Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Crusades -- Islamic Perspectives, by Carole Hillenbrand

I found this review of The Crusades -- Islamic Perspectives in one of the backlogs of the Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt's most widely circulated newspaper. The reviewer, Denys Johnson-Davies, enjoyed Hillenbrand's writing style and was impressed with her seventeen page bibliography. Some of the interesting parts of the book include, Muslim poems describing the carnage of the fall of Jerusalem, the Muslim's adaptions to the crusader tactics of siege warfare, and the Italian merchants who supplied wood to both the crusaders and Saladin's men during the Third Crusade. Overall, the book seems interesting and contains an especially intriguing chapter about the short and long term effects of the Crusades on the Muslim world. Based on this review i would suggest this book to anyone interested on the Muslim perspective of the Crusades.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/472/bk2_472.htm

New Source: netserf

I recently consulted an old "friend" of mine: Benjamin's A Student's Guide to History, 9th ed. (Bedford/St. Martins) and found to my surprise a whole research guide in the back. One suggested web source was http://www.netserf.org/History/.
I have spent some time going through the site: it seems to be an effective search engine for all things Medieval. I hope this proves useful going forward!

~C. Erba

Peter the Hermit

I was curious about Peter the Hermit after I had read material on the people's crusade. I wanted to know more about Peter's role in the first crusade and his impact on the conflicts to follow. This article gave me a good summary of Peter and his contributions: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/crusades/79579/1. I had previously believed that Peter played a large part in the recruitment effort for the first crusade and had inspired many others to recruit for the crusades while leading soldiers into battle against the Turks later in the conflict. It turns out the Peter did play a large role in recruitment but did not play as important of a role as I had originally believed in the actual conquest. Peter did recruit many to join the first crusade, and his sermon style persuasion was used by recruiters not only for the first crusade, but also for several crusades to come since it was so successful in getting people to join the effort. However, after he reached Turkish territory with his recruits, Peter attempted to engage in battle before a sufficient number of military men and tacticians had joined the fight allowing the bulk of the people's crusade to be slaughtered. While Peter did escape death at this engagement, he served little good in the battles to come when the bulk of the soldiers, knights, and lords showed up in Constantinople to plan their crusade to Jerusalem. Although Peter was very successful in his recruitment effort and influenced the recruitment of soldiers for decades to come, he did not possess the military mind to lead soldiers into battle.

Friday, January 29, 2010

A Brief History of Christian-Muslim Conflict

I found a nice post written by Dr. Alan Jamieson entitled Christian-Muslim Conflict:Distant Wars and Local Echoes on his blog: Past Now and Then

It focuses on the control of the Mediterranean but has some basic information about the history of Christian-Muslim conflict in the holy land. It really stops with the Capture of Jerusalem by the British in 1917 during the first world war. I found it valuable because it demonstrates the length of the struggle between religions in that region. I feel that a lot of this history is useful when examining the political relationships in today's world

I hope to post something later to complete the history of the conflict by expanding the story into the 21st century.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Program up for St. Louis crusades conference

[This is brought over from my personal blog]

Well, the program for the crusades conference has been posted. This looks very exciting--not quite as exciting as that conference over in Syria and Jordan recently, but close. I'm afraid nothing quite beats going to a conference session in the Krak de Chevaliers...

Here's the link to the program: http://crusades.slu.edu/symposium/schedule.htm

The annoying thing is that the sessions are concurrent, which will necessitate a bit of jumping around--I've learned that, at events like this, time is too precious to adhere to the normal dictates of politeness and attend an entire session just to hear one paper. The chance to hear my former advisor, Eva Haverkamp, give what will doubtless be another excellent presentation, is my main reason for going. However, the program looks very exciting in any case, and I've observed that conferences are, for my own part, extremely exciting and dynamic occasions...Among the papers I'm looking forward to hearing (barring the plenary sessions, which will happen as a matter of course):

"Turks on the Hills: The Seljuks of Asia Minor Fighting Crusaders and Byzantium"
Roman Shlyakhtin, Central European University

"The Rhetoric of Reconquest: Pope Urban II and the Populus Christianus"
Matthew Gabriele, Virginia Tech University

"What Pope Urban II Understood by Crusading"
Paul E. Chevedden, Ctr. for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA

"Rough Diplomacy in the Crusade of Henry VI"
Daniel Webb, Saint Louis University

"National Identity, Language, and Internal Conflict in the Armies of the First Crusade"
Alan V. Murray, University of Leeds

"'A Man Totally Devoted to War and to God': The Spiritualization of Godfrey of Bouillon, 1100-1145"
Simon John, Swansea University

"The Self under Siege: Ideas of Identity and the "Other" in the Era of the Crusades"
Mith Barnes, University of Louisville

"Gregory VII and the Idea of a Military-Religious Order"
Paul Crawford, California University of Pennsylvania

"Visionary Intellectual or Ordinary Knight? The Early Career of Philip of Mézières"
Anne Romine, Saint Louis University

"The Last Crusade in Medieval Spain: the War for Granada (1482-1492)"
Bárbara Boloix-Gallardo, Washington University

"Ecclesiastical Chivalry: A New Model of the Military Orders"
Sam Conedera, S.J., Fordham University


Can't wait...

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Welcome to Passagium Generale

Hello, and welcome to my blog, Passagium Generale: The Medieval Crusades. The immediate purpose of this blog is to provide my students with a forum to research and discuss the crusades, in both their medieval and modern aspects. The long-range goal of the project is to establish a scholarly, up-to-date discussion forum on all aspects of crusades history, art, literature, and archeology, to name a few fields.

So, welcome again, and look for various postings and discussions in the months to come.

--Daniel P. Franke, PhD candidate
Department of History
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY