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 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.
