Bøker i Saqi Essentials-serien

Sifts through the works of a score of contemporary Arab chroniclers of the Crusades, eyewitnesses and often participants in the events. This book retells their stories in their own style, giving us a vivid portrait of a society rent by internal conflicts, and shaken by a traumatic encounter with an alien culture.

Presents a rebuttal of the cultural reductionism of Max Weber and others who have tried to explain the politics and society of the Middle East by reference to some unchanging entity called 'Islam,' typically characterised as instinctively hostile to capitalism. This work looks at the facts, analysing economic texts with his customary common sense.