, and Nur ad-Din step into the spotlight, each tugging the story in a new direction.
By the time you reach the Siege of Damascus and the rise of Nur ad-Din, you'll see how the world of the Middle East was reshaped not merely by battles but by personalities-bold, stubborn, brilliant, and flawed. My hope is that when you close this book you'll feel as if you've stood right there with them: on the walls of Antioch, in the chambers of kings, and on the dusty roads that carried armies across vast distances.
1 different editions
Also available
Also from
Wang, Hui
Shield Tunneling Technology in Mixed Face Ground Conditions
Ju, Shijian
Zhu, Weibin
Wang, Hui
Hardcover
Graph Neural Network Methods and Applications in Scene Understanding
Wang, Hui
Liu, Weibin
Hao, Huaqing
Hardcover
The Maillard Reaction in Food Chemistry: Current Technology and Applications
Wang, Hui
Cheng, Faliang
Ruan, Dongliang
Paperback
Also in
Medieval & Renaissance History
The Power of Place: Rulers and Their Palaces, Landscapes, Cities, and Holy Places
Rollason, David
Hardcover
The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam, and Francis of Assisi's Mission of Peace
Moses, Paul
Hardcover
Self-Help from the Middle Ages: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us about Living
Jones, Peter
Hardcover
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
Greenblatt, Stephen
Hardcover
The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, Volume II: The Modern and Contemporary West
Guelzo, Allen C.
Hankins, James
Hardcover
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It
Ramirez, Janina
Paperback
Alchemy: An Illustrated History of Elixirs, Experiments, and the Birth of Modern Science
Ball, Philip
Hardcover
The Surgeon, the Midwife, the Quack: How to Stay Alive in Renaissance England
Skuse, Alanna
Hardcover
The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
Mortimer, Ian
Paperback
The Wolf Age: The Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons and the Battle for the North Sea Empire
Skeie, Tore
Paperback
Irish History & Mythology: Exploring The History, Celtic Myths, Folklore, Sagas, Traditions of Ireland
Brought Alive, History
Paperback
Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe
Gabriele, Matthew
Perry, David M.
Paperback
Stone Lands: A Journey of Darkness and Light Through Britain's Ancient Places
Robertson, Fiona
Hardcover
The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time
Kelly, John
Paperback
What God Kept for Himself: Atheism, Sodomy, and Radical Dissent in Renaissance Italy
Grassi, Umberto
Hardcover
Our Island Story: A History of the Kings, Queens and Battles of England, Scotland and Britain for Boys and Girls
Marshall, H. E.
Paperback
When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the Riches of the East
Gordon, Stewart
Paperback
The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire
Weatherford, Jack
Paperback
The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade
Bauer, Susan Wise
Hardcover
The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain
Fernandez-Morera, Dario
Hardcover
The Manuscripts Club: The People Behind a Thousand Years of Medieval Manuscripts
de Hamel, Christopher
Paperback
Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane
Starr, S. Frederick
Paperback
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys Into the Medieval World
de Hamel, Christopher
Paperback
Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries, the Story of the World's Mysterious Manuscripts
Shaw, Garry J.
Hardcover
A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age
Manchester, William
Paperback
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
Greenblatt, Stephen
Paperback
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It
Ramirez, Janina
Hardcover
The Battle of Yarmuk: An Assessment of the Immediate Factors behind the Islamic Conquests
Ibrahim, Raymond
Paperback
The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts
Lawrence-Mathers, Anne
Hardcover
The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople
Bauer, Susan Wise
Hardcover
In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire
Holland, Tom
Paperback
Venice and the Mongols: The Eurasian Exchange That Transformed the Medieval World
Pubblici, Lorenzo
Di Cosmo, Nicola
Hardcover
The Birth of the Anglo-Saxons: Three Kings and a History of Britain at the Dawn of the Viking Age
Adams, Max
Hardcover
Women in the Middle Ages: The Lives of Real Women in a Vibrant Age of Transition
Gies, Frances
Gies, Joseph
Paperback
Financial Vipers of Venice: Alchemical Money, Magical Physics, and Banking in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Farrell, Joseph P.
Paperback
This Earthly Globe: A Venetian Geographer and the Quest to Map the World
Di Robilant, Andrea
Paperback
Urban Infrastructure in Medieval England: Sustainability and Resilience
Magnusson, Roberta J.
Paperback
Old Norse - Old Icelandic: Concise Introduction to the Language of the Sagas
Gordon, Randall
Byock, Jesse
Paperback
Elucidation of Necromancy Lucidarium Artis Nigromantice Attributed to Peter of Abano: Including a New Translation of His Heptameron or Elements of Mag
Abano, Peter Of
Peterson, Joseph H.
Hardcover
The Prince (Royal Collector's Edition) (Annotated) (Case Laminate Hardcover with Jacket)
Machiavelli, Niccolò
Hardcover
Il Fior di Battaglia by Fiore dei Liberi Facsimile: With translation by Guy Windsor
Windsor, Guy
Hardcover
The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance
Al-Khalili, Jim
Paperback
The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance
King, Ross
Paperback