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Historical person
1135–1193
Balian of Ibelin was a crusader nobleman in the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the late twelfth century. He is best known for organising the defence and negotiated surrender of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187 after the disaster at Hattin.
In Sharon Kay Penman’s The Land Beyond the Sea, Balian of Ibelin, Raymond of Tripoli, Agnes of Courtenay and others compete over alliances, marriages and the choice of a future ruler as Saladin consolidates power around them. Tariq Ali’s The Book of Saladin places Balian of Ibelin within a narrative shaped by social change and the pressures of ordinary life, religion, belief and institutional authority, and political ambition and government.
Series
The Islam Quintet is Tariq Ali’s cycle of five historical novels examining encounters between Islamic societies and the Christian West across more than five centuries. Moving from the fall of Muslim Granada and the Crusades to Norman Sicily, the late Ottoman Empire and the modern transnational world, the…
All books in this series
Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
