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Welcome to Norman Housley’s blog – The Cross and the Crescent: Crusading and the Contemporary World.

Since 9/11 we have been living in a time of religious resurgence, in particular alarm about radical Islamic terrorism. Pundits wax lyrical about a new Clash of Civilisations. Understanding this seismic shift in international affairs calls for historical perspective, and scholars of the Crusades are ideally placed to provide it. In this blog Professor Norman Housley explores the many resonances between our own world and the most dramatic period of confrontation between Cross and Crescent, which included not just the age of the crusader states in the Holy Land, but also that of the Ottoman advance in south-eastern Europe.