Changes

|title=The First Crusade: The Call from the East

|sort=First Crusade: Call from the East, The

|publisher=Vintage

|date=March 2013

|website=http://www.peterfrankopan.com/

|summary=A history of the need and call for a First Crusade, rather than of the Crusade itself. In The Call From the East, Peter Frankopan seeks to reverse centuries of western dominance of the Crusader narrative. Occasionally smitten by and uncritical of his hero, the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I, Frankopan puts the Crusade into the context of a faltering Christian Empire and recaptures some of the Byzantine political motivation for a European campaign to Jerusalem.

}}

At the now famous Council of Clermont in November 1095, Pope Urban II responded to calls of distress from the eastern Byzantine Empire by issuing the dramatic call to arms that sparked the First Crusade. But there are at least two sides to every story, especially in history. Western histories of the Crusades have concentrated on that Council and the journeys of Crusaders across Europe: Peter Frankopan's ''The Call from the East'' instead draws attention to Emperor Alexios I Komnenus and the plight of his Byzantine Empire.

Then again, you could also follow Frankopan's example and challenge your assumptions about western narratives, maybe starting with [[Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary]].

{{commenthead}}