Shea has created a fictional scenario to explain this failure, and his firmly historical figures (such as Aquinas) are set side-by-side with wholly fictional characters and semi-legendary figures such as the Italian poet Sordello, who appears in Dante's Purgatorio and whom Shea has also taken considerable poetic license with.
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Many of the characters in the novel, such as Thomas Aquinas, Baibars, King Manfred of Sicily, Louis IX and Charles of Anjou are historical figures, woven into the fictional canvas Shea invented.
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He becomes a devout believer in Islam and takes the Arabic form of his name and the surname of a convert, Daoud ibn Abdullah.
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Some historians believe that an alliance was attempted by the Papal Court (with Louis IX's backing) with the Mongols against the Muslim world, which ultimately failed.
16th century French historian Pierre de Marca, in his Histoire de Béarn, propounds the reverse – that the word signifies "hunters of the Goths", and that the Cagots were descendants of the Saracens.
William reminds the king of his past service (as told in the chanson Li coronemenz Looïs), and he is eventually accorded the right to an expeditionary force to conquer Nîmes from the Saracens.
Having strengthened his forces, he marched towards Lucera to join the Saracen troops settled there since the time of his grandfather.
At the opening, June 28, after the singing of the Veni Creator, Spiritu, Innocent IV preached on the subject of the five wounds of the Church and compared them to his own five sorrows: (1) the poor behaviour of both clergy and laity; (2) the insolence of the Saracens who occupied the Holy Land; (3) the Great East-West Schism; (4) the cruelties of the Tatars in Hungary; and (5) the persecution of the Church by the Emperor Frederick.
John I of Gaeta won the title patrikios from the Byzantine emperor, as a reward for defeating the Saracens.
and admiral under the Byzantine emperors Michael III (r. 842–867) and Basil I the Macedonian (r. 867–886), who achieved several naval victories against the Saracen raiders.
The name of the order was given to honor the figure of the founder of the Principality of Andorra, Emperor Charlemagne of the Franks, who granted sovereignty to the people of the "Valleys of Andorra" in gratitude for helping him fight the Saracens.
The story is as follows: an escaped prisoner from Orange (Guillebert) comes to William in Nîmes and describes to him the beauties of the Saracen held city and of its queen Orable.
The Saracen's Head is the name formerly given to a group of late medieval buildings in Kings Norton, Birmingham.
On the North African coast, "the well-known titles of Bugia, and Tangier define the more certain limits of the Saracen victories."
Along the road, several skirmishes broke out between the marching crusaders and the Saracen army marching parallel under Saladin.