Customer Reviews

Armies of the Crusades (Men at Arms Series, 75)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book covers a broad topic, and is therefore not extremely thorough. It still gives a good bit of useful text for its small size. Generally speaking the plates are good, but they have nothing on Angus McBride. The book covers the following topics, usually devoting one or several pages to each:
The Armies of Outremer (Christian territory centered on Jerusalem)
The Military Orders (like the Templars and Hospitallers, and some lesser known groups)
The Iberian Armies (El Cid and the Reconquista covers this topic in much greater detail)
Byzantine Armies (extremely brief)
Abbasid Armies (Armies of the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad)
Moorish Armies (the Armies of Islamic Spain)
Seljuk Armies (Turkish warriors during the Crusades)
Fatimid Armies (Egyptian Muslim forces)
Ayyubid Armies (those of Salah al-Din and the Battle of Hattin)
Mamluk Armies (Turkish slave mercenaries at the end of the Crusading period)
Plate Commentary

Like most of the books in this series, the information in them is very basic and does not go into very deep detail. Good as an introduction though. Also has excellent color pictures that show you how the knights dressed. A quick and easy read.

Armies of the Crusades is an excellent addition to the Men at Arms series and a must for anyone interested in the Crusades.

this is a great book it shows all of the gear that the crusaders used. 5/5. I recieved the book 2 days early it felt like a surprise.

Like a lot of Osprey fans I primarily use their books as research material for miniature war gaming. Osprey books are wonderfully concise things. There are a lot of different factions though in the Crusades and I felt like there wasn't enough room to cover all the different armies it attempted to cover.

A great resource for world or European history. Good background in the text, but very good to excellent illustrations. A very good teaching tool.