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Historical person
1138–1193
Saladin was a Kurdish military leader who became sultan of Egypt and Syria and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. He ended Fatimid rule in Egypt, united much of the Muslim Near East and defeated the crusader army at Hattin in 1187, recovering Jerusalem. During the Third Crusade he fought Richard I and negotiated a settlement that left Jerusalem under Muslim rule while permitting Christian pilgrimage. He died in Damascus in 1193.
Tariq Ali’s The Book of Saladin gives the sultan a fictional memoir, while Sharon Kay Penman’s The Land Beyond the Sea portrays his campaigns from multiple perspectives. He appears in countless crusade novels, often as the chivalrous counterpart to Richard. Medieval admiration had some basis, but modern fiction can romanticise him and understate ruthless warfare, dynastic calculation and political division.
In non-fiction, Saladin is discussed in Dan Jones’s Crusaders and Dan Jones’s The Templars. In Dan Jones’s Crusaders, Kings, pilgrims, merchants, military orders and local communities appear alongside figures such as Saladin and Richard I. The United States edition was published as Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands.
Historical context
Series
The Roger of Huntley series follows a fugitive monk and crusader through the violence of the Third Crusade and the later crisis of King John’s reign. The early books place Roger among soldiers, pilgrims and rulers in the eastern Mediterranean, while the later novels return him to England…
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The Brotherhood follows the fictional Templar Thomas Cronin through the wars of the Crusader states and the political consequences of the Fourth Crusade. The sequence begins under Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, when Saladin's growing power threatens the remaining Christian territories. Montgisard, Jacob's Ford, Hattin, the siege of Acre…
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The Crusades Trilogy follows Arn Magnusson, a fictional nobleman from twelfth-century Götaland, from a monastic childhood through service as a Knight Templar and return to a divided Scandinavian homeland. The Road to Jerusalem establishes the rivalry between the Erik and Sverker factions and Arn’s forbidden relationship with Cecilia…
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Elizabeth Chadwick’s William Marshal cycle follows the Marshal family and the households bound to it from the civil war of the Anarchy to the crisis of King John’s reign. A Place Beyond Courage centres on William’s father, John Marshal, while The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion trace…
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The Lionheart series recounts the rise, crusade and embattled kingship of Richard I through the eyes of Ferdia, an Irish captive who becomes Richard's loyal follower. Beginning during the troubled final years of Henry II, the trilogy follows Richard's accession, the Third Crusade, his rivalry with Saladin and…
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The Outlaw Chronicles reimagine Robin Hood as Robert Odo, Earl of Locksley, a charismatic and violent criminal lord remembered by his lieutenant Alan Dale. The original novels carry Alan from his entry into the Sherwood band through the Third Crusade, Richard I’s wars, the loss of Normandy, Magna…
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The Islam Quintet is Tariq Ali’s cycle of five historical novels examining encounters between Islamic societies and the Christian West across more than five centuries. Moving from the fall of Muslim Granada and the Crusades to Norman Sicily, the late Ottoman Empire and the modern transnational world, the…
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The five Angevin novels trace the Plantagenet dynasty from the succession crisis after Henry I through Henry II and Eleanor’s turbulent marriage, their sons’ rebellions, Richard I’s crusade, captivity and final campaigns. The sequence combines royal family drama with the Anarchy, Angevin state-building, church–crown conflict and the Third…
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The Plantagenet Saga spans the dynasty from Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine to Richard III. Across fourteen novels, family rebellion, disputed succession, royal marriage and war connect the Angevin Empire, the conquest of Wales, conflict with Scotland, the Hundred Years’ War and the Wars of the Roses.
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The Templar trilogy follows members of the St. Clair family and a secret brotherhood whose history is bound to the rise and destruction of the Knights Templar. Beginning in the aftermath of the First Crusade, the sequence moves through the disasters of Hattin and the Third Crusade before…
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The Crusader series follows the fictional Lancastrian knight Frederick Banastre and his descendants through the conflicts of the Angevin and early Plantagenet monarchy. Frederick enters the household of the future Richard I, campaigns in France and the Holy Land, and becomes involved in the political struggles caused by…
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Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
