Summary of Dan Jones's Crusaders

By IRB Media

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#1 The count of Sicily, Roger, lifted his leg and farted. By the truth of my religion, he exclaimed, there is more use in that than in what you have to say. His advisors stood chastened. The plan they had recommended was not a good one, as courtiers’ plans often are.

#2 Roger, count of Sicily, was born around the year 1040. He was the eleventh-century Europe’s ultimate self-made man. He had left his homelands in what is now north-west France and set out for territory that had called many of his kinsmen and countrymen: the rich but unstable southern Italian regions of Calabria and Apulia.

#3 The Norman invasion of southern Italy was not well received by everyone, and some even viewed them as a filthy and tyrannical bunch. But over time, the papacy began to view the Normans as useful allies who could be used to advance the church’s agenda.

#4 The conquest of Sicily was a holy mission that required a substantial earthly justification. The island contained some of the finest farmland in the Mediterranean, and its Muslim emirs had improved the agricultural methods there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822547735

IRB Media

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Insights on Dan Jones's Crusaders

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The count of Sicily, Roger, lifted his leg and farted. By the truth of my religion, he exclaimed, there is more use in that than in what you have to say. His advisors stood chastened. The plan they had recommended was not a good one, as courtiers’ plans often are.

#2

Roger, count of Sicily, was born around the year 1040. He was the eleventh-century Europe’s ultimate self-made man. He had left his homelands in what is now north-west France and set out for territory that had called many of his kinsmen and countrymen: the rich but unstable southern Italian regions of Calabria and Apulia.

#3

The Norman invasion of southern Italy was not well received by everyone, and some even viewed them as a filthy and tyrannical bunch. But over time, the papacy began to view the Normans as useful allies who could be used to advance the church’s agenda.

#4

The conquest of Sicily was a holy mission that required a substantial earthly justification. The island contained some of the finest farmland in the Mediterranean, and its Muslim emirs had improved the agricultural methods there.

#5

Roger I, the count of Sicily, was a very popular Christian overlord who ruled over a very rich and diverse population. He built and sponsored churches and monasteries on the island, and forced the conversion of the local Muslims.

#6

The story of Roger’s refusal to extend his success in Sicily by sponsoring an invasion of Ifriqiya is a perplexing one. It comes down to us via a scholar named Ibn al-Athir, who lived and died in Mosul between 1160 and 1233.

#7

The eastern Mahgreb is the portion of north Africa’s coastal littoral roughly covered by north-eastern Algeria, Tunisia, and north-western Libya. It was invaded by the Normans in 1061.

#8

Ibn Hamdis, a young Muslim poet, was exiled from Sicily in the 1070s. He went to live with King Muhammad al-Mu’tamid of Seville, where he became a salaried companion. He yearned eternally for his homeland, but things were at least good for a moment.

#9

The city of Seville, which lent its name to the kingdom, lay some 125 miles north of the Strait of Gibraltar. Its dominions stretched from Silves and the Algarve on the Atlantic coast of modern Portugal to Murcia in the east.

#10

Alfonso VI, king of Castile and León, was the most powerful Christian monarch in Spain. He was also known as El Bravo because of his strength in both judgment and arms. He was determined to expand his kingdom’s borders, and it was a bold ruler who dared to stand in his way.

#11

The ambitions of Alfonso and other Christian rulers were strongly encouraged from the papal court in Rome. The pope wanted to eliminate the Mozarabic liturgy, which many Arabized Christians in Spain had, and replace it with the Latin one.

#12

The attack on Barbastro in 1063 was a clear example of how Rome was supporting the expansion of Christian states into Spain. When Alfonso VI sent one of his lords south to collect the paria tribute due from the taifa of Granada, ʿAbd Allah made it clear that he understood exactly which way the wind was blowing.

#13

The Battle of Barbastro in 1076 was the first time that Muslims in Spain were subjugated by a Christian king. The conquest of Toledo in 1085 was a watershed, as it shocked the Islamic world.

#14

The poet-king al-Mu’tamid had been roundly humiliated by Alfonso, who with the fall of the taifa of Toledo now became his direct neighbor. To protect himself, al-Mu’tamid looked south to Morocco and western Algeria, where power lay in the hands of a notoriously vicious and puritanical sect of Berbers known as the Almoravids.

#15

The Almoravids were a Berber dynasty that took over the taifa kingdoms in the south after al-Mu’tamid’s defeat in 1091. They were a Muslim empire that owed religious allegiance to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. Little territory had been gained back from the Christian states of the north.

#16

The poet Ibn al-Labbana wrote of the sight of al-Mu’tamid leaving his kingdom, which was apparently a pitiful one. He died in 1095, and his rival Alfonso VI lived on until 1109 when he died while still defending Toledo from Almoravid attack.

#17

The birth of Anna Komnene was a privilege for her family. She was born in the Porphyry Chamber, which was reserved