Preaching Holy War : Crusade and Jihad 1095-1105

At the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II (d. 1099) launched the endeavor that became known as the First Crusade. About ten years after Urban first preached the crusade, a jurisprudent from Damascus named 'Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106) dictated a call to the jihad (holy war) against the European invaders. The themes and oratory techniques used in al-Sulami's preaching show remarkable similarities to those employed by Urban, despite the fact that each preacher came from a separate preaching tradition. In this groundbreaking book Niall Christie and Deborah Gerish explore the similarities between the messages of Urban and al-Sulami, examining how far medieval understandings of holy war might have spanned these radically different cultures. To date, only a very small part of al-Sulami's dictation, Kitab al-Jihad (the Book of the Holy War), has been edited and translated. This book includes a full text, translation and study of the work, making the entire treatise available to modern readers for the first time.