re: What are you reading?

Yes I read the Asbridge book also. Love this time period.

For the Muslims, from this book, the conflict with Christianity was unapologetically a religious holy war. And it did not start with Urban’s sermon in Clermont as it does for westerners. That sermon, perhaps understandably, is not moment at all for Muslims. They viewed the holy war as beginning before the First Crusade, in Sicily and Spain.