'Saracen' was a name employed by medieval writers to describe the Muslims of Syria and Palestine, and the Arab rulers of North Africa generally - especially those conquerors of Spain and Sicily, and the invaders of France. Later the name was applied to all those peoples against whom the crusades were preached, and it is with these events that the term 'Saracen is most popularly connected. Saladin, proclaimed sultan in 1174, was the most prominent leader of this period and in many ways he can be said to typify the Saracenic qualities: courage, wisdom, magnanimity. However, the crusader period covered but a small part of Saracen history which, indeed, can be said to extend from pre-Islamic Arabia; Spain itself saw eight centuries of Saracen rule. In 'A Short History of the Saracens', Ameer Ali examines every aspect of these extraordinary people. Few writers, in the decades since this work was first published, in 1899, have presented a more complete account. For this reason, both historians and students of the period will welcome its republication.

Europeans are in denial. Against a backdrop of Islamophobia, they are increasingly distancing themselves from their cultural debt to the Muslim world. But while the legacy of Islam and the Middle East is in danger of being airbrushed out of Western history, its traces can still be detected in some of Europe's most recognisable monuments, from Notre-Dame to St Paul's Cathedral. In this comprehensively illustrated book, Diana Darke sets out to redress the balance, revealing the Arab and Islamic roots of Europe's architectural heritage. She tracks the transmission of key innovations from the great capitals of Islam's early empires, Damascus and Baghdad, via Muslim Spain and Sicily into Europe. Medieval crusaders, pilgrims and merchants from Europe later encountered Arab Muslim culture in journeys to the Holy Land. In more recent centuries, that same route through modern-day Turkey connected Ottoman culture with the West, leading Sir Christopher Wren himself to believe that Gothic architecture should more rightly be called 'the Saracen style', because of its Islamic origins. Recovering this overlooked story within the West's long history of borrowing from the Islamic world, Darke sheds new light on Europe's buildings and offers rich insights into the possibilities of cultural exchange.

This is the first and only book to examine the Crusades from the added viewpoint of psychoanalysis, studying the hidden emotions and fantasies that drove the Crusaders and the Muslims to undertake their terrible wars. The reader will learn that the deepest and most powerful motives for the Crusades were not only religious or territorial - or the quest for lands, wealth or titles - but also unconscious emotions and fantasies about one's country, one's religion, one's enemies, God and the Devil, Us and Them. The book also demonstrates the collective inability to mourn large-group losses and the collective needs of large groups such as nations and religions to develop a clear identity, to have boundaries, and to have enemies and allies. Motives which the Crusaders and the Muslims were not aware of were among the most powerful in driving several centuries of terrible and seemingly endless warfare.

This edition has a prefixed section on the life of Mohammad by Roger Long.

First published in 2008. Written by a barrister and Muslim who also authored the well-known book The Spirit of Islam, this is an unusual and indispensable history of the Saracens, a people who left behind them a great legacy and incredible intellectual wealth. The history of the Saracens is also the history of the spread of Islam. This work chronicles the rise and decline of Saracen power and of the economic, social and intellectual development of the Arab nations.