Table of Contents

Preface
List of Abbreviations and Illustrations
Contributors

Introduction 1
1. Arms of the Umayyad Era: Military Technology in a Time of Change -- David Nicolle 9
2. Some Administrative, Military and Socio-Political Aspects of Early Muslim Egypt -- Khalil 'Athamina 101
3. Regime, Army and Society in Medieval Egypt, 9th-12th Centuries -- Yaacov Lev 115
4. Personal Adversities of Jews during the Period of the Fatimid Wars in Eleventh Century Palestine -- Elinoar Bareket 153
5. Technology and Success of the First Crusade -- John France 163
6. Zwischen Joseph-Legende und Mahdi-Erwartung: Erfolge und Ziele Sultan Saladins im Spiegel zeitgenossicher Dichtung und Weissagung -- Hannes Mohring 177
7. Kurdes et Turcs dans l'armee ayyoubide de Syrie du Nord -- Anne-Marie Edde 225
8. The Impact of the Crusades on Rural Society and Religious Endowments: The Case of Medieval Syria (Bilad al-Sham) -- Yehoshua Frenkel 237
9. Mongol Society and Military in the Middle East: Antecedents and Adaptations -- John Masson Smith, Jr. 249
10. The Mamluk Officer Class During the Reign of Sultan Baybars -- Reuven Amitai-Preiss 267
11. Les dernieres Batailles du grand emir Yasbak min Mahdi -- Bernadette Martel-Thoumian 301
12. Gunpowder Weapons at the Siege of Constantinople, 1453 -- Kelly DeVries 343
13. Ottoman Military Technology: the Metallurgy of Turkish Armour -- Alan Williams 363
14. A Note on Hudna: Peace Making in Islam -- Gideon Weigert 399

Index 407

About the Author

Yaacov Lev, Ph.D., University of Manchester, is Lecturer in Islamic medieval history at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Recent publications include Persecutions and Conversion to Islam in Eleventh-Century Egypt (1988), and The Suppression of Crime, the Supervision of Markets, and Urban Society in the Egyptian Capital during the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (1988).

Reviews

'...worth obtaining for both its historical and historiographic insights...'
W.W. Clifford, Mamlūk Studies Review, 2002.