The confrontation between Islam and Christendom that began almost from the death of the Prophet Mohammed in ad 632 and endured to the dissolution of the 1300-year-old Muslim caliphate in 1924 has shaped the modern world.
From the taking of Jerusalem in ad 638 by Caliph Umar, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, Christian Popes, Emperors and Kings, and Muslim Caliphs and Sultans were locked in a 1300-year battle for political, military, ideological, economic and religious supremacy. This struggle was fought out in France and in the Iberian Peninsula, across North Africa, in the Levant, the Holy Land and Mesopotamia, in the Balkans and Central Europe, throughout the Mediterranean Sea and, in time, in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. Echoes of it even reverberated in the discovery and conquest of the Americas.
At the heart of this centuries-long confrontation were some of the most significant clashes of arms in human history, upon whose outcome depended the very existence of empires, kingdoms, city states, and peoples, and whose consequences continue to shape attitudes, politics and policies to the present day: The taking and re-taking of Jerusalem, and the struggle for control of a city holy to the three great monotheistic religions of the world; The fall of Constantinople, the demise of the 1000-year Byzantine Empire, and the catalyst for Christendom to conclude the reconquest of Spain, as well as to strike out East and West in order to outflank the Ottomans; The sieges of Rhodes and Malta, and the struggle for domination of the Mediterranean Sea, the heart of the Classical World; The battle of Mohacs, and the fall of the great Christian bastion of Hungary, at a time when Christendom was already riven by the struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism; The last assault on Vienna, and the ‘high-water mark’ of Ottoman advance into Europe; Megiddo (Armageddon), the re-taking of Jerusalem, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the dissolution of the Sultanate and the Caliphate, and the formation of modern Europe, and the modern Middle East.
The House of War will offer a wide, sweeping historical narrative, encompassing the broad historical and religious context of this period, while focussing on some of the key, pivotal sieges and battles, and on the protagonists, political and military, who determined their conclusions and their consequences.
