The Last Crusaders

Starred review from March 1, 2010
Rogerson ("The Heirs of Muhammad") focuses not on the more famous Crusades from 1095 and 1291 but on a later series of clashes between various Christian and Muslim forces in and around the Mediterranean, beginning with Portugal's capture of the city of Ceuta in 1415 and ending with the battles at Lepanto in 1571 and Alccer Quibir in 1578. The author imbues his text with an excellent sense of person and place, presenting not only the exploits of both Christians and Muslims on the battlefield but also their shifting alliances and internal struggles. He also explores how military technologies and the expansion of trade and exploration helped shape the conflicts. This thoroughly readable book provides a vibrant and well-organized account of this tumultuous, lesser-known period of history. Highly recommended for both students and general readers.KM

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2009
A big-ideas survey of the consolidation of power by four rising militant powers in the 15th and 16th centuries: Portugal, Spain, the Ottoman Empire and the corsair admirals of North Africa.

Historian Rogerson (The Heirs of Muhammad: Islam's First Century and the Origins of the Sunni-Shia Split, 2007, etc.) frames his enthusiastic narrative between two milestones: the sack of the North African Muslim coastal city of Ceuta by the Portuguese in 1415, which essentially launched the new superpower on its crusading orders; and the Battle of the Three Kings in 1578, during which the Portuguese boy king Sebastian was soundly defeated in his reckless invasion of Morocco. Between these two events, both the Christian West, led by the Hapsburg Empire, and the Muslim East, led by the Ottomans, battled each other for supremacy. The capture of Ceuta put Portugal on the world stage, after the humiliating defeats of Christendom's earlier crusades, and Prince Henry the Navigator embarked on a series of wildly successful trading missions to the south over the next half century. He brought back vast wealth in West African gold and slaves, opened trade routes that would stimulate explorers like Vasco da Gama and encouraged settlement of Brazil. The balance of powers shifted again when Mehmet II the Conqueror took Constantinople in 1453; while the union of Aragon and Castile in the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella created a powerful motivation to drive out the Moors from the Iberian peninsula by 1492. As a scholar of North African history, Rogerson does an especially thorough job of vivifying the personalities of the Muslims defending the Ottoman Empire, including the Barbary admiral Barbarossa, Suleyman the Magnificent and other sultans who expanded the empire, and the Moroccan ruler Sharif Al-Qaim.

A dense but lively account that never loses sight of its vigorous thesis.

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