History in the Making: The Last Crusaders

by Caroline Finkel

The Last Crusaders
by Barnaby Rogerson
LittleBrown Books

As Barnaby Rogerson writes in his gripping new book, crusading went out of fashion following the Latin seizure of Constantinople in 1204. Soon thereafter the tables were turned, and Muslim powers began to inflict defeats on the flower of Christendom – until, that is, the Portuguese ventured across the Straits of Gibraltar to sack Ceuta in 1415, sparking a “world war” that would end, again in Morocco, in 1578, with the defeat of the Portuguese King Sebastian by Sultan Abdulmalik. In the intervening years the Habsburgs (of both the Spanish and Austrian houses) fought the Ottomans and a host of lesser Muslim states, even as the Portuguese sailed the oceans to establish the first global trading empire. Rogerson tells a rollicking tale, bringing to life the superheroes of the past while conjuring up the mainly Mediterranean shores where they vied for power and profit in a long coda to the crusades of medieval times. His text is enhanced by a plethora of maps, timelines, biographies and family trees to guide the reader through the complex history and geography of an era that has left an indelible mark on the modern world.

Other Highlights from Cornucopia 42

Portrait of the Artists

Unlocking the door to the private world of Feyhaman and Güzin Duran, by Maureen Freely
The Flutterby Ball

The Kaçkar Mountains are heaven for butterflies, as the butterfly book author and photographer Ahmet Baytaş, economist by trade, ecologist by nature, discovered when he returned to Yaylalar, the village of his birth

Mother of the Uighurs

The Turkic Uighurs of Western China have long chafed under Communist Chinese rule. Christian Tyler meets their formidable figurehead, Rebiya Kadeer, who spent five years in prison for protesting against her people’s treatment and now carries on her fight for their freedom from Washington

Gorgeous Georgian

Robert Ousterhout is agog at the remarkable Georgian churches of the Tao-Klarjeti, the two medieval Georgian principalities between Kars and the Kaçkars

Water Over the Bridge

For the English-speaking community of Istanbul the suggestion of aqueduct-hunting in Thrace strikes fear into the hearts of all but the foolhardy. Relentlessly cheerful, Prof James Crow of Edinburgh University would laugh off each misadventure and forge onward.
Heat and Dust

Leo Gough grew up in the hothouse atmosphere of Cold War Ankara, where his father was director of the British Institute of Archaeology. He recalls tales of derring-do from the larger-than-life visitors and scholars who passed through the institute’s doors

Four Walks in the Kaçkars

Kate Clow, pioneering waymarker and author of two walking guides to the Taurus Mountains, has now created a guide to trekking in the Kaçkars. Here she describes four breathtaking one-day walks.
A Day on Black Rock Pasture

By whatever name it is known – whether Karataş Yayla (Black Rock Pasture) or ÇaGrankaya (Singing Rock) – this spur of the Kaçkars is full of drama. Andrew Byfield battled rain and fog to reach its riches

First Impressions

The work of Feyhaman Duran and his contemporaries, once dismissed as unfashionably figurative, is now attracting renewed interest. A recent exhibition at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum in Istanbul celebrated their work. Berrin Torolsan selects some of her favourites

Wrestling with Life in the Mountains

High in the apparently empty Kaçkars, the way of life is as old as the hills. Michael Hornsby joins in the fun at a village festival in remote summer pastures. Photographs by Giulio Rubino