Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors
Faith, Power, and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
An in-depth portrait of the Crusades-era Mediterranean world, and a new understanding of the forces that shaped it
In Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors, the award-winning scholar Brian Catlos puts us on the ground in the Mediterranean world of 1050–1200. We experience the sights and sounds of the region just as enlightened Islamic empires and primitive Christendom began to contest it. We learn about the siege tactics, theological disputes, and poetry of this enthralling time. And we see that people of different faiths coexisted far more frequently than we are commonly told.
Catlos's meticulous reconstruction of the era allows him to stunningly overturn our most basic assumption about it: that it was defined by religious extremism. He brings to light many figures who were accepted as rulers by their ostensible foes. Samuel B. Naghrilla, a self-proclaimed Jewish messiah, became the force behind Muslim Granada. Bahram Pahlavuni, an Armenian Christian, wielded power in an Islamic caliphate. And Philip of Mahdia, a Muslim eunuch, rose to admiral in the service of Roger II, the Christian "King of Africa."
What their lives reveal is that, then as now, politics were driven by a mix of self-interest, personality, and ideology. Catlos draws a similar lesson from his stirring chapters on the early Crusades, arguing that the notions of crusade and jihad were not causes of war but justifications. He imparts a crucial insight: the violence of the past cannot be blamed primarily on religion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Contemporary accounts of the Crusades were written by dueling theologians and "sycophantic courtier-poets," each with their own particular ulterior motives and axes to grind says Catlos, a professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Aiming to strip "away the layers of literary varnish," he notes that "we are left with frustratingly little, and much of it tentative." Catlos alternates focus between figures whose stories have survived the passage of time while accreting diverse myths and legends and on those who have slipped into obscurity but who lived lives as fascinating and remarkable as they are unfamiliar. He concludes that violence in the era was more often a consequence of greed or external threat than of religious or ideological disagreements: religion "was as often as not disregarded by individuals and communities pursuing more worldly agendas," but "with a crisis looming... or merely when enemy or rival kingdoms happened to identify with a different faith or denomination, the language of holy war was eagerly deployed." Catlos can't resist some romanticism of his own, but for the most part he succeeds in making his history of three religions and as many continents and centuries approachable, believable, and captivating.
