John J. Robinsin - Dungeon, Fire and Sword; The Knights Templar in the Crusades (1994).pdf

Over the past thousand years, the bloodiest game of the king-of-the-hill has been for supremacy on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the site of the ancient Temple of Solomon. This book recounts the stirring saga of the Knights Templar, the Christian warrior-monks who occupied the sacred Mount in the aftermath of the butchery of the First Crusade. Recruited to a life of poverty, chastity and obedience intended to lead only to martyrdom on the battlefield, they were totally dedicated to the pious paradox that the wholesale slaughter of non-believers would earn the eternal gratitude of the Prince of Peace. The Templars amassed great wealth, which they used to finance their two hundred years of war against Muslims on the desert, in the mountains, and up the broad sweep of the Nile valley. The Templars' reward for those two centuries of military martyrdom was to be arrested by pope and king, tortured by the Inquisition, and finally decreed out of existence. But their legend and legacy just would not die. In telling the incredible story of the Knights Templar, the author's clear explanation of the cultural and religious differences among the Templars' enemies and friends in the Middle East gives fresh understanding of the people who populate this restless region. Here are the Sunnies and the Shiites, the Kurds and Armenians, the Arabs and Turks, who figure so prominently in today's headlines. The similarity of their antagonisms today and those of eight hundred years ago are often so striking as to be eerie. Dungeon, Fire & Sword is a brilliant work of narrative history that can be read as an adventure story...

PART ONE: The First Crusade and the Birth of the Temple
1. Holy War (1052 to 1099)
2. The Kingdom of Jerusalem (1100 to 1118)
3. The Knights of the Temple (1118 to 1139)
4. Allahu Akbar!
PART TWO: At War in the Holy Land
5. St. Bernard's Crusade (1126 to 1148)
6. The Breach at Ascalon (1149 to 1162)
7. The Coming of Saladin (1163 to 1174)
8. The Horns of Hattin (1174 to 1187)
9. The Fall of Jerusalem (1187)
10. Frederick Barbarossa (1187 to 1190)
11. The Lion Heart (1190 to 1191)
12. Impasse (1191 to 1192)
13. The Sons of Saladin (1193 to 1199)
14. A Crusade Against Christians (1200 to 1204)
15. The Albigensian Crusade (1205 to 1214)
16. A Cardinal Sin (1215 to 1229)
17. The Emperor Frederick (1221 to 1229)
18. The Disorder of the Temple (1229 to 1239)
19. Tibald of Champagne (1239 to 1240)
20. Triumph and Tragedy (1241 to 1247)
21. The Man Who Would Be Saint (1244 to1250)
22. King-of-the-Hill (1250 to 1261)
23. The Khan of Khans (1167 to 1260)
24. The Revenge of Baibars (1260 to 1274)
25. The Pope of Good Intentions (1271 to 1274)
26. A Kingdom Coming Apart (1275 to 1289)
27. The Fall of Acre (1289 to 1291)
28. "Jesus Wept" (1292 to 1305)
PART THREE: Torture and Trial
29. Friday the Thirteenth (1306 to 1307)
30. A Faith to Die For (1307 to 1311)
31. The Destruction of the Temple (1311 to1314)
32. Legacy Lists of Templar Grand Masters, Popes, Kings of Jerusalem, France, England, Germany, and Holy Roman Emperors