“This compelling account of the Crusades era debunks the clash-of-civilizations paradigm [and] depicts an era of interfaith cooperation.” —The New Yorker

In Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors, the award-winning scholar Brian Catlos transports readers to the Mediterranean world of 1050–1200, the era when enlightened Islamic empires and primitive Christendom began to contest it. Catlos meticulously reconstructs this world from siege tactics to poetry and theology. In doing so, he stunningly overturns a fundamental myth: that it was an era defined by religious extremism.

Catlos brings to light many figures who were accepted as rulers by their ostensible foes. Samuel B. Naghrilla, a self-proclaimed Jewish messiah, became the force behind Muslim Granada. Bahram Pahlavuni, an Armenian Christian, wielded power in an Islamic caliphate. And Philip of Mahdia, a Muslim eunuch, rose to admiral in the service of Roger II, the Christian “King of Africa.”

What their lives reveal is that, then as now, politics were driven by a mix of self-interest, personality, and ideology. Catlos draws a similar lesson from his stirring chapters on the early Crusades, arguing that the notions of crusade and jihad were not the causes of war but convenient justifications.