Previously published: New York : Doubleday, 2001

Includes bibliographical references (pages 389-395) and index

Foreword -- Insult -- Sultan is born -- Kingdom of heaven -- Flint and the spark -- Prince Richard -- Jihad -- Their lions were hedgehogs -- Still water -- Lovers and kings -- Bride and the camel -- Most gracious, most merciful -- House of David -- Heathens in thine inheritance -- Appointment at Vezelay -- Red sails -- Dispatches from the promised land -- Visitations in Sicily -- Fruit of Aphrodite -- Tournament -- Holy test -- Waste not the hire -- Home fires smoldering -- Plain of Sharon -- Fourteenth day of Sha' ban the honored -- Angst and delirium amid the pomegranate trees -- Scared and demonic flame -- Dagger on the pillow -- Parable of the weeds -- Samson's country -- Dry tree of Hebron -- Ram backs for butting -- Here is my hand -- Slender string -- Last conquest -- Not by their leaves or their blossoms, but by their fruit -- Epilogue -- Acknowledgments -- Selected bibliography -- Index

This volume recreates the collision of the Christian holy wars and the Muslim jihad at the end of the twelfth century. A dual biography of the legendary Richard the Lionheart and the Sultan Saladin, iconic hero of the Islamic world, the author recounts the life of each man and reveals the passions of the times that brought them face-to-face in the final battle of the Third Crusade. Richard the Lionheart, commonly depicted as the romantic personification of chivalry, here emerges in his full complexity and contradictions as the author examines the dark side of Richard's role as the leader of the blood-soaked Crusades, and breaks new ground by openly discussing Richard's homosexuality. This work's portrait of Saladin brings to life the wise, highly cultured leader who realized an enduring Arab dream by united Egypt and Syria and whose conquest of Jerusalem not only sparked the Third Crusade but ignited the first jihad and turned Saladin into a hero of epic proportions. The author captures the fascinating clash of the two armies as they battled their way to the outskirts of Jerusalem. There, Saladin's brilliant maneuvers and Richard's sudden failure of nerve turned the tide

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