The Crusades have long been one of the most intense areas of modern interest between European and Arab/Muslim civilizations. As Paul Cobb notes in his groundbreaking monograph, The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (Oxford University Press, 2014), despite the rich sources for the period to help us understand the perspective of Muslims on this event, few if any historians have used these sources. The reasons for this are manifold: few historians can read Arabic, a large percentage of these works remains unedited in manuscript libraries, and still fewer historians are competent readers of all the diverse genres of Arabic literary production that should be read to gain an adequate sense of the Zeitgeist.

The book under review, The Cutting Edge of the Poet's Sword, attempts to provide an important new vantage point in understanding the poetry of this period. Latiff states that his goal in writing the work is to allow the “European reader to appreciate the impact of the crusades from ‘the other side’; in particular from the perspective of Muslim poets” (p. 1). The author is interested in how poetry served as a stimulus for the anti-Frankish jihād, namely the idea that poetry was an “ideological and political vehicle” which accompanied the preaching during this period.

The book is divided into eight chapters. The first three are devoted to setting the historical scene and thinking through problems of method. Chapter 1, “Setting the scene”, reviews the many literary sources for this period, surveys the political and religious ideas and contexts in which poets composed, and considers the importance of madrasa education in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Chapter 2, “Poetry and poetics in medieval Arabic discourse”, reviews a central claim of the book that poetry was both inflected by and shaped ideological discourse in this period as propaganda. The third preliminary chapter introduces the reader to theories and principles of what the author terms “anti-Frankish jihād” during this period. He does so by referring to the Malikī jurist Yūsuf al-Findlawī (d. 1148) who, despite his scholarly status and old age, took part in the jihād.

The subsequent chapters address the main themes in Muslim poetry written during this period, beginning with the responses to the First Crusade (1095–1099) in chapter 4. Chapter 5, “Poeticising the reconquest and future expectations”, considers reconquest of Jerusalem in 1187. This event was a major turning point in the Crusades, and thus it is not surprising that poets’ verses remarked on this monumental event. The author shows in this chapter that the thrust of much of this poetry related to the victory of Islam over Christianity, and other apocalyptic expectations Muslims had of a final victory that would also defeat the Byzantines at Constantinople. Chapter 6 focuses on what the author terms the “literary underpinnings” of the anti-Frankish jihād. In it, he reviews the themes that poets mobilized in order to “strengthen pro-jihād” efforts. Among these themes are the Muslims’ anti-Christian polemics, the pious warrior ethos, and the influences of motifs drawn from the Quran and ḥadīth literature. The final two chapters discuss poetry's function in political mediation through examinations of the poetry of the famed chancery writer al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil (d. 1200) who used elegant expressions to chart a career from the Fatimid chancery to working on behalf of the Ayyubids, and how illustrious literati such as ʿUmāra al-Yamanī (d. 1174) and Usāma b. Munqidh (d. 1188) found poetry to be a valuable resource in their political lives. The final chapter, entitled “Shattered dreams: Jerusalem, the Umma and new enemies”, considers both the enduring memory of the great members of the Ayyūbid house, Nūr al-Dīn (d. 1174) and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (d. 1193) and the later fate of its rulers. This becomes poignant (and uncomfortable) following al-Muʿaẓẓam ʿĪsā's destruction of the walls of Jerusalem during the Fifth Crusade in 1219.

The relationship between the anti-Frankish jihād and the vast and complex literary production of sixth–seventh/eleventh–twelfth century Levant and Egypt is a complex and difficult question. Readers of this book will come away understanding that literati of this time were interested and invested in producing jihād propaganda. There seem to be many avenues open for further research. In particular, it would be of interest to see to what extent poetry differs from other rhetorical registers such as letters, decrees, or khuṭbahs as a means or mode of expressing the emotional dimensions of religious and political feelings. While the author mentions studies on the history of emotions, this dimension of his work should one day be expanded into a more focused discussion of how poetry functioned in pre-modern Islamicate contexts.

The author has reproduced the verses which he has translated in the course of the study in an appendix on pp. 227–47. The book is clearly written, however it suffers from some inaccuracies and flaws in translation, transliteration, and expression. I mention some of these in the following list, highlighting those bearing on the transcription of verses:

Given the frequent inaccuracies and errors in transcription of Arabic verses, I would advise readers to consult the original sources when reading this volume.