The Cutting Edge of the Poet’s Sword

These two monographs both explore perceptions of crusades in literature contemporary to them. One originated as a doctoral thesis by Osman Latiff on the ways in which Muslim poetry served as a stimulus for anti-Frankish jihad. The other, by David A. Wacks, focuses on some important pieces of medieval Iberian literary fiction related to the crusades and conversion. The question of Muslim perceptions of crusading has been already well studied by various scholars, above all in a well-known monograph by Carole Hillenbrand (The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives [1999]). Many issues treated in the book by Latiff have been already examined in her book. At the same time, a specific focus on Muslim poetry is new, and poetry is studied here in far more detail than by Hillenbrand. Poetry is revealed to be a crucial source for understanding Muslim perceptions of their struggle against the crusaders. As Latiff demonstrates in the introduction to his book, poets who wrote crusade-related poems were often influential figures, sometimes even being court poets. Furthermore, one of the chapters is dedicated to the use of the poetry in diplomacy between Egypt and Syria in order to establish unity and alliance

Alliance · Art · Diplomacy · Islam · Literature · Poetry · Political science · Politics · SWORD · Classics · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Law