History of the Crusades (2): From the death of Salah ad-Din to the reconquest of Acre (1193 - 1291), by HE Zaimeche Al-Djazairi

This second volume of our "History of the Crusades" will focus on the way in which this historical phase of two centuries ended, against all expectations, with a dazzling and indisputable Muslim victory - an outcome that was by no means assured, nor even predictable, given the many upheavals that took place on the Eastern political scene after the death of Salah ad-Din.

During the turbulent century that separates the disappearance of the legendary sultan, in 1193, from the Muslim reconquest of Acre and the last Frankish strongholds on the coasts of Shâm, in 1291, no less than six new great Crusades will indeed emerge from the bowels of the Europe to descend on the other shore of the Mediterranean, and the conquering impulses of the West will find new targets: Egypt, of course, which has become the indisputable bastion of Islam, but also Tunis or even Constantinople, Byzantine capital ravaged by the greed of the Latins. Jerusalem will even be, for a time, lost again by the lightness of the last Ayyubids. Above all, a new and most evil actor will make his debut on the geopolitical scene: the Mongols, whose two great waves of invasions in the form of a historic cataclysm will permanently traumatize Islamic civilization and even, for a time, almost annihilate it. completely.

Faced with this unprecedented existential threat, providential men such as Allah has always placed will arise at the most dramatic moments in history: the famous Mamluks, who will sweep away their predecessors at the end of the race before putting a decisive halt to the Mongol hordes and definitively drive the Crusaders out of the East. It is therefore the history of this century of all dangers – and of its heroes – that the author will retrace here, before offering the reader an overview of the perpetuation of the spirit of Crusade through the centuries, in Mediterranean and especially in the Balkans, against a new Muslim power on the rise: the Ottomans.