Browse all reviews
Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830–1930 / Judith Surkis
Review Date: 04 June 2021
In recent decades historians, postcolonial theorists and feminist scholars have demonstrated how, in a variety of geographical settings, gendered stereotypes supported the conquest and domination of overseas territories by European colonial regimes.
That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500 / Hannah Barker
Review Date: 22 May 2020
Hannah Barker’s book is a thorough and engaging evaluation of late medieval slave trading practices in the Mediterranean. The tile is taken from the 15th-century recollection and denunciation of an Alexandrian slave market by Felix Fabri, a German friar (p. 209).
Expertise and Architecture in the Modern Islamic World / ed. Peter Christensen
Review Date: 14 February 2019
The architect, like other professions in the modern world distinguished by specialist training (doctors, engineers, etc.), cannot be conceived easily without some notion of ‘expertise’. The architect’s authority derives from their mastery of certain skills, their fluency in technical vocabularies, and importantly the accumulation of experience – ‘expert’ from the Latin expertus, the past participle of experiri, ‘to try’.
Curia and Crusade: Pope Honorius III and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1216-1227 / Thomas W. Smith
Review Date: 28 June 2018
History has not been kind to the reputation of Pope Honorius III (1216–27).
Richard the Lionheart Exhibition / Historisches Museum der Pfalz Speyer
Review Date: 12 April 2018
The exhibition honouring the legacy of Richard the Lionheart (d. 1199) - king of England, knight and crusading leader - at the Historisches Museum der Pfalz Speyer, Germany, offers a royal tribute to the legacy of this famous medieval ruler. Pageantry, stateliness and effective design create a compelling narrative, supported by displays of the most important treasures of Richard’s reign.
Reconfiguring the Fifteenth-Century Crusade / ed. Norman Housley
Review Date: 12 April 2018
For generations of historians, the fall of the Christian-held city of Acre to the Mamluk forces of al-Ashraf Khalil in 1291 brought about the end of the crusading era.
Godfrey of Bouillon: Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Ruler of Latin Jerusalem, c.1060-1100 / Simon John
Review Date: 05 April 2018
The second publication to appear in Routledge’s Rulers of the Latin East series, Simon John’s new book charts the career of Godfrey of Bouillon, a person who was, as the author notes, ‘by any estimation … a significant historical figure’ (p. 1).
The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East / Michael Provence
Review Date: 05 April 2018
It was more than 30 years ago when Albert Hourani pointed to the common Ottoman lineages of the Arab political elite active in the inter-war Middle East. ‘They had been at school together in Istanbul’, he noted.
The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources / eds. Elizabeth Lapina, Nicholas Morton
Review Date: 16 November 2017
The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources makes an important and timely intervention in the field of crusader studies. As the title suggests, the volume aims not only to advance our understanding of crusade ideology, by analysing its biblical foundations and relationship with contemporary exegetical interpretations, but also to contribute to wider scholarship on the assimilation of scriptural imagery in medieval texts.
Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca / Eileen Kane
Review Date: 06 July 2017
Russia’s tsars ruled over more Muslims than any other empire in the world. And as the recent wave of ‘new imperial’ history compels us, this fact can only be explained by focusing on imperial flexibility and accommodation as much as coercion or violence.