Chronicling the Crusades

The Crusade of Varna and The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir by Imber and Richards respectively are the latest two publications in the Crusade Texts in Translation Series edited by a number of eminent crusade scholars. The series aims to publish English translations of key source documents fundamental to the study of the crusades, many of which have previously only been available in their original language. Other translations in the series include The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin or al-Nawadir al-Sultaniyya wa'l-Mahasin al-Yusu-fi-yya by Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad by D.S. Richards, Robert the Monk's History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana by Carol Sweetenham, and The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon. A Translation of the Medieval Catalan Llibre dels Fets by Damian Smith and Helena Buffery. As is evident from the above list, the texts selected for translation encompass a wide variety of crusades, genres, languages, and viewpoints. By publishing these translations the series editors are making a positive and valuable contribution to widening the scope of crusade studies by facilitating a dialogue between the often distinct linguistic and scholarly traditions of scholars of Islamic or southwest Asian history, and crusade historians from a western European, or Christian perspective. In particular, European academic scholarship, not surprisingly, tends to rely on crusade sources in European languages and thus consequently predominantly narrates events from a Christian European perspective. Moreover, when southwest Asia in the late medieval period is the subject of academic focus, it is its interaction with the western European world that tends to predominate. This is problematic as it can misrepresent the relative signifi cance of particular events for contemporary audiences. These texts, although ostensibly part of a series which focuses on this interaction between Christian Europe and the Islamic world, in fact place events in a wider perspective and allow readers to understand the reactions and motivations of various Islamic political entities, states and empires in their own context and not solely from a western European perspective.

Scholarly work on the crusades has of course been undertaken using Arabic language histories and sources, but these are frequently only available in Arabic and are thus not readily accessible to many crusade scholars: for example the work of M.S. Omran and M.S. Kilani.¹ Of course there are some notable exceptions to this; specifically the publications by Gabrieli, Maalouf, and Hillenbrand.2 All three scholars use Arabic language sources and histories of the crusades extensively, but the scope and intentions behind their respective works means that there are no lengthy and continuous translations of the sources. Hillenbrand and Maalouf have written histories of the crusades in the east Mediterranean from an Arab or Islamic perspective and they both include short, translated quotations from Arabic language primary sources both to illustrate their work and provide a valuable insight into the Islamic and Arab perspective on the crusades. Gabrieli's book in contrast, consists exclusively of longer translated extracts from Arabic-language primary sources edited and arranged chronologically by subject matter or theme. However, while these longer quotations or extracts are of course extremely useful they do not allow the reader to gain an overall sense of perspective of the entire work. Particularly in the case of Arabic-language histories, if the sections of the works not related to crusading matters are omitted, a distorted view of the significance of the crusades for Arab and Muslim audiences can be presented. This problem is also evident in the otherwise extremely useful selections from the chronicle of al-Qāalanisī by Gibb.³ Until this series, complete English translations from Arabic texts concerning the crusading period were essentially limited to the memoirs of...