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The Knights Templar Of The Middle East * HRH Prince Michael of Albany & Walid Amine Salhab (2006)

Not long after I read Angel Millar’s book in which he claims it is the first about Freemasonry and the Middle East, I read about this title about: “The Hidden History of the Islamic Origins of Freemasonry”. The author’s name sounds a bit wild and so does the backcover so I did not have very high expectations, but I still wanted to read it. Just out of curiosity.

In a nutshell the authors (or rather, author, since it is written in the I-form) claim that the real origin of the Knights Templar is Muslim, that the last retreat of the Templars was Scotland and that around the time the Templar order faded, Freemasonry rose in… Scotland. From there it spread to France, returned to Brittany and then conquered the world.

The book opens with chapters about early Christianity, Jerusalem, early Islam, Muslim rule in Western countries and then several orders, including that of the Knights Templar. The tone is somewhat annoyingly ‘Islam is great and Catholicism is not’. Too much praise on one side and too much criticism on the other made a bit of a strange balance.
After a few chapters about the Templars the authors describe the downfall and after this the rise of Freemasonry.

The authors refer a lot to authors such as Laurence Gardner, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and the like which makes it easy to add this book in the genre of popular science with its wild theories. Indeed, I reviewed a few of such books back in the days and this kind of out-of-the-box literature may be usefull to find new (possible) leads, but it is more usefull for amusement or a more ‘free’ view on history in order to get another way of looking at things than as reference book. I can say the same about the current title.

The book is only about 200 pages but chapters are quite in depth about different subjects, sometimes running too far off the red thread. The overall story is not really new, but the authors seem to think to have new information to back up the claims. All in all the details seem to be more on parts of the story and not really evidence substantiating the thesis of this book.

Like the books of the mentioned authors, “The Knights Templars Of The Middle East” makes an amusing read with a few things to think over, but does not rise above the level of amusement.

2006 Weiser Books, isbn 157863346X

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