A HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES Volume 1 the First Crusade and The foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem

A History of the Crusades #1

by Steven Runciman

Sir Steven Runciman’s three volume A History of the Crusades, one of the great classics of English historical writing, is now being reissued. This volume deals completely with the First Crusade and the foundation of the kingdom of Jerusalem. As Runciman says in his preface: ‘Whether we regard the Crusades as the most tremendous and most romantic of Christian adventures, or as the last of the barbarian invasions, they form a central fact in medieval history. Before their inception the centre of our civilization was placed in Byzantium and in the lands of the Arab caliphate. Before they faded out the hegemony in civilization had passed to western Europe. Out of this transference modern history was born.’

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval, Medieval History, Middle East, European History, Religion

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

A King's Scholar at Eton College, he was an exact contemporary and close friend of George Orwell. While there, they both studied French under Aldous Huxley. In 1921 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge as a history scholar and studied under J.B. Bury, becoming, as Runciman later commented, "his first, and only, student." At first the reclusive Bury tried to brush him off; then, when Runciman mentioned that he could read Russian, Bury gave him a stack of Bulgarian articles to edit, and so their relationship began. His work on the Byzantine Empire earned him a fellowship at Trinity in 1927.

After receiving a large inheritance from his grandfather, Runciman resigned his fellowship in 1938 and began travelling widely. From 1942 to 1945 he was Professor of Byzantine Art and History at Istanbul University, in Turkey, where he began the research on the Crusades which would lead to his best known work, the History of the Crusades (three volumes appearing in 1951, 1952, and 1954).

Most of Runciman's historical works deal with Byzantium and her medieval neighbours between Sicily and Syria; one exception is The White Rajahs, published in 1960, which tells the story of Sarawak, an independent nation founded on the northern coast of Borneo in 1841 by the Englishman James Brooke, and ruled by the Brooke family for more than a century.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a review of The Arabian Nights on GR which began - pessimistically and rather alarmingly - "I needed a book which I could lose" - the idea being either that the reviewer has a form of dementia or is in an ongoing situation where they may need to flee and have no time to grab their reading material (I can't really imagine being that frantic but some people lead less sheltered lives than me).

Anyway, that reader should avoid Sir Stephen Runciman's towering, complex and riveting three volume history of the Crusades, because once you get going, you won't want to lose it. Indeed, you will be taking it with you everywhere, into the boardroom, the bathroom, into your most intimate boudoir itself. (What lives I imagine you living!)

This is a vastly tangled story, what with Caliphates, Seljuks, Byzantines, Franks, Abbasids, and starring roles for Saladin, King Richard Couer de Lion, Baldwin IV the Leper King of Jerusalem (he was 15, they carried him out onto the battlefield, he was dying, but you still had to have the King on the battlefield because the King was magic, even if horribly disfigured - apparently he was a sweet boy, everyone said so), Pope Urban Renewal II, monks called Fulcher, Kerbogha, the atabeg of Mocha, Baldric of Dol, Walter Sans Avoir, and not forgetting The Assassins (a backing group).

When they got there the crusaders built places such as Krak de Chevaliers. I mean, how cool is that?



If you like your outrageous continent-spanning narratives big, bold and scholarly, or if you're done with A Game of Thrones, these three hefty volumes might be just what the Doctor of Medick ordered.

**

On a more serious note, the wonderful complexity of the Crusades are such that they represent the first episode of unprovoked Western imperialism (before the 11th century the West wasn't in any position to colonise anyone; and the whole thing didn't last that long, the Crusader states hobbled on for about a century or so and then were absorbed back into the caliphate, which was, of course, itself an imperial enterprise); but also, the Crusades represented the first interpenetration of the West and the East, which heretofore were sealed off from each other. The meeting of the two civilisations was violent, but did not remain so. When fresh convoys of Teutonic and Frankish knights arrived in Antioch and Jerusalem, the older crusaders often sighed with regret, knowing that these new hotheads would soon be wanting to carve their way through the infidel hordes and entirely disrupt the delicate mutual respect and economic intercourse which had by then, slowly but surely, been established. And so it went.

[Xander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating account of the Crusades by historian Steven Runciman. The book itself is written as a narrative, covering all events on an almost day to day basis. This makes for easy and exciting reading, and makes it hard to put the book down - you just want to read on and see where this or that is going.

In Volume 1, Runciman covers the events leading up to the First Crusade, officially called on Tuesday 27 november 1095 by Pope Urban II, up to the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1100. Within just four years a huge mass of Christian knights and foot soldiers had set out from all over Europe and conquered Antioch, defeated various Turkish and Arab armies, besieged many towns and cities and ended up with the possession of Jerusalem.

All throughout this journey personal quarrels and animosities pop up and geopolitical alliances come and go (with Byzantine emperor Alexis, with the Egyptian Fatimids and with Christian alliances all over the Holy Land). Also, the 'army' - even though in effect it lacked cohesion and consisted of different parties - had to rely on luck many times. Things definitely could have gone totally different on lots of occasions.

One thing that struck me was the utter brutality of these Crusaders. They absolutely felt no scruples about killing innocent women and children, set whole towns ablaze, used the scorched earth policy whenever it was beneficial and broke promises made to surrendering populations many a time. Most of the Crusaders were in it for the booty and glory, so scheming to get the best political positions and deception to collect the most loot is a big part of this story.

Admittedly, this book dates from 1951 and absolutely does not follow scholarly guidelines - Runciman even stresses in the Preface to this book that he finds academic historians too obsessed with peer reviews and study of insignificant details. He wants to offer the big picture, to tell the narrative. To accomplish this he uses all original sources. So, while this book is definitely a pleasure to read, one has to be cautious about its status as a reliable source of information on the Crusades as it is 70 years old and does not adhere to academic standards. (Which is why I give it 3 instead of 4 stars.)

[Gustav Klimt · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the biggest favors you can do for yourself in this life is to read Steven Runciman's History of the Crusades. If you are daunted by its length, know that just reading Volume 1 will enrich your knowledge of the millenium-old struggle between Islam and the west a hundred fold.

This first part takes you from the launching of the Crusades by Pope Urban II at Claremont through the bloody and merciless conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders that ended the First Crusade. Along the way, you will learn a great deal about medieval politics and culture, Catholic and Orthodox theology, medieval warfare, feudalilsm, the history of Islam, and any other number of things.

The only thing this history lacks is much probing of medieval culture beneath the upper crust of the social stratum. You wont' learn much about the lives of women, the poor, the rural peasantry, etc....but Runciman is far more sensitive to the moral complexities of the subject than many other earlier historians. For one thing, this is not a tale of righteous Christians and barbarous, backwards Muslims. If anything, the historical facts cannot help but continually position the Crusaders as the backwards barbarians, particularly in the amusing episode of their arrival in the Orthodox Christian capital of Constantinople, where the Greeks (particularly Anna Comnena) are horrified by the boorishness of their Frankish and Norman guests.

Anyway, if you are interested in the Crusades, stop watching bad Ridley Scott movies and pick this up: you won't regret it.

[Michael O'Brien · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding of the events preceding the First Crusade that ultimately set it on the course it ended up as well as the First Crusade itself. It is interesting and readable, and answers many of questions I'd wondered about it since high school and college such as "why did Palestine and Egypt fall so easily into Muslim hands in the 7th Century?", "Why didn't the original Christian inhabitants resist the Arab invaders more?"; "Were the Crusades only about religion?"; "Why didn't the Byzantine Empire and the Crusaders work together more closely to fight and expel the Muslim population?"; "Why did the Jewish population welcome the Arab invasions during the 7th Century?" (especially ironic in the light of current events)

This book does a good job humanizing the characters and their personalities prominent in these events: Pope Urban II, Emperor Alexius, Raymond of Toulouse, Baldwin, Godfrey, Bohemond, Peter the Hermit, and so many more, including their Turkish and Arab opponents. In doing so, Steven Runciman portrays a situation far more complex and interesting than what most of us probably were taught in high school and college. So, overall, I strongly recommend this book for anyone looking to learn more about the First Crusade and the various impetuses that drove it.

[William2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading volume 1

[Matthew Devereux ∞ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful history of the first crusade from Pope Urban's 1095 speech to 1100 in Jerusalem. Written as a linear narrative with events and protagonists but without long exegesis of causes and so on.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you conceive something habitually considered in this part of the world as a great and romantic endeavour as an appalling barbarian invasion ending in genocide - and bear in mind where it all took place - quite a lot falls into place.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Raymond of Aguilers later that morning went to visit the Temple area he had to pick his way through corpses and blood that reached up to his knees.

As much as I enjoyed the scholar's book on the Fall of Constantinople, I found this a well researched linear survey, but one lacking resonance. The sequence is delineated but not explained or explored other than the traditional idea that it was opportunity meshed with spiritual responsibility which encouraged the papal decree that white Christians should travel across Europe to perhaps kill brown Christians along with the obvious targets of Turks, Jews and Arabs.

There are a few Runciman bullet points which must have been provocative at the time of publication (1950).

* Augustine didn't see spiritual merit in pilgrimage but Jerome did and afterwards, cousin, business was booming.

*Maybe Islam was an improvement on Christianity, and people often forget in our regional xenophobia that Christianity was an Eastern religion in terms of relative geography.

[Ben-Ain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una obra imprescindible para todo aquel que quiera conocer todos los movimientos, acciones y precedentes que desencadenaron en la Primera Cruzada.

Steven Runciman condensa en este primer tomo una ingente cantidad de información que arranca con cómo estaba Oriente y Europa religiosamente hablando antes de que la Cruzada fuese siquiera planteable. Las relaciones con Constantinopla, las conquistas de Bizancio en Italia, las relaciones entre la Iglesia Latina y Griega, (y ámbas con los Judíos y Musulmanes). Todo esto es necesario para hacerse una idea de cómo y porqué las cosas llegan al punto en que el Papa Urbano II llama a la Cruzada.

Es un libro que requiere lectura intensa, pues no sólo hay mil nombres (ríete tú de Juego de Tronos), sino que al parecer no había mucha imaginación por aquellos entonces y hay muchas personas que se llaman igual. Además, la friolera de ciudades por las que pasan las tropas en sus distintas variantes desde Europa hasta la llegada a Oriente, es considerable. El teatro de operaciones, con batallas aquí y allá, se hace un poco confuso también si no se dispone de un mapa a mano. Le voy a dar 5 estrellas porque el libro, aun sin mapas, lo merece. Pero por todos los Dioses, ¿tanto cuesta a las editoriales el meter un par de mapitas con todas las ciudades que se mencionan? A ver, que sí, soy muy especialito y cansino con el tema de los mapas, pero es que los pueblos y ciudades (si es que aún existen) han cambiado de nombre desde entonces, y es un lío encontrar algunas veces dónde estaban pasando las cosas. Eso sin contar que algunas ciudades, como Cesarea, existen en varios sitios bastante cercanos entre sí. Aún así, como digo, el libro es un compendio de saber, merece la pena muchísimo.

[Olethros · Rating 5 out of 5]

-Erudición y entretenimiento no tienen que enfrentarse, al menos no necesariamente-.

Género. Historia.

Lo que nos cuenta. Desde la Primera Cruzada, con una mirada hacia atrás para entender el sustrato del Imperio Romano y su herencia, hasta la caída de San Juan de Acre, con una mirada hacia delante hasta Pio II para entender sus estertores, retrato pormenorizado y cronológico de los hechos, personajes y acontecimientos que construyeron el fenómeno conocido como Las Cruzadas.

¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 – 4 stars

I have always had a fascination with the Crusades of the Middle Ages, at first prompted by a misguided sense of romanticism, and later perhaps by a sense of morbid curiosity. I can’t say that I still feel the same sense of romanticism about the crusades that I had when I was younger, but I must admit to still being fascinated by the idea of Outremer, the Christian kingdoms of the Holy Land, as a sort of almost mythical amalgam of west and east…a political and religious experiment doomed to fail, but fascinating, nonetheless. However one looks at it though, the crusades cannot be whitewashed and the horrors they display, and which follow us to this very day, are frightening reminders of perhaps the worst aspects of human nature. Even more horrifying is the ostensible ’pure’ motives of the movement…a purity based on religious fanaticism which we can certainly view with jaundiced eyes today, but even when they occurred it seems that few of the participants themselves bothered to even try and act as though this was the primary motivation for their actions unless circumstances required them to pretend this was the case.

I don’t know the state of current scholarship on the crusades and thus can’t say how accurate Runciman’s analysis, now more than seventy years old, is considered today, but I imagine that the ‘facts’, inasmuch as they have come down to us with any accuracy, are what they are and it’s really a matter of interpretation…which I think will be what any reader of these texts will bring to them. Runciman strikes me as a fairly objective interpreter of the texts to which he had access, and based on his appendices and bibliography, they appear to have been as exhaustive as was possible.

This first volume (of three) of Runciman’s magnum opus covers the birth of the idea of the crusade, or holy war, as it arose in the West primarily as a response to the rise of Moslem power, first in Spain and then in the East (primarily in the environs of the Holy Land and the marches of the Byzantine Empire). It is surprising to me how the beginnings of the idea of a military pilgrimage to the East seem to have had a not insignificant part of its genesis in invitations from the Byzantines themselves (it was no doubt no less surprising to the Emperor Alexius himself when, instead of the relatively small groups of mercenaries he hoped to have under his command, he instead was presented with large armies under the command of proud and powerful princes eager for their own power and glory, not those of the emperor of the East). Given how this would play out to the Empire’s severe detriment in times (not so far off) to come, and the manner in which the combat of western vs eastern Christianity would become a defining characteristic of later crusades…perhaps as much, or even more, than the combat of Christianity vs. Islam, it is in the very least a somewhat ironic fact. The seeds of the distrust, and even hatred, of the Latin and Byzantine Churches for each other is already evident in the earliest days of the first crusade, though prior to any official schism in these branches of Christianity, and certainly not yet at the fever pitch it would later attain. The inability of the Latins to work together, and their obvious political and economic motivations for going on crusade, no less than their religious ones, set the tone for all subsequent Crusades and the surprise is less how unsuccessful later ones were than in how successful this first one was despite the fact that it was riddled with greed, hatred, ineptitude, and misunderstanding.

No war is ‘good’ and to attempt to classify one as ‘holy’ is perhaps the height of folly. With this being understood, it is still almost painful to see how specific decisions came to define the crusading movement and push it from an area where it might have allowed for greater cooperation between the Latins and Byzantines if only certain individuals had survived, gained more power, or some sense of cooperation and a common cause been espoused. There are even glimpses of some level of possible coexistence between Latin conquerors and Muslim inhabitants, but these few bright spots of possibility are erased in the waves of ill-feeling, xenophobia, and ultimately genocide that instead became the norm. The ultimate flavour of the medieval crusades, as defined by this first, and only truly ‘successful’ expedition can perhaps be best summed upped in the following quote from Runciman:

The massacre at Jerusalem profoundly impressed all the world. No one can say how many victims it involved; but it emptied Jerusalem of its Moslem and Jewish inhabitants. Many even of the Christians were horrified by what had been done; and amongst the Moslems, who had been ready hitherto to accept the Franks as another factor in the tangled politics of the time, there was henceforward a clear determination that the Franks must be driven out. It was this bloodthirsty proof of Christian fanaticism that recreated the fanaticism of Islam. When, later, wiser Latins in the East sought to find some basis on which Christian and Moslem could work together, the memory of the massacre stood always in their way. (287)

[Pascal Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dated & sublime. I used to carry a copy everywhere. I should start again.

Put bluntly, Runciman’s A History of the Crusades is a morality play masquerading as serious history. It is brilliantly written, and as is true of Edward Gibbons’ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, it will live on as great literature. But it is hardly solid history based upon a careful analysis of the evidence. Runciman viewed the crusaders as intolerant barbarians who foolishly destroyed the foundations of the Byzantine Empire, which he deeply admired.

[Mesoscope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Runciman's classic history of the Crusades begins with this engrossing and highly-readable account of the background leading up to the Latin Christian incursion into the Near East by way of the Byzantine Empire, up through the First Crusade and the stunning initial conquest of Jerusalem. Runciman bases his history on his vast familiarity with the chronicle sources written in an imposing number of languages.

The book is packed with colorful personalities and events, and by the standards of current scholarship, regards history a bit too much as the "drama of princes and kings." So the story largely becomes a personal one, and the implications of various disasters and gut-wrenching massacres is perhaps somewhat overshadowed by the personal fortunes of the Crusading captains such as Bohemond and Raymond of Toulouse.

Runciman's specialty was the Byzantine empire, and I especially valued his patient work in excavating and documenting its centrality to events which are all-too-often viewed as a belligerent incursion of Western Europeans into Anatolia and Palestine. While there is some truth to that, the situation and motivations of the Europeans are far more complex than all that. The lands through which the Crusaders traveled and fought were, after all, to a large degree recent acquisitions by the expanding Arab and Turkoman peoples, and had long been part of the Eastern Roman Empire. Reducing the whole complex order of events to Western expansion is too simplistic.

Runciman lingers on and perhaps idealizes the role of the Byzantines, and especially the Emperor Alexius Comnenus. Runciman clearly viewed them as the great civilization of the three, caught between warring barbarians.

This book recounts countless unforgettable incidents, from the petty bickering that repeatedly threatened to derail the entire campaign to the bizarre machinations of Peter Bartholomew, from countless battles to endless missed opportunities. There was a miracle of sorts in the Crusading armies reaching their goal against such impossible odds and across such endless roads, but more often than not, conquest meant wholesale murder and petty power-grabs.

This book is endlessly illuminating and beautifully written, and remains a classic of the field.

[Walter Mendoza · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Steven runciman's book about The crusades is highly recognized as one the most greatest works of history of the crusades. The author is an amazing writer also an impartial historian with judgements and opinions supports on solid scholarship on source and contemporary chroniclers.

The first volume: The First Crusade and the Foundations of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, tell us about the fundation the first crusade, the beginning, the fundation of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Previously Runciman examined loss the palestine, the conflict in Bizantine empire, conflicts on the Cristian world. Runciman after describes of the major crusaders leaders and their travels to the Holy land, The first siege of Nicea until the siege of Jerusalem, and ends with the Baldwin's coronation as King of Jerusalem.

A great work, one classic account the crusades, I recommend this book.

[Thanasis · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Ο μεσαιωνικός άνθρωπος ήταν πεπεισμένος ότι η Δευτέρα Παρουσία πλησίαζε. Έπρεπε να μετανοήσει όσο ήταν ακόμη καιρός και να βγει να κάνει το καλό. Η Εκκλησία δίδασκε ότι η αμαρτία έπρεπε να εξιλεωθεί με προσκύνημα και οι προφητείες διακήρυταν ότι οι Άγιοι Τόποι έπρεπε να ανακτηθούν για την πίστη πριν να μπορέσει ο Χριστός να ξανάρθει.”

Στο παραπάνω απόσπασμα αποτυπώνεται ο κυριότερος λόγος που συμμετείχαν στην πρώτη Σταυροφορία, Δούκες, Κόμητες, κληρικοί, γεωργοί, σιδεράδες, τυχοδιώκτες κλπ. Ένας άλλος σημαντικός λόγος ήταν το προσωπικό όφελος από νέες κτήσεις και λάφυρα.

Παρακινούμενοι από τον Πάπα και υποβοηθούμενοι από τον Αυτοκράτορα του Βυζαντίου πολυάριθμοι στρατοί ξεκίνησαν από την Ευρώπη ένα ταξίδι πολλών μηνών για να απελευθερώσουν τους Αγίους Τόπους. Κάποιες φορές πολεμούσαν μεταξύ τους, άλλες λεηλατούσαν τις πόλεις από τις οποίες περνούσαν και σε κάποιες περιπτώσεις συμμάχησαν με Μωαμεθανούς εναντίον Χριστιανών.

[OldFisben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ну, на фоне всех описанных Рансименом событий, любой нынешний эпик в духе игры престолов и его эпигонов - все это просто возня в песочнице. Такого накала страстей, интриг, подлости, благородства, гекатомб жертв, грохота бесконечных сражений и осад еще поискать. Рок-н-ролл мертв, а еще нет. То бишь, Иерусалим франков пал, но государства крестоносцев, пусть уже и мизерные, все еще сопротивляются. Поэтому будем продолжать, господа.

[Ivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il libro è molto interessante e ben fatto; peccato che questa sia la prima parte della corposa opera di Runciman, staccata e stampata pari pari, a parte. Da cretino, ho prima letto l'opera in due volumi, e poi mi sono comprato questo, aspettandomi chissà cosa di nuovo. Non do le cinque stelle per punire la casa editrice.

[James Hogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been wanting to read a history on the Crusades for a while now. We hear about the Crusades from time to time, and everyone has their one or two sentence summary of what they were or why they were terrible (I hear little praising the Crusades, in this day and age!). The Crusades has often been used as a convenient shorthand for condemning Christianity as a whole. See, this is what true dedication to religion leads us. See, Christianity is just as barbaric as other religions that Christians preach against. See, Christians have no moral high ground to stand on whatsoever. And so I thought it helpful to read a history of these Crusades and try and understand what they were. Why did they start? What happened? I picked this history to read (this is only volume 1 of 3!), understanding that it was written back in the middle of the 20th century and so there would be the potential of bias (but really, isn't that true of any book?) and I would need to closely read this to try and understand if what is in this history is truly accurate. Of course, this is the only work on the Crusades I've read, so I cannot adequately judge if this is tome is a quality historical work or not, but this is one of the definitive works on the Crusades and from my reading thus far, it seems a most fair and even-handed treatment of the Crusades. The author rarely editorializes. He seems to mostly just try and tell what happened and give reasoned hypotheses when he can. While he writes from a Western perspective, he does what he can to color in the side of the various peoples that the Crusaders displace. And now? I have a much better idea of the Crusades than I did when I started, which is really all I wanted! This tale is told well, in a narrative style that, while not entirely gripping, still pulls one along and is never boring. So what's the deal with the Crusades? Well, this so-called review is already far too long and of little enough substance already, but honestly? Read the book and discover for yourself. I found it a most refreshing description of the events leading up to the crusades, describing the conditions in the lands both West and East...describing the political intricacies of the Western kingdoms, the Byzantine Empire, and the various Muslim dominions. The First Crusade began for many reasons...one could discuss the feudal dynamics and land hunger of the western powers...or one could discuss the pressures upon the Byzantine Empire under the rule of Alexius I and how he used every means at his disposal to keep his empire afloat in the middle of a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape...or one could even talk about the dynamics in the Muslim world and the relatively static nature of some of these kingdoms compared to the influx and influence of the new power on the scene, the Turks...or one could talk about the relationship between the Western Christian Church and the Eastern...and how while there was not yet schism, the relationship between the two was not always a healthy one...and clouds were on the horizon. And yes, religion was something that was very present in the narrative thread of the day. Now we may talk about religion as being something that is a private matter between one's self and one's god. But then? Religion was something that was seen as necessarily intertwined with the rule of the state. So this tale of the Crusades? It is indeed messy. There were atrocities. There were horrors. There was selfishness and heroics and cowardice and betrayals and greed and brutality. Just like with almost all history, this tale is not black and white. And I think that's why I enjoyed reading this book so much. I now know much more about the early history of the Crusades and understand why they took place. Highly recommended. On to Volume II.

[Graychin · Rating 4 out of 5]

History is necessarily a catalog of folly because that’s what we human beings excel at. As one might expect, therefore, the writing of history is also a fool’s errand. For what he has said and for what he has failed to say, the historian will always be blamed. But a rollicking good story covers a multitude of sins.

Take, for example, The First Crusade, the first installment of Steven Runciman’s famous three-volume history of that peculiar medieval pastime. This is the book (published in 1951) that changed the way the English-speaking world thought of and remembered the crusades. Prior to Runciman, you might say, the crusades were a triumph of Western culture; after Runciman, a regrettable interlude of unwarranted rapacity and bloodlust. Runciman himself doesn’t take things as far as some of his more ideologically-driven successors have done. But he certainly has a fondness for the sophistication of Byzantium and the Muslim emirs of the eastern Mediterranean; by contrast, he considers the western crusaders coarse and mildly barbaric.

To the Byzantines Runciman gives an especially sympathetic reading. You see this, for example, in his apology for their military losses against the invading Turks: the Byzantines, he suggests, were too sincere in their Christianity to indulge wholeheartedly in killing the infidels; hence they relied on sub-par foreign mercenaries, etc. But when it comes to the popular anti-violence movement that swept the West in the tenth and eleventh centuries, Runciman brushes off the Church’s interest in promoting it as motivated only by a desire to protect ecclesiastical possessions and revenues.

Caveats of this sort in mind, Runciman’s story telling (after the first 75 pages or so of preliminaries) is really wonderful. The Byzantine emperor Alexius, Pope Urban II, Count Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond, Baldwin, Godfrey, Tancred and Peter the Hermit (or at least compelling versions of them) come alive in his words. The book is what they call a page turner. I enjoyed it so much that I have now resolved the finish the other two volumes before the end of the year.

[Max Gwynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have long meant to tackle Runciman’s epic trilogy covering the Crusades and I am so glad I finally did so.

Brilliantly exhaustive and gripping, Volume One covers the First Crusade splendidly and must easily stand as the most authoritative history available.

Eager to jump straight into Volume Two now …

[jihad · Rating 5 out of 5]

" إن للإسلام حضارة عربية المهد عالمية المقصد ، ودور الحضارة الإسلامية في تاريخ البشرية أخطر من أن يشار إليه في سياق ضيق .

الكتاب اكثر من رائع ، وما لامسته من المؤلف إنصافه الكامل والتزامه جانب الحقيقية وحياديته تجاه التاريخ .

ملحوظة : تم كتابة هذا الجزء (الجزء الأول)من وجهة النظر الغربية .

[Clavdivs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelent!

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steven Runciman in volume 1 of his History of the Crusades:The First Crusade and the Foundations of the Kingdom of Jerusalem describes an 11th century that witnessed massive movements of peoples and political reorganizations. The Byzantine and Latin churches had parted company in 1054. The Turks were causing great distress among pilgrims who could no longer make the journey to Jerusalem. Until that time the Byzantine Empire, which stretched from Lebanon to Austria to Italy, had maintained a very prosperous and peaceful empire through the use of chicanery and trickery. War was to be avoided: it represented a confession of failure. It was considered shameful, a violation of Christian principles and simply wholesale murder. Occasionally, it could be condoned if against infidels. Pope Urban II and Alexius I, the Byzantine emperor, both looked for a way to heal the great rift and as luck would have it the Turks gave them the excuse they needed.  Alexius put in a call to the Council at Piazenza for soldiers to fight the infidel Turks. This played into Urban's hands. He was looking for a way to heal the wounds in the church but also to bring the East under domination of the Roman patriarch. He had become increasingly concerned about the cult of the warrior promoted by the Norman code of chivalry and barbarian heritage. The Crusade would be an ideal way to channel this bellicose activity into an endeavor he could dominate.
     He got more than he bargained for. Urban had promised grants of land (with him as suzerain, of course) to crusaders who were successful in battle in the East. Not just soldiers responded to the call. Peter, the Hermit, who preached approaching apocalypse, famines and mass destruction, in 1094 led 20,000 ruffians and brigands on a rampage through Hungary toward Constantinople. At Semlin a dispute arose between the locals and the people's crusade:
4,000 Hungarians were killed. Alexius was worried. He had assumed the soldiers he had asked for would take the southern route and would be a disciplined army. When the People's Crusade finally arrived in Constantinople he moved them through as rapidly as possible. They continued killing everything in the way, mostly Greek Christians. Finally, they were tricked into an ambush by the Turks who killed thousands. The French, German and Italian princes, who arrived later, were more disciplined. When they arrived at Alexius' headguarters they were met graciously, but cautiously, and asked to swear allegiance to Alexius. Reluctantly, they agreed. Generally, they were awed by the immense wealth of the Byzantines not to mention their generally higher level of culture.
     Problems of greed and politics arose immediately upon their departure for Jerusalem. At Antioch, following a long siege, the Franks took the city but instantly argued over who was to control it.
     In the meantime, Alexius who was dismayed by the Franks' miserable treatment of the native Greek Christians whose protector he officially was, opened negotiations with the Egyptian Fatimids, who then ruled Palestine and who generally had been guite tolerant of native Christians and Jews. The Fatimids offered safe conduct for all pilgrims, but the Crusaders by this time saw Jerusalem within their grasp.
In July of 1099 the city fell. The massacre which followed was to sour relations between Moslems and Latin Christianity for centuries. The Crusaders murdered everyone in Jerusalem. The Moslems had been willing to accept the Franks as just one more factor in the tangled political environment of the Middle East, but the slaughter in Jerusalem became proof to them of bloodthirsty Christian fanaticism. Treatment of local Christians who had been sent out of Jerusalem before its fall was not much better. Local priests were tortured to reveal where they had hidden sacred relics of the Cross (they were reluctant to turn them over to a foreign patriarch.)
     After 4 years of struggle the First Crusade ended with the creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem under the leadership of Baldwin of Bologne, a penniless French knight who was to be a good king, but the Crusade had sown the seeds of mischief which would generate the undying enmity of the Moslem world.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Word to the wise: if you ever decide to write a historical fiction story set during the First Crusade, save yourself some frustration and read this BEFORE you start writing, and not after you've already written 40,000 words.

It's not hard to see why this shaped our modern understanding of the First Crusade. It's concise, engaging, detailed, and in the more ridiculous moments, it even has a dry sort of humor about the whole thing. It makes a single narrative from all of the first-hand European accounts of the crusade, and where they conflict with each other, it presents their differences and offers a possible resolution without getting too bogged down in alternatives.

The rhetoric is a little outdated in some areas, and more recent scholarship has added more detail to some of the events discussed in the book. It's a fantastic intro to the First Crusade, but it shouldn't be your only resource if you want to really dig deep into this very weird period of history.

[Raphael Jerome Celestino · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 3.5 stars...

Medieval history has always fascinated me. However, I'm always hard-pressed to find a book that tackles the topic with a little more than just dumping all the facts and presenting it to you.

This book provides an account of the events leading up to, during and after the First Crusade. However, unlike other history books, the book is structured in a story like fashion, which I really enjoyed. It definitely made it hard to put the book down.

However, I have two main gripes on the book. Firstly, there are a lot of "name bombing". What I mean by this is the book tends to mention a lot of names of people that have no significance to the story being told and would not be brought up again in any part of the book. Sometimes, I find myself skimming the list of names mentioned. Secondly, I think the book would've benefited from having included maps at the start of each chapter. Though I'm okay with Geography, I found myself having to reach for Google Maps a few times.

[Vassilis Xanthakis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Πρόκειται αναμφίβολα για το πιο πλήρες πόνημα που κυκλοφορεί στα ελληνικά σχετικά με τις Σταυροφορίες. Στο πρώτο βιβλίο ο μεγάλος ιστορικός Steven Runciman αναφέρεται στο πως προέκυψε κι εξελίχτηκε η Α' Σταυροφορία με πλήρεις περιγραφές και εξαιρετικές αναλύσεις για τα πρόσωπα, τις μάχες και τα σημαντικά γεγονότα.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great work of history by Runciman

[Elina Chatzichronoglou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye-opening and highly recommended!

[Frank DeRose · Rating 5 out of 5]

When the term genius is used these days, almost invariably it is applied to a student of mathematics or the sciences, an Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, or Alan Turing. Most assuredly, these individuals are geniuses of the highest order. Steven Runciman is a genius of a different kind, a genius of the liberal arts.

In order to understand the greatness of Runciman, one might start by looking at the appendices of his Crusades, in which he lists the principal sources for his history. There are Greek, Latin, Arabic, Armenian, and Syriac sources. These are just the principal sources. Runciman’s history also integrates the work of modern historians writing in languages as diverse as English, French, Italian, German, and Russian. The Wikipedia article on Runciman states:

"It is said that he was reading Latin and Greek by age five. In the course of his long life he would master an astonishing number of languages, so that, for example, when writing about the Middle East, he relied not only on accounts in Latin and Greek and the Western vernaculars, but consulted Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, Syriac, Armenian and Georgian sources as well."

In brief, Runciman was a genius at learning languages, both living and dead. He reminds us that the study of the liberal arts begins with the study of language. It is not possible to be a serious student of the liberal arts without being a serious student of languages.

But, it would be a slight and an insult to Runciman to label him as "just" a genius of languages. His command of the geographical, ethnic, political, religious, military, artistic, architectural, and economic factors in the patchwork that was Europe and the Middle East at the end of the first millennium is breathtaking. That is, Runciman's mastery of many languages enabled him to become a master of history, too.

As a historian, Runciman reminds us why the Middle East is such a complicated (and fascinating) place, a region where waves of Persian, Jewish, Greek, Latin, Byzantine, Arabic, Turkish, Islamic (Sunni and Shiite), Christian (Orthodox, Monophysite, and Nestorian), Armenian, Mongol, and European (Frankish, German, Italian, Norman) influences (and armies) have washed over the land at various times with various effects. We come away from his history convinced that there are no easy answers, that all attempts to cut the Gordian knot of the Middle East are in vain. Many of the forces that shape the Middle East of today are the same forces that have been in play, implacably, for centuries and they will remain in play for centuries to come. It is through the work of great historians, polyglots, and masters of the liberal arts like Steven Runciman that we begin to develop a balanced understanding of the histories and cultures of these forces, both their admirable and their detestable manifestations. And it is for this reason that the study of history, language, and the other liberal arts remain essential parts of our society today.

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had been looking forward to reading this a great deal, I had been delving into the early crusades and the Byzantine empire for a while and I had heard good things about it.

It was good, overall.

I did not enjoy the first third of the book as much as I had expected to however, the first two volumes or ‘books’ were a bit fragmented. Now I do realise that the crusades, having so many players and so many important figures are VERY difficult to write about. I do get that the many personages and places that have to be introduced leave little time for explaining them and I fully know that the period had so few surviving records that it is tough to write about. Nonetheless. The first couple of books were difficult to read even for someone who had a background in the time/place.

By book three it was all coming together considerably, and from being a book that I ‘had to read just a chapter at least’ it became a book that ‘do I have to put it down already?’ by the end one felt one had a decent background on the first crusade, the people involved, the motivations behind the people and events. It also gives a good groundwork for anyone who wants to read original sources. It is really very well referenced.

Overall, I only have two major criticisms;

1) Maps could be better used. Places often are rattled off without any maps available to trace them. It is not always made clear where the author is talking about, especially in the early books and in the case of places like Caesarea, which has at least three locations of the same name in the Middle East. At times one really misses a map. At other times, such as pg. 176 there is a map of the area under discussion, but it does not include all the places mentioned. At other times, one has extensive descriptions of battles ect with No map. Very frustrating. The plates included, while nice and topical could well be replaced by modern and more relevant images.

2) And for me a bit chilling; the author comes across as patient with the Normans, very understanding of the Byzantine point of view, friendly to the local Islamic/Eastern Christian variants and terribly anti-Semitic every time he mentions Jews. He rails resentfully at Jews surrendering a city to the Moslems early on in the book, and dwells approvingly on the atrocities practiced upon them by Norman crusaders latter on. I wonder why they yielded the city?

But overall, a good explanation of the first crusades, excellently referenced and very likely to be useful as a primary (or at least secondary) source.