By Christopher Miskimon

The struggle between the Christian world and the Muslim Caliphate, eventually known as the Ottoman Empire, spanned over a millennia. Geography made this conflict inevitable. From 637, when Jerusalem was taken by Caliph Omar, to when Jerusalem fell again in 1917, the centuries were marked by constant tensions which occasionally broke out int open conflict. The period of the Crusades during the 11th to 13th Centuries marked major fighting. When the Ottomans took Constantinople, it marked the beginning of centuries of Ottoman expansion and threat to Eastern Europe. Once that threat was finally abated, the Ottomans went into a gradual decline as European Christian states grew in power. World War I finally put paid to the Ottoman Empire, leaving the Middle East open to the Christians they had kept at bay for so long.

This new book looks at the Christian-Muslim struggle through a focus on the major battles of the period. The author does an effective job weaving together conflicts widely separated by time and explaining their relationship to each other in the sweep of history. He is a retired British General with extensive experience in the Middle East and he effectively brings this depth of understanding to his subject.

The House of War: The Struggle Between Christendom and the Caliphate (Simon Mayall, Osprey Publishing, Oxford UK, 2024, 352pp., maps, photographs, bibliography, index, $35, HC)