The Crusader Storm

The Crusader Storm traces the rise and fall of the Crusader States from the First Crusade to Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem, exploring how diverse cultures collided, coexisted, and reshaped the medieval Middle East. Through the eyes of rulers, rebels, and ordinary people, it reveals a world far more complex than a simple clash of faiths.

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.