Year of the Golden Pig Reading 2: "The Crusades through Arab Eyes"

I read a lot. I just don't finish a lot. Therefore my second entry in my Year of the Golden Pig reading is quite shocking. It is a book that I just started reading a couple of weeks ago when I was in Beirut.

You may have never heard of Amin Maalouf, but you really should. He is a Lebanese novelist, who has also written a couple of books on non-fiction. His book, "The Crusades through Arab Eyes," is one that I have seen around for a few years, but I never really wanted to read too much more on the Crusades, since I am not a huge fan of Medieval history, particulary that of Europe, and also since I had taken a college course on the Crusades at university. But after I started reading his novels in Kuwait, I started looking for this book. Then I found it in Beirut.

I learned quite a lot from this book. For instance, many of the European Crusaders were cannibals during the early part of the Crusades. That was quite a shocking find. It was well documented by Medieval European historians (who actually seem more shocked that Crusaders also ate dogs), but then slipped from the public record during the Imperial period, when Europe was once again trying to colonize the lands of Islam. What was more shocking about the cannabalism was the fact that it wasn't because people were starving; it was because they were trying to shock their enemy (though in its defense, the 11th century Shock and Awe policy killed fewer people than the one we have in the 21st century).

What I primarilly learned from the reading though was how Christians and Muslims mostly got along after the initial conquest. It was the incursion of new invaders who caused most of the problems. I also discovered how much influence the Seljuk Turks had in the Arabian world of the 11th and 12th centuries. I really didn't know they had such control. I thought it came much later. Throughout the book, the leadership of the Arabian world is divided to such an extent, that Europe is able to occupy these lands, even though their forces are vastly outnumbered (and their technology isn't that superior to what is in the Levant). Only when Arabs united under Salah ad-Din (a Kurd) were they able to finally reconquer Jerusalem.

So if you would like to learn about the root of many of our current problems, and see many modern parallels, pick up this work from Amin Maalouf.