Jonathan Phillips (1)

I made the crucial mistake, while reading this, of listening to the Radio 4 comedy, All The World's A Globe, with the result that every now and then I would discover that I was reading it in the voice of Desmond Olivier Dingle, rendering this epic, tragic tale of the strangest left-turn in history, utterly hilarious.
It does boggle the mind, somewhat, that a holy crusade whose primary intention is to go kill Muslims in the Holy Land ends up off killing Orthodox Christians in Constantinople, show more but Philips lays it all out for the reader and traces the logic of how an untimely death here, a bit of uneven preaching there, some over-inflated numbers, a massive economic hole that threatens to founder both the crusade and an entire city-state, and a deposed Prince turning up at just the right time with just the right offer, all lead inexorably to the catastrophic downfall of one of the most amazing cities of the medieval world, and an entire empire falls with it.
My dimly remembered knowledge of this particular military foray recalls that most of the blame for the wayward expedition was lain at the feet of the wily Venetians, who built the fleet that was to carry the crusaders to the Levant. Phillips lucidly argues that the only truly naked act of greed and cynicism that the Venetians can be fairly blamed for is the siege of Zara. The leaders of the Crusade vastly overestimated the numbers and ordered ships accordingly, at a huge price. Venice literally stopped all other commercial activity for an entire year to produce the fleet, and when the numbers failed to materialise, were left very much in the same hole as the Crusaders. Even when settled on the shore of the great city, they had no intention of attacking the place: they fully expected the princes' extravagant promises to be honoured, whereupon it would have been hey-ho, off to Jerusalem we go. Circumstances, betrayals, mistrust, coups, murders, sneak attacks and outright hostility followed, and the rest is history.
Its a sad, fascinating story. One has to admire the drive, religious devotion, determination and sheer military skill of the Europeans, if not the use to which they are put. Phillips emphasises the importance of tournaments - wide ranging, sometimes lethal competitive brawls - in training the knights and soldiery of the west, as opposed to the neglected, poorly led and deteriorating Byzantine military forces. Even so, in the end, nothing much is achieved except a lot of dead people, tons of looted treasures, one burnt, wrecked and sacked city, and a lingering bitterness between the Catholic and orthodox churches
Basically. show less

This is a really solid biography of Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, best known in the Anglophone world as Saladin: one of the most well-known names from the Middle Ages. Yet, as Jonathan Phillips points out in The Life and Legend, particularly in the West Saladin is a figure better known because of romantic, orientalising tales told about him from the medieval period on rather than on account of his actual career. In the first part of this book, Phillips' remedies that with an impressively show more well-contextualised look at Saladin's life within the 12th-century Near East. The latter half looks at the afterlife of Saladin, how he's been memoralised and mythologised in both Western and Muslim culture over the centuries since his death. I found this section fascinating, but wished Phillips had had the scope to go more in-depth here.

Overall, accessible and engagingly written, and should appeal to a broad range of readers. show less

Pretty fascinating account of the Crusades. I hadn't read anything about the Crusades since I took Western Civ in high school, so this was mostly fresh information for me and I found it very interesting. The final chapter is eminently skippable, however--Phillips tries to tie contemporary figures such as Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden to the medieval Crusades, and it doesn't really work. (And the chapter also just feels like it is from an entirely different book.) Still well worth reading.

To be perfectly blunt, I could not have cared less whether the chapters on how Saladin's image has been used now were included or not. It is pretty obvious that it is used for the sole purpose of furthering the political agenda of the day of whatever political group has hijacked it. In short, his image is defined by the needs of the multitudes, and bears no resemblance to historical records.

I actually enjoyed the book more for being a detailed biography on the man himself. Medieval politics show more is a bit of a minefield to negotiate for the uninitiated - and Philips does a sound job in explaining the political landscape that Saladin was born into and operated within.

Philips' book is quite lengthy - it covers all the aspects of Saladin's personal life; his military career, especially that in Egypt; court life under both Zengi and Nur al-Din; political and religious histories of the then Muslim world. It is not solely focused on the Crusades, thought this period did indeed dominate his political and military career. Then, of course, are the chapters on his legacy, and the depictions of Saladin in both the West and the East.

A lot of research has gone into this book, with a plethora of sources worthy of exploring further. In fact, there were quite a few instances where little snippets of information piqued my interest which will result in my own further research. show less