What you hold in your hands is the much-delayed result of a research project I first began in 2010. However, after delivering a paper on my initial findings at a conference held at the University of Leeds in 2011 – where I had the great pleasure of meeting formidable scholars of both southern Italian history (Graham Loud, Paul Oldfield and Alex Metcalfe) and of the Crusades (Alan Murray and Conor Kostick) – progress effectively stalled. Having been waylaid both by life and by an ongoing, laborious side project (knowledge of classical texts in the medieval period), an email from Graham Loud reignited this now dormant endeavour. He informed me that Rupert Harding from Pen & Sword Books was looking for someone to write an account of Norman military exploits in the Mediterranean. I thanked Graham for passing on the query, deciding immediately to complete what I had started a few years earlier. Although I hope he will not regret it after reading this book, Graham must be thanked not only for passing on Rupert’s query, but also for the help and encouragement he has given me to date. Lastly, the delay ended up being beneficial: various ideas have had time to coalesce and be refined, and the publication of books by Charles Stanton (2011) and Georgios Theotokis (2014) have since enhanced our understanding of a subject that had received little attention by academic historians when I first began researching it.
The end result is intended to be accessible to a broader audience than I normally write for – that is to say, hopefully the book will be of interest to scholars and students, as well as general readers with an abiding interest not only in the medieval period, but in the history of warfare and the societies that have waged it. It was certainly challenging to write with a wider audience in mind, and I am grateful to Rupert Harding for helping me to make the transition (it is hoped with some success on my part). However, as an academic historian, certain approaches are still present. Detailed notes are provided towards the end of the work, albeit with comments kept to a minimum, which include the quoted excerpts from the original languages I am conversant with: Greek, Latin, and Old French (for other languages such as Arabic, I have relied on translations in French, Italian and English). The notes have not only been retained for scholars and students who would like to consult the various primary and secondary sources on which the various arguments are based, but also to encourage other interested readers to delve further into sections that take their interest.
As both a writer and an avid reader of history, I have always appreciated attention to detail, and accordingly the same approach has been taken in this book. While italicized technical terms have been reduced to a minimum, some have been retained where English equivalents do not exist or are misleading. However, since military terminology is of great importance in regard to certain interpretations discussed throughout the narrative (e.g. spear types and attendant tactics), I have chosen to discuss them at length in the Appendix. Also, while some authors choose to summarize the outcomes of campaigns and battles in a few sentences, where the sources provide the requisite detail, I have chosen to devote paragraphs or even pages to them. Hopefully this method will not be too taxing for those who appreciate a lighter narrative, but the intention from the outset has been to illuminate, where possible, the various stages of battles and sieges, in addition to the tactics and equipment used in them.
The rendering of foreign names can be a difficult task, especially when there are often two or three variants in use, especially for Arabic and Turkic names. I have generally used English equivalents where they exist (e.g. ‘Basil’, instead of ‘Vasileios’ or ‘Vasili’), but not always (‘Raoul’ instead of ‘Ralph’). With Arabic names, the accenting system used by experts such as Alex Metcalfe has generally been followed. While the classical transliteration method for Greek has been employed, the letter β is rendered as ‘v’ rather than ‘b’ (it has been pronounced by Greek-speakers as vee-ta for over 1,500 years). The other exception is the transliteration of epsilon (ε) with a rough breathing: often rendered as ‘he’, since it has been silent for over a millennium, the letter has been rendered as ‘e’ (e.g. ‘elepoleis’ [‘city-taker’], not ‘helepoleis’; ‘Ellas’ [Greece], not ‘Hellas’). Lastly, since Turkic names are rendered in a variety of ways, I decided to impose a semblance of uniformity via use of the modern Turkish alphabet. Some letters may look unfamiliar at first, but the pronunciation of them is not difficult to learn: e.g. ç = ch in chapter, ş = sh in shape; hence Selçuk is pronounced as Selchook, and Tutuş as Tootoosh.
I am greatly indebted to the prodigious linguistic ability of Lynda Garland, who kindly offered to double-check my numerous translations from the Greek and Latin sources. Naturally, any errors that remain are the result of my linguistic failings, not hers. Others who need to be named are my father and father-in-law, Ian Brown and Neville Finlay, who took photos of specific locations in order to supplement those missing from my personal collection (after spraining an ankle when last in Italy, I lost a few valuable days earmarked for inspection of fortresses and battle sites). Last, but certainly not least, my partner in life, Kristen, is to be thanked profusely for not only producing the maps, but also for putting up with a bleary-eyed obsessive towards the closing stages of the writing of this book.
Paul Brown
February 2016