?Al? ibn ??hir al-Sulam? (d. 500/1107), a legal scholar and preacher at the Great Mosque of Damascus, offered his account of the early Crusades in his book Kit?b al-Jih?d (“The Book on Holy War”). As he saw it, the history of the early Crusades is divided into three distinct stages. The first stage was that in which the Normans “swooped down upon the island of Sicily”; the second that in which “town after town” in Islamic Spain fell to Christian forces; and, the third that in which the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem. A feature of al-Sulam?’s account that stands out is the way in which he tries to cast crusading into a theoretical form by identifying crusading with the events of the eschaton, the End of Days, or End Times, before Final Judgment. Al-Sulam? makes the Crusades intelligible by conceptualizing them, but that is not his only, or even his primary, goal. He links his theorizing to the practical political realities of his day—the alarming growth of Christian power in Sicily, Spain, and Syria—and engages in apocalyptic speculation in order to convince his intended audience—pious and virtuous sovereigns (sal???n; sing. sul??n)—that, despite repeated defeats, Islam now is moving inexorably towards a specific telos—triumph over all of Christendom—and now is the time to take action to realize this goal. Al-Sulam? evaluates the Crusades primarily in terms of the achievement of a goal—to reverse Islam’s losses and restore the Muslim community to its former preeminence. The historical continuity al-Sulam? claims between his day and the eschaton is made that much more poignant by his commingling of the End Times with the concrete and particular events of the Crusades. He explains Islam’s reverses by their necessary place in the events of the End Times, with decline and fall being crucial for ultimate growth and revival. Al-Sulam? provides systematic order to a range of activities and makes a case that the End of Days is not that far away, if only Muslims would “seize the opportunity quickly.”