Note: Published as a serial in Cassell's Magazine, December 1903 to November 1904, with illustrations by H. R. Millar. --VisualHaggard.org (above) "Haggard considered The Brethren, a medieval romance set during the Crusades, to be one of his best historical fictions owing to the extensive research he put into the novel." --VisualHaggard.org Not strictly speaking SF, this historical novel has much the same flavor as Haggard's better known speculative novels.

Synopsis: "... a tale ... of that pregnant and mysterious epoch, when men by thousands were glad to lay down their lives for visions and spiritual hopes, could find a picture, however faint and broken, of the long war between Cross and Crescent waged among the Syrian plains and deserts. Of Christian knights and ladies also, and their loves and sufferings in England and the East; of the fearful lord of the Assassins whom the Franks called Old Man of the Mountain, and his fortress city, Masyaf. Of the great-hearted, if at times cruel Saladin and his fierce Saracens; of the rout at Hattin itself, on whose rocky height the Holy Rood was set up as a standard and captured, to be seen no more by Christian eyes; and of the last surrender, whereby the Crusaders lost Jerusalem forever." (From the Author's Note)