Crusade and Mission: European Approaches Toward the Muslims (Princeton Legacy Library) - Softcover

Kedar, Benjamin Z.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691102465 ISBN 13: 9780691102467

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1988

Synopsis

This wide-ranging study of medieval Europe's response to the challenge of Islam examines the relationship between ideas of crusade and mission, between European projects for military conquest and those for the conversion of Muslims to Christianity. Covering the years from the emergence of Islam to the fourteenth century, Benjamin Z. Kedar discusses not only the crusades and the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem but also the confrontation of Catholics and Muslims in Sicily and Spain.

Originally published in 1984.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

About this title

About the Author

Benjamin Z. Kedar, Professor Emeritus of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is a leading historian of the crusades and the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the founding editor of the journal Crusades. He has employed varieties of the comparative approach in his Merchants in Crisis (1976), Crusade and Mission (1984), and in numerous articles. He has also proposed to use series of aerial photographs of the same area, shot at different points in time, as reliable sources for the history of Palestine/Israel from 1917 onward. Kedar served as president of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East and chaired the board of the Israel Antiquities Authority, and is currently vice-president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He is a corresponding member of the Medieval Academy of America and of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Munich).

Review

"[Professor Kedar] is concerned with the essential dilemma the Christians faced, should they attempt to convert the infidels or exterminate them by the sword, or was it possible to combine these two approaches and if so how? Amongst those who wrote on the subject, there was no question that Islam should be attacked or undermined; it was not the overall objective which was under discussion but rather the methods which should be used. . . . Professor Kedar has produced a superbly researched discussion of these attitudes . . . there is a degree of sharpness in his discussion of the Mendicants or Ramon Llull . . . which is in many ways refreshing, and he challenges the idea that they represented any real attempt to mitigate the aggressive stance of Medieval Christianity."---Hugh Kennedy, History

"This book is a major addition to the literature on medieval religious ideology. . . . Its subject is important, its arguments compelling, its scholarship impeccable."---James A. Brundage, Church History

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0691102465
• ISBN 13: 9780691102467
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 264