
European & Arab versions of the Crusades have little in common. For Arabs the twelfth & thirteenth centuries were years of strenuous efforts to repel a brutal & destructive invasion by barbarian hordes. In The Crusades Through Arab Eyes" Amin Maalouf has sifted through the works of a score of contemporary Arab chroniclers of the Crusades eyewitnesses & often participants in the events. He retells their stories in their own vivacious style giving us a vivid portrait of a society rent by internal conflicts & shaken by a traumatic encounter with an alien culture. He retraces two critical centuries of Middle Eastern history & offers fascinating insights into some of the forces that shape Arab & Islamic consciousness today."