The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean

Ronnie Ellenblum is an Associate Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a life member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. He is the author of the prize-winning Crusader Castles and Modern Histories (Cambridge, 2007). His first book, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1998), has become a standard work for the study of Crusader Geographies.

• Part I. The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean: 1. Presenting the events; 2. Deconstructing a 'collapse'; 3. 950–1027 - an impending disaster; Part II. Regional Domino Effects in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1027–60 AD: 4. The collapse of Iran; 5. The fall of Baghdād; 6. A crumbling empire: the Pechenegs and the decimation of Byzantium; 7. Egypt and its provinces, 1050s–1070s; Part III. Cities and Minorities: 8. Jerusalem and the decline of classical cities; 9. Water supply, declining cities and deserted villages; 10. Food crises and accelerated Islamization; 11. Reflections.

'We have long been familiar with the famines that struck Egypt in the mid-1000s, but Ellenblum is the first to show how these are part of a broad regional pattern. This comprehensive and clearly argued book advances our understanding of the complex political, social, and economic processes of the late tenth and eleventh century in SW Asia and, more broadly, our capacity to link these processes to those underway in other parts of Eurasia.' Stephen Humphreys, University of California, Santa Barbara