THIS book is dedicated to the teachers who nurtured my love of history and who taught me how to engage with the human past in an insightful and judicious way.
I would like to thank Alon Klebanoff, who supervised my high-school project on the longbow in the Hundred Years War, for setting me on my academic course. His example and guidance were decisive influences in my choice of an academic career. Though more than a decade has passed and though I have been privileged to spend much time in several of the leading universities of the world, I have yet to meet someone with such a detailed knowledge of military history and with such love and enthusiasm for the battles and soldiers of bygone days.
I would like to thank Benjamin Z. Kedar, who was my mentor at the Hebrew University and supervised my BA and MA studies, for laying the firm foundations of my academic abilities and even of my academic personality. I would like to thank him for the long hours he spent both in class and outside it imparting to me the crafts of an historian, carefully correcting my steps in my first research projects. Yet I would like to thank him even more for giving me along with those firm foundations also free rein and active encouragement to go beyond the well-trodden paths of historical research, and wander through the wilder fringes of that kingdom.
I would like to thank Martin van Creveld, who together with B. Z. Kedar supervised several of my initial scholarly projects, for providing me both with broad historical visions and with the occasional brutal push in the right direction. I am particularly indebted to him for warning me against the pitfalls of narrow-mindedness and of self-obsession, which threaten to enclose scholars in a sterile academic bubble. The present book resulted from several discussions I had with him, and he has also read and commented on the initial drafts of the book’s first chapters. I cannot pretend, though, that the book even approaches the standards he has set, for compared to his own projects, it is little more than an entertaining hobby-horse.
And I would like to thank Steven J. Gunn, who supervised my doctoral studies, for helping me to bring together the skills and knowledge I accumulated, and for showing me how to bridge the enormous gap separating historical theory from the practicalities of writing. Without his dedicated and selfless assistance, I could not have transformed the fleeting and ephemeral ideas in my mind into a corporeal doctoral dissertation. The hours we spent together in performing this alchemical exercise have been an invaluable lesson, and made the composition of the present book far smoother.
The book could not have been written without the kind and generous guidance of these teachers. I hope they will enjoy it, and would find something to be proud of in it.
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I am also grateful to my schooldays history teachers, and in particular Danny Fesler and Dafna Haran, for fostering my initial love of history, and for some of my best hours at school. Thanks are also due to Sarai Aharoni, my good friend of many years, for her ongoing intellectual stimulus, and to Jonathan Lewy, for his references and insightful comments concerning the Nizari sect.
I was fortunate in having two excellent research assistants, Ilya Berkovich and Eyal Katz. I am certain that if Ilya sets his heart on it, he would soon make a name for himself as an outstanding scholar. As for Eyal, it seems he is going to help people in a far more direct manner as an occupational therapist. I hope he will never have to help the victims of special operations.
I am greatly indebted to the Yad Hanadiv Fellowship Trust for their generous support of this research project, and in particular to Natania Isaak, who made it a pleasure as well as a privilege to enjoy the Trust’s generosity.
Finally, I would like to thank my family for its emotional and material support, and in particular to Itzik, my spouse and life-companion, who also did an excellent job preparing the book’s maps.