Никола Бенин
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
9
Foreword
11
Jonathan
Phillips
Introduction
15
Amar
S. Baadj, Ahmed M. Sheir
The
Historiographical Memory of the Crusades in NineteenthCentury Egypt 21
Ahmed
Mohamed Sheir
A
Survey of the Arab Contribution to the Study of the Crusades
(1899-2023)
55
Mohamed
Mones Awad (trans. Amar S. Baadj)
The
Fatimids and their Attitude towards the Crusades in Modern Arabic
Historical
Scholarship 77
Mohamed
Raheel (trans. Amar S. Baadj)
Conceptions
of the Crusades in the Saudi Historiographical Imagination:
The
History Department of Umm al-Qurā University as a Case Study 97
Amro
Abdelaziz Mounir (trans. Amar S. Baadj)
Medieval
European Relations with the Islamic World in the Works of the
Historian
Maḥmūd Ismāʿīl 117
Amar
S. Baadj
Remembering
and Imagining the Invasion: A Threat to the Muslim Sacred
Spaces
in Arabic Folk Epics 131
Oleg
Sokolov
Medieval
Muslims and Crusaders in Modern Arab Cinema: Reassessing
Youssef
Chahine’s Epic al-Nāṣir Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin the Victorious) 151
Fadi
Ragheb
Notes
on Contributors 201
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A
number of people and institutions have played crucial roles in the
production
of this volume. First of all, the co-editors would like to express
their
sincere thanks to the team at Trivent Publishing. In particular, we are
most
grateful to Teodora C. Artimon for her enthusiastic support of this book
as
well as the series in which it appears and for providing expert assistance
and
oversight at every step of the publication process.
Ahmed
Sheir significantly benefited from the Fritz Thyssen Fellowship
(2021–22),
awarded for his project “Between Memory and Historiography:
The
Crusades in Modern Egyptian Historical Scholarship”, which was hosted
by
Professor Albrecht Fuess at Philipps-Universität Marburg. This fellowship
enabled
him to initiate his research on the memory and historiography of the
Crusades
in modern Egypt and strengthened his ongoing association with
Philipps-Universität
Marburg. It also facilitated the organization of the online
lecture
series “Rethinking Memory and Historiography of the Crusades in the
Middle
East” (2021–22), which played a pivotal role in shaping the themes of
this
volume and enriching discussions on Crusade historiography. Since 2022,
Sheir
has continued his work on this volume while serving as a research
fellow
on the Arabic Fragments in the Cairo Genizah, as part of the ongoing
ERC
“APCG” project, based at Trinity College Dublin in collaboration with
the
Cambridge University Library. This fellowship provided a crucial
platform
for further developing his research and actively contributing to the
editing
of this volume.
Amar
S. Baadj has benefitted greatly from his association since 2016 with
the
DFG-Leibniz sponsored research group on “The Contemporary History
of
Historiography” based at the University of Trier under the direction of
Professor
Lutz Raphael. It was while employed as a research fellow in this
project
that he commenced his study of the modern Arab historiography of
the
medieval period, resulting in an international conference (Trier,
Acknowledgements November
2017) and an edited volume entitled A
Handbook of Modern
Arabic
Historical
Scholarship on the Ancient and Medieval Periods (Leiden: Brill, 2021).
The
editors would like to sincerely thank the anonymous peer reviewers
for
their rigorous evaluations and constructive feedback on the chapters
which
have greatly enhanced the quality of this collection. They are also most
grateful
to Jonathan Phillips (Royal Holloway, London University), for kindly
writing
a foreword to the volume. Finally, both of the editors would like to
take
this opportunity to extend their deep appreciation to all of the chapter
authors
for their hard work and their valuable contributions.
Amar
S. Baadj (Relizane, 25.05.2025)
Ahmed
M. Sheir (Marburg, 25.05.2025)
FOREWORD
Jonathan
Phillips*
This
volume constitutes a fresh and significant contribution to the
historiography
of the crusades and the Muslim Near East. Ahmed Sheir and
his
colleagues, greatly assisted by Amar S. Baadj’s enviably fluent
translations,
have produced an impressive, broad-ranging and diverse series
of
papers that will do much to put down a marker for the sheer volume and
diversity
of work on the crusades in Arabic scholarship. For most of the
twentieth
century and even until recent years, scholars of the crusades and the
Muslim
world tended to keep at arms-length from one another, in part by
reason
of geography, in part because of different historiographical traditions,
in
part through politics, and overarching all of this, I suspect, the issue of
language.
In 1999 Carole Hillenbrand’s landmark book Crusades: Islamic
Perspectives
did much to introduce western scholars and students to the
medieval
Muslim world.1 This, combined with a far greater public curiosity
about
the history and legacy of the crusades after the use of crusade imagery
in
and after the 9/11 terror attacks, prompted a considerable volume of work.
From
a western academic perspective one consequence was the up-to-date
translation
from Arabic of important narrative texts such as Ibn al-Athir,
Usama ibn Munqidh
and Ibn Shaddad, and then, just as importantly, nonnarratives, such as poetry,
sermons, pilgrimage documents or compendia
including
Ibn abi Usaybiʿah’s huge work The Best Accounts of the Classes of
Physicians.
2
There is also, much more recently, a far
greater interaction
*
Royal Holloway, University of London.
1 Carole
Hillenbrand, Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press,
1999).
2
Ibn al-Athir, The
Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi'lTa'rikh,
trans. Donald S. Richards, 3 volumes, Crusade Texts in Translation, 13, 15, 17
(Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2006-8); Usama ibn Munqidh, The Book of Contemplation: Islam and
the
Crusades, trans. Paul M. Cobb (London: Penguin, 2008); Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad,
Foreword
12
between
historians of the crusades and the Muslim Near East. This is
happening
at academic conferences, such as the Leeds International Medieval
Congress
and the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean. Likewise at the
most
recent quadrennial conference of the Society for the Study of the
Crusades
and the Latin East held at Royal Holloway, University of London in
2022,
or the ‘Hillenbrand 25 Years on’ workshop held at Groningen in October
2024.
All of these events have featured participants from a range of academic
backgrounds,
although the majority of the Arabic-language scholars are based
in
western educational institutions.
While
such developments are hugely welcome and exciting for all
concerned,
there is still a long way to go. The greater use of hybrid technology
allowing
people remote access to talks and events is a huge boon; the series
organized
by Ahmed Sheir from which some of these papers derive being an
obvious
example. But although it is relatively easy to find overviews of
western
historiography on the crusades, this is not the case for the Arab
world.3
We have a need, therefore, to recognize, understand and learn from
the
approaches and interpretations these scholars have chosen to take and also
to
see the traditions in which they have developed.
While
in recent years scholars from and/or based in the Eastern
Mediterranean
have been publishing important research in European
languages,
notably Taef el-Azhari, Abbès Zouache and Ahmed Sheir, the
Arabic
language work of many of their colleagues remains inaccessible for the
The Rare and
Excellent History of Saladin or al-Nawadir al-Sultaniyya wa'l-Mahasin
alYusufiyya by Baha' al-Din Ibn Shaddad, trans. Donald S. Richards, Crusade
Texts in
Translation
7 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); Muslim Sources of the Crusader Period: An
Anthology,
ed. and trans. James E. Lindsay and Suleiman A. Mourad (Indianapolis:
Hackett
Publishing, 2021); Gouvernance et Libéralitiés de Saladin d’après les données
inédites de six
documents arabes, ed. and trans. Jean-Michel Mouton, Dominique Sourdel
and
Janine Thomine-Sourdel (Paris: L’académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres,
2015);
Ibn abi Usaybi’ah, trans. Emilie Savage-Smith, Geert Jan van Gelder, Franak
Hilloowala et al.,
A Literary History of Medicine: ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ of
Ibn
Abī Uṣaybiʿah (d. 1270), edited, translated and analyzed by The ALHOM Team
(Leiden: Brill,
2019); abridged as Anecdotes and Antidotes: A Medieval Arabic History of
Physicians
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
3
See Christopher J. Tyerman, The Debate on the Crusades (Manchester: Manchester
University Press,
2011); Norman J. Housley, Contesting the Crusades (Oxford: Blackwell,
2006)
and the forthcoming chapter by Christoph Maier in volume 1 of The Cambridge
History
of the Crusades, ed. Jonathan Phillips et al., 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge
University
Press, 2026).
Foreword
13
majority
of western academics.4 Several of the essays here will help redress
that;
of course, language may keep much hidden, but having a sense of the
sheer
range and variety of work will offer an insight into the study of the
crusades
in a particular time and/or place as the papers here by Sheir, Awad
and
Mounir show. In many ways, the barrier of language exists in reverse too
–
an absence of good translations into Arabic of Latin or Old French texts, and
likewise,
the poor availability of up-to-date secondary scholarship, for
example,
avoiding the problematic interpretation of Steven Runciman, work
that
reviewers described as out of date even on its initial publication in 1952.5
Such
a situation can, therefore, mirror the limitations of crusade scholars who
cannot
read Arabic, but this volume will, at the bare minimum, show English
language
historians what they need to look for, or to be aware of. That in itself
can
stimulate either a wish to pursue a line of enquiry following, say, the
chapter
by Raheel here, or to signpost a particular source or even to look to
make
a personal contact.
These
papers also shed valuable light on the variety of perspectives that
scholars
in the Islamic world have chosen to adopt. One such case is in the
chapter
by Baadj looking at the Marxist-based interpretations of Mahmud
Ismaʿil,
and then showing how he, in turn influenced further generations of
scholars
(and presumably, public perceptions) of the crusades. Within this
collection,
we also get a clear sense of the variety of religious, political and
cultural
contexts in which scholars in the Arabic language operate. We have
here
also a vital glimpse of the regional and chronological variations
encompassed
by these issues which will help to break down the perception of
crusade
scholarship in the Muslim Near East as monolithic.
Also
of great interest here are the diverse forms of evidence in play. To
bring
in non-narrative sources such as folk epics (Sokolov) and film (Ragheb,
noting
the vital political context too) can help us to appreciate better the
breadth
of scholarship here, but also to get a far better insight into the impact
4 For example:
Taef el-Azhari, Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661-
1257
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019); multiple fine articles by Abbès
Zouache
including: ‘Écrire l’histoire des croisades aujourd’hui, en Orient et en
Occident’,
in: Construire la mèditerranée, penser les transferts culturels, eds Rania
Abdellatif,
Yassir Benhima, Daniel König and Elisabeth Ruchaud (Munich:
Oldenbourg
Wissenschaftsverlag, 2013), pp. 120-47; Ahmed M. Sheir, The Prester John
Legend
between East and West during the Crusades: Entangled Eastern-Latin Mythical
Legacies
(Budapest: Trivent Publishing, 2022).
5
See the summary by Jonathan S. C. Riley-Smith in Crusades 6 (2007), pp. 216-17.
Foreword
14
and
the reception of the crusades in both the medieval and the modern
worlds.
Part
of the excitement and enjoyment of what we all do is, of course, to see
new
perspectives, ideas and information. Too long underappreciated and
often
unknown in terms of scope and volume, it is hoped that the scholarship
manifest
in these essays does much to bring a wealth of learning to a new and
wider
audience.
Няма коментари:
Публикуване на коментар