Recent research shows that imagining Jerusalem played a crucial part in many late medieval devotional practices – virtual pilgrimages to Jerusalem, reconstructions of its topography and sacred places in European cities, visualizations of one’s own city as Jerusalem.
By telling intimate stories of individual journeys, Jones illuminates these centuries of war not only from the perspective of popes and kings, but from Arab-Sicilian poets, Byzantine princesses, Sunni scholars, Shi'ite viziers, Mamluk slave soldiers, Mongol chieftains, and barefoot friars.