In general – and increasingly over the past four decades – scholarship has tended to view the Crusades as above all an important element of medieval European history. The majority of authors lay strong emphasis on the organisational characteristics shared by expeditions to the Near East or against Muslim Spain with those to the Baltic or against Christian enemies within Europe; ultimately these various operations are seen as having their roots in Western phenomena like the eleventh-century papal reform movement, developments in penitential practice or the sanctification of violence. Histories of the Crusades from a Muslim perspective are rare. The few surveys in English focus on the Near East down to the elimination of the “Crusader States” in 1291.In The Race for