Eagle

Product Description

Salah ad-Din or Saladin as he is known to the Franks was a Kurd the son of a despised people & yet he became Sultan of Egypt & Syria. He united the peoples of Allah recaptured Jerusalem & drove the Crusaders to the very edge of the sea. He battled & in the end tamed King Richard the Lionheart who well deserved his savage name. He was a great man the greatest man that I ever knew but when I first met him he was only a skinny child...- The Chronicle of Yahya al-Dimashq But alongside the legend of Saladin there is another story. When the Crusader army is routed beneath the walls of Damascus in 1148 a young Saxon named John is captured & enslaved. He is bought by Yusuf a slight bookish boy for the price of a pair of sandals. & so begins the story of two enemies brought together by fate & of a friendship that will change the face of the Holy L&. Timid Yusuf will grow up to become the warrior Saladin nicknamed 'the Eagle'; John will first teach his young master the art of war before returning west to serve first the King of Jerusalem & then King Richard himself. From spectacular set-piece battles to the political manoeuvrings of the corrupt Crusader court from the brutality of single combat to the sophistication of Islamic life this is the first in a remarkable trilogy that will chart the story of the greatest leader the Middle East has ever known.