Crusade and Jihad

Malcolm Lambert investigates the histories of Christianity and Islam to trace the origins and development of crusade and jihad. In a narrative that brims with larger than life characters -among them, Richard Lionheart, Nur al-Din, Saladin, Baybars and Ghengiz Khan - he describes the long and firecely fought struggles to control the sacred places of the Middle East between the seventh and thirteenth centuries.

Crusade and jihad are often reckoned two sides of the same coin, but this simple opposition, the author shows, conceals crucial differences and similarities between them. From the outset jihad reflected tensions within as much as outside Islam. Jihad also described the struggle between good and evil in the souls of believers. Calls for crusade and jihad disguised ambitions for power and plunder, but they also inspired acts of chivalry and heroism.

Malcolm Lambert then moves to the more recent history of jihad and crusade. In nineteenth-century France he...