This volume brings together papers by Crusades' experts from England, France, Canada and the United States discussing the confrontation between the Franks and Muslims in twelfth-century Syria, balancing the traditional European view with an Islamic perspective. Each author's individual contribution lies in the new ideas and insights to a particular topic such as new interpretations in Crusade studies, Latin jurists in the Levant, the Italian colonies, propagation of violence and propaganda, the role of individual popes, the impact on Islamic society as reflected in literature, religious...

This is an extensive study of labour in the social and economic life of Islamic communities around the Mediterranean in the medieval period, 9th-15th century.
Based on a large number of primary and secondary sources, it contains a comprehensive dictionary of trades and occupations practised by both men and women, followed by a statistical and textual examination of the division of labour, the distribution of the labour force, occupational structures and the role of labour in the Islamic economy. It also describes ethnic divisions of labour, social status and image. A group of literary...