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A thousand and one years ago ... The boot was on the other foot. The armies of the First Crusade stormed Jerusalem in the apotheosis of a campaign marked by IS style violence. An analogy Maalouf couldn't foresee in the '80's but he doesn't report cannibalism by choice out of both Arab & Western sources on a lark. There's shaming to do.

On the other hand, those European nobles who put their political acumen to a modus vivendi within a highly fragmented Middle East get their due. The chess of chieftains between the declining Abbasid Caliphate, the Turkic tribes, the Persian powers and the Kurdish warlords of Egypt is as fascinating as the War of the Roses (irl Game of Thrones ), though the eternal cycle of settling the succession by a friendly family game of stab-and-poison can become tedious. Saladin is still a hero, but not a lonely one. He follows in the footsteps of other charismatic leaders who understood how to harness the power of jihad to reverse the establishment of the Latin Kingdoms and aid their own ascent. These are overlapping priorities, don't try to sort them.

So why don't I give this 4 or 5 stars ? Because a lot of people read this book to complement the classic Western POV's on the Crusades. It's often difficult to identify where Runciman's chronicle stands while something happens on the other side.