Imagining Defeat: An Arabic Historiography of the Crusades
Abstract
This study tracks changing conceptions of the Crusades among Arab authors, from medieval through modern sources, examining how current emotionally charged interpretations of the Crusades came into the literature and how they came to resonate. This study shows that in medieval Arabic sources, the campaigns and settlement of the Christian Franks is not seen as a discrete event, and despite modern interpretations of a two-hundred year struggle between two sides, that the Franks are seen as just one more facet in the political scene of the era, often of less concern than internal enemies. The study then tracks the introduction of the concept of the Crusades as a discrete event into Arab historical writing in the mid-nineteenth century via Christian Arabs working from Western sources and its gradual inclusion in Muslim Arab historical thought. Finally, this study examines modern Arabic interpretations of the Crusades, colored by current experiences and nationalist and/or Muslim fundamentalist thought.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA467268
Entities
People
- V Chamberlin John M.
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School