God grant that they never set foot there again

I've recently finished The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by the Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf. At school we studied the crusades from a largely Western point of view; a while back I read about them considered from the perspective of the Romans; and this book fills in the obvious gap.

It's an interesting read, but the epilogue is particularly topical. At the time of the crusades the middle east was a world leader in culture and science and the west in many ways a brutal and primitive backwater. (Maalouf makes much of western unity against eastern fragmentation, but I think this a side effect of the westerners being in a hostile land.) Yet today the situation is reversed: western Europe and its colonies lead the world in every way, while the middle east has stagnated for centuries. A question ofted asked is: why should that be?

Maalouf suggests that while the Europeans adopted much from middle eastern thought, learning the language and science of their newly conquered subjects, the Muslim world learned little from the invaders. The cultural exchange was largely one-way. An unsurprising reaction to have, perhaps, but possibly also one more disastrous than the invasions themselves.

Anyway, I recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject.