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The Crusader Storm: A Global History of the Wars for the Middle East

Nicholas Morton

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'Bold, vital and urgent . . . Blows the old parochial Western accounts clean away' SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB

A spectacular new panoramic history of the Crusades.

From their foundation in 1097 to Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem almost a century later, the Crusader States transformed the Middle Eastern world. In an era shaped by many conflicts, this was not simply a war between Christianity and Islam, but an epic contest among multiple rival empires, dynasties and cultures.

The Crusader Storm unfolds through a kaleidoscope of perspectives: a Byzantine renegade, a crusader princess, a Turkish matriarch, a young Arab nobleman, a Syriac archbishop, Saladin's leading commander and the vizier of Egypt. Between them, information, technologies and ideas - as well as weapons - crossed borders at astonishing speed as their societies fought, allied and traded. Their entangled fates reshaped not only the Middle East, but the medieval world itself.

Drawing on sources from Arabic, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Latin and Hebrew traditions, Nicholas Morton's enthralling panorama transforms our understanding of the Crusades - revealing them not as a single clash of faiths, but as a dynamic era of war, commerce, innovation and exchange that defined the course of history.

PRAISE FOR THE MONGOL STORM:

'Brain-stretching . . . Pulsating . . . Irresistible'

SUNDAY TIMES

'Deeply researched and elegantly written - essential reading'

DAN JONES

'Erudite . . . Thrilling and much-needed'

DAILY TELEGRAPH

'Revelatory, lively and stocked with colourful personalities'

LITERARY REVIEW

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Nicholas Morton

Nicholas Morton

Nicholas Morton is an associate professor at Nottingham Trent University specialising in the history of the Medieval Middle East, writing extensively on topics including the Crusades, the Mongol Empire and the Seljuk Turks. An award-winning author, his books include The Mongol Storm, which the Sunday Times described as 'a reminder that the best history writing is eminently readable', and the highly anticipated The Crusader Storm: A Global History of the Wars for the Middle East, which will be published in June 2026.

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