Peter Jackson (historian)

Peter Jackson FBA is a British scholar and historian, specializing in the Crusades, particularly the contacts between the Europeans and the Mongols as well as medieval Muslim India.

[1] His main research interests are on the relations between the Mongols and the Latin West between 1220 and 1410,[2] and he has written extensively on the topic, exploring the concepts of medieval Europe, the Crusades, medieval Russia and the Mongols, especially the clash of cultures, and the interconnectedness of legends such as that of Prester John.

[3] His 1999 book The Delhi Sultanate was described by a reviewer as amongst the most distinguished works on the medieval Islamic world in our time [4] and was scheduled for translation into Arabic.

In this book, the geographical extent of his scholarship, his linguistic skills, and his extensive knowledge of medieval Islamic geography enabled him to compress into a single volume a nuanced assessment which was rooted in close textual analysis and a mastery of the linguistic problems presented by his sources, reminiscent of the research of Simon Digby.

[4] His latest book on the Mongols and the Islamic World has been described as a work of great erudition which demonstrates Peter Jackson's life-long understanding of both the Muslim and the European sources for the history of the Mongols.