Showdown in the Levant by Nicholas Morton

Wall Street Journal - Reviews:

Oxford Professor and Author Christopher Tyerman reviews ‘The Field of Blood’ by Nicholas Morton

Nine hundred years ago, on June 28, 1119, near the northwestern Syrian town of Sarmada, an army led by European settlers was annihilated by a superior force of Turks led by Ilghazi, ruler of Aleppo. The scale of the massacre gave the battle its name in Frankish memory; the ager sanguinis, the Field of Blood.

Yet according to Nicholas Morton’s book “The Field of Blood: The Battle for Aleppo and the Remaking of the Medieval Middle East,” the clash may claim a double significance, at least in historical memory.

See also review @ The National

How to Plan a Crusade by Christopher Tyerman review – the role of reason in medieval religious wars | Books | The Guardian

How to Plan a Crusade by Christopher Tyerman review – the role of reason in medieval religious wars

This book opens disarmingly with a novice historian stumbling through a lecture, “wondering why he had ever begun”. He is saved by his students, who storm the hall and, with cries of “Deus lo volt”, demand to be taken to Jerusalem, AKA the pub next door. Thirty-six years later, Christopher Tyerman, now professor of the history of the Crusades at the University of Oxford, returns to the subject of his lecture: how to plan a crusade.

How to Plan a Crusade is serious and scholarly, the synthesis of decades of work on difficult, fragmented sources. Administrative records weren’t routinely kept until around 1300, which makes Tyerman’s task harder and more impressive.