European Contact with Others: The Crusades
Seminar and Essay Questions
- Were the motives of the crusaders primarily religious or economic?
- Why were the later crusades so much less successful than the first?
- To what extent was the Fourth Crusade a perversion of the crusading ideal?
- What type of rewards did crusading offer to those taking part?
Documents
- Fulcher of Chartres' Account of Urban II's Speech at Clermont, 1095.
- Usmah Ibn Munqidh (1095-1188): Autobiography, excerpts on the Franks
- The Fourth Crusade, 1204. The Capture of Zara (recorded by Geoffrey of Villehardouin) and the Summons to Alexis (recorded by Robert de Clari).
Introductory Reading
Barber, The Two Cities, 112-30, 352-372, 445-458.
Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 85-105, 260-268, 308-309
Power, The Central Middle Ages, 200-206
Tyerman, C. 'What the Crusades Meant to Europe' in P. Linehan, and J.L. Nelson (eds), The Medieval World (London, 2001), pp. 131-145.
Waley and Denley, Later Medieval Europe, 251-262, 275-276
e-resources
- The Internet Medieval Sourcebook has sections on Byzantium, Islam, and the Crusades.
- Byzantium: Byzantine Studies on the Internet
- Internet Islamic History Sourcebook
- Crusades Encyclopedia
- De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History. The website includes a series of resources (primary sources, articles, and essays) relating to the Byzantine Empire and the Crusades.
- The Long View. BBC Radio programme, Tuesday, 22 October 2002. Discusses the war against Iraq in the light of the Crusades.
- 'The First Crusade'. Talk of the Nation. NPR Radio programme, 16 September, 2004.
- 'The Siege of Constantinople, 1453'. In Our Time. BBC Radio programme, Thursday 28 December 2006.
Further Reading
Byzantium
Angold, Michael, The Fourth Crusade: Event and Context (Harlow, 2003)
Herrin, Judith, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (Harmondsworth, 2007)
Haldon, John, Byzantium: A History (Stroud, 2002)
Mango, Cyril (ed.), The Oxford History of Byzantium (Oxford, 2002)
Nicol, Donald, The Last Centuries of Byzantium (London, 1972)
Norwich, John Julius, Byzantium, 3 vols (London, 1988-1995)
Robert of Clari, The Conquest of Constantinople, trans. and ed. Edgar Holmes McNeal (Toronto, 1996)
The Rise of Islam
Ettinghausen, Richard, and Oleg Grabar, The Art and Architecture of Islam: 650-1250 (New Haven, 1987)
Kennedy, Hugh, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century, 2nd ed. (Harlow, 2004)
Lapidus, Ira M., A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge, 1988)
Lewis, D.L., God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 (New York, 2008)
The Crusades
Angold, Michael, The Fourth Crusade: Event and Context (Harlow, 2003)
Asbridge, Thomas, The First Crusade: A New History (London, 2004)
Christiansen, Eric, The Northern Crusade: the Baltic and the Catholic Frontier, 1100-1525, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1997)
Hillenbrand, Carole, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999)
Housley, Norman, The Later Crusades, 1274-1580 (Oxford, 1992)
Housley, Norman, Crusading and the Ottoman Threat, 1453-1505 (Oxford, 2012)
Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. M.R.B. Shaw (Harmondsworth, 1963)
Maalouf, Amin, The Crusades through Arab Eyes, trans. Jon Rothschild (London, 1984)
Madden, Thomas F. (ed.), The Crusades: The Essential Readings (Oxford, 2002)
Mayer, H.E., The Crusades, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1988)
Phillips, J.R.S., The Medieval Expansion of Europe, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1998)
Riley-Smith, Jonathan (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford, 1995) [also online]
Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The Crusades: A Short History (London, 1987)
Robert of Clari, The Conquest of Constantinople, trans. and ed. Edgar Holmes McNeal (Toronto, 1996)
Setton, Kenneth M. (gen. ed.), The Crusades, 6 vols. (Madison, 1969-89)
Strickland, Debra Higgs, 'Monsters and Christian Enemies', History Today 50 (2000), 45-51.
Tyerman, Christopher, God's War: A New History of the Crusades (Harmondsworth, 2006)
Tyerman, Christopher, The Invention of the Crusades (Basingstoke, 1998)