100 Books Like Studies into the Balts' Sacred Places

This captivating book, with its broad vision, puts the crusades in context in a way that no other has done. Bartlett’s magisterial overview of the expansion of Latin Christendom remains the most engaging work on how conquest, migration, and religion transformed and laid the foundations for the Europe we know today. Erudite, scholarly, and packed with detail, but also accessible and enjoyable, his thematic approach pulls together examples from diverse regions to make a compelling (and at times controversial) case for how a shared European culture was created as the bounds of Christendom were pushed in all directions. It’s an essential introduction to medieval Europe’s frontier societies–several of which were shaped by crusading.

I remember picking this book up at a conference when I was a doctoral student, and it ignited a passion that has come to define my career. I had previously seen the crusades as dry, tedious lists of battles and military campaigns, but Adrian’s book opened new doors to understanding the societies created by the crusading movement in the Levant. Now in its second edition, this impressive volume remains the go-to work for the flourishing archaeology of the crusader states. Everything from ceramics and coins, to tombs, houses, churches, monasteries, castles, towns, farms, and industrial installations is covered. I have taught the archaeology of crusading for many years, and this book has always been at the top of my reading lists. It also inspired me to write my own book on Prussia.

When visiting the spectacular medieval monuments of Spain and Portugal that emblematize centuries of Islamic and Christian rule, it is impossible to ignore their surrounding landscapes, often dramatic, always thought-provoking. They remain powerful inspirations for my own work, and Thomas Glick’s wide-ranging book, which spans the entirety of the Iberian Middle Ages, stands out as a landmark of Anglophone scholarship on medieval Spain which uses the landscape as a fundamental lens on cultural change. He elegantly blends archaeological and geographic evidence with written sources to place the transformation of the landscapes of al-Andalus at the heart of understanding the implications of Christian ‘feudal’ rule. Whilst our knowledge of both Islamic and Christian cultural landscapes has advanced since this book was published, it remains a bold and thoughtful overview.

An instant best-seller when it first appeared in 1978, Montaillou uses Inquisition records of the cross-examinations of Cathar heretics and their Catholic neighbours and kin to recover the religious, social, emotional and sexual lives of medieval Pyrenean villagers.

Shepherds, mayors, matriarchs and servants, priests and laity, come vividly to life as they recount their work and pleasures, friendships and enmities, doubts and beliefs. 

Montaillou is the most influential example of what was then a speciality of the French Annales school of history, namely, studies of everyday life (la vie quotidienne) in a particular historical milieu.

Since then micro-histories, detailed accounts of social microcosms and what they tell us about the wider worlds in which they were embedded, and the historical shifts or transformations to which they bear witness, have become the bread and butter not only of local but of global historians.   

This is a look at the evolving Lithuanian state at a key moment in its efforts to fight off western crusaders, expand to the east against Russians and south against Mongols, and accommodate its society and religious practices to its allies and subject peoples.

This was the era when the modern states of Belarus and Ukraine were forming under Lithuanian rule or protection. The cities of those regions, as well as the princes, were all Orthodox Christians, but they preferred being governed by tolerant pagans who lived among them than being heavily taxed by Muslim nomads who despised them.

In the decades to follow, Lithuanians would be deeply influenced by Polish culture and religious thought, so the conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1387 came as no surprise.

A great insight informs every aspect of this excellent book. While few historians today would put the crusades down to mere fanaticism, too many uninformed people still think of the crusades in absurdly simplistic terms of clashing civilizations, cultures, and religions. This book takes aim at that sort of ignorance by telling the history of one of the world’s great historical phenomena in a very accessible way from the perspective with which most readers will be least familiar.

Readers may be familiar with The Arabian Nights, the source material behind this fascinating novel. Yet, what distinguishes Jamila Ahmed’s retelling is her focus on the famed storyteller, Shaherazade, whose exposure of the Seljuk king’s wife’s infidelity sets in motion a violent chain of events in twelfth-century Persia.

In lush, sensuous prose, Ahmed fills this vividly imagined, action-packed novel with compelling characters and labyrinthine tales within tales populated with mythical adventurers and creatures with magical powers.

The elaborate, psychologically complex portrait of Shaherazade at the heart of the novel celebrates the power of storytelling while paying homage to the agency of the storyteller.

This remarkable ‘novel’ opens (and closes) with the author being given a journal written by Roger, Duke of Lunel, ‘l’Escrivel’, from whom he claims to be descended. This diary forms the bulk of the novel, and it seems to be a translation of a real diary, an intimate and detailed account of the penitent Roger’s journey to Jerusalem in company with other pilgrims on the First Crusade. At times poetic and beautiful, Roger lays bare his innermost reflections on his faith, his sexuality, his guilty love for his friend’s wife, and his search for his soul and for redemption. In excruciating detail, we also learn of the venality, ambition, and greed of those in charge of the various crusader armies who seek power and position in their conquered territories, and the absolute brutality of the conquering crusaders who, in the name of Christ, slaughter, behead and burn all those men,… show more.

No one should claim to understand the crusades without having first read this book.

This work by a scholar of Islamic history is based entirely on Muslim sources, and as such provides a mirror image to the works which draw heavily on Latin, Greek, French and Italian sources. It is concise (119 pages), easy to read, and backed by a large document section as well as recommended reading for each chapter. For anyone who is not an Islamic scholar, the book is worth owning for the clear, succinct definitions of key Arabic terms such as iqta, qadi, and jihad itself. The guide to Arab names is invaluable. The book provides an overview of sources, describes the Muslim Middle East before the crusades and then describes Muslim reaction to the various Christian incursions into the Dar al-Islam as depicted in contemporary Arab and Turkish sources.

This lavishly illustrated book focuses on the crusades’ material objects: sculptures, paintings, manuscripts, architecture, coinage, and even jewelry. As historical evidence, artifacts are as important as documents, and these carefully chosen items provide privileged insights into the largely-shared crusader worldview and sense of mission. They further illuminate the complex relationships that developed between crusaders and the many foreign cultures with which they came into contact.