The First Crusade
The Call from the East
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- ¥1,400
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FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE SILK ROADS
Discover 'the most significant contribution to rethinking the origins and course of the First Crusade for a generation' (Mark Whittow, TLS)
'Filled with Byzantine intrigue, in every sense this book is important, compellingly revisionist and impressive' Simon Sebag Montefiore
In 1096, an expedition of extraordinary scale and ambition set off from Western Europe on a mass pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Three years later, after a journey which saw acute hardship, the most severe dangers and thousands of casualties, the knights of the First Crusade found themselves storming the fortifications and capturing the Holy City. Against all the odds, the expedition had returned Jerusalem to Christian hands.
Frankopan paints a strikingly original picture of this infamous confrontation between Christianity and Islam. Focusing on Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, a truly fresh interpretation of a very old story emerges that radically alters our understanding of the entire crusade movement.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a field near Clermont, France, on November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II issued a rousing call to arms, a march to Jerusalem to retake the Holy City from the infidel Muslims who for more than 20 years had been invading and conquering lands belonging to Christians. Four years later, European armies arrived in Jerusalem and drove out the Muslims, retaking the city for Christendom. Yet, as historian Frankopan, a fellow at Oxford, so forcefully reminds us in this cracking good story of political and religious intrigue, the real reason that Urban II rallied the forces that day was an urgent message from Alexios I Komnenos, emperor of Byzantium, whose political authority had begun to decline and whose empire was under attack on all sides by Muslim forces. Alexios called upon Urban, who sent troops immediately. Frankopan draws deeply upon the Alexiad, written several decades later by Komnenos's daughter, Anna, and he presents a vivid portrait of a man whose early political ineptness created division in his empire, but whose boldness launched the Crusades and changed the shape of the medieval world by expanding the geographic, cultural, and political horizons of Europe. 2 maps.
