The religious wars of the Crusades are renowned for their military engagements. But the period was witness to brutality beyond the battlefield. More so than any other medieval war zone, the Holy Land was rife with unprecedented levels of criminality and violence.

In the first history of its kind, Steve Tibble explores the criminal underbelly of the Crusades. From gangsters and bandits to muggers and pirates, Tibble presents extraordinary evidence of an illicit underworld. He shows how the real problem in the region stemmed not from religion but from young men. Dislocated, disinhibited and present in disturbingly large numbers, they were the propellant that stoked two centuries of unceasing warfare and shocking levels of criminality.

Steve Tibble is a graduate of Cambridge and London Universities, and is a research associate at Royal Holloway College, University of London and one of the foremost academics currently working in the field of the Crusades. This talk is based on his latest book of the same name, Crusader Criminals.