This book is a study of the spatial distribution of Frankish settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem at the time of the Crusades, and is based on an unprecedented field study of more than two hundred Frankish rural sites and on a close reexamination of the historical sources. The author reexamines some of the basic assumptions of standard recent scholarship, and advocates a new model of the nature of Frankish settlement, as a society of migrants who settled in the Levant, had close relations with Eastern Christians, and were almost completely shut off from the Muslim society that lived...

For the last 150 years the historiography of the Crusades has been dominated by nationalist and colonialist discourses in Europe and the Levant. These modern histories have interpreted the Crusades in terms of dichotomous camps, Frankish and Muslim. In this revisionist study, Ronnie Ellenblum presents an interpretation of Crusader historiography that instead defines military and architectural relations between the Franks, local Christians, Muslims and Turks in terms of continuous dialogue and mutual influence. Through close analysis of siege tactics, defensive strategies and the structure and...

This book is a study of the spatial distribution of Frankish settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem at the time of the Crusades, and is based on an unprecedented field study of more than two hundred Frankish rural sites and on a close reexamination of the historical sources. The author reexamines some of the basic assumptions of standard recent scholarship, and advocates a new model of the nature of Frankish settlement, as a society of migrants who settled in the Levant, had close relations with Eastern Christians, and were almost completely shut off from the Muslim society that lived...

For the last 150 years the historiography of the Crusades has been dominated by nationalist and colonialist discourses in Europe and the Levant. These modern histories have interpreted the Crusades in terms of dichotomous camps, Frankish and Muslim. In this revisionist study, Ronnie Ellenblum presents an interpretation of Crusader historiography that instead defines military and architectural relations between the Franks, local Christians, Muslims and Turks in terms of continuous dialogue and mutual influence. Through close analysis of siege tactics, defensive strategies and the structure and...

As a 'Medieval Warm Period' prevailed in Western Europe during the tenth and eleventh centuries, the eastern Mediterranean region, from the Nile to the Oxus, was suffering from a series of climatic disasters which led to the decline of some of the most important civilizations and cultural centres of the time. This provocative study argues that many well-documented but apparently disparate events - such as recurrent drought and famine in Egypt, mass migrations in the steppes of central Asia, and the decline in population in urban centres such as Baghdad and Constantinople - are connected and...

In the thirty-five years since B.Z. Kedar published the first of his many studies on the crusades, he has become a leading historian of this field, and of medieval and Middle Eastern history more broadly. His work has been groundbreaking, uncovering new evidence and developing new research tools and methods of analysis with which to study the life of Latins and non-Latins in both the medieval West and the Frankish East. From the Israeli perspective, Kedar's work forms a important part of the historical and cultural heritage of the country. This volume presents 31 essays written by eminent...