Crusaders and Franks: Studies in the History of the Crusades and the Frankish Levant(Variorum Collected Studies)

While research on the crusades tends increasingly to bifurcate into study of the crusade idea and the crusading expeditions, and study of the Frankish states the crusaders established in the Levant, Benjamin Kedar confirms-through the articles reproduced in this latest selection of his articles-his adherence to the school that endeavours to deal with both branches of research. Of the ten studies that deal with the crusading expeditions, one examines the maps that might have been available to the First Crusaders and their Muslim opponents, another discusses in detail the Jerusalem massacre of July 1099 and its place in Western historiography down to our days, a third sheds light on the largely neglected doings of the Fourth Crusaders who decided to sail to Acre rather than to Constantinople, while a fourth exposes unknown features of the well-known sculpture of the returning crusader-most probably Count Hugh I of Vaudémont- who is embracing his wife. Of the ten studies that deal with the Frankish Levant, one proposes a hypothesis on the composition stages of William of Tyre's chronicle, another provides new evidence on the Latin hermits who chose to live in the Frankish states, a third examines the catalogue of the library of the cathedral of Nazareth, while a fourth calls attention to convergences of Eastern Christians, Muslims and Franks in sacred spaces and offers a typology of such events, and a fifth proposes a methodology for the identification of trans-cultural borrowing in the Frankish Levant.

Table of Contents:
Preface; Franks in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1047(with Reuven Amitai); A Note on Jerusalem's Bīmārīstan and Jerusalem's Hospital; L'appel de Clermont vu de Jérusalem; The Forcible Baptisms of 1096: History and Historiography; Crusade Historians and the Massacres of 1096; Emicho of Flonheim and the Apocalyptic Motif in the 1096 Massacres: Between Paul Alphandéry and Alphonse Dupront; Some Reflections on Maps, Crusading and Logistics; The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades; Did Muslim Survivors of the 1099 Massacre of Jerusalem Settle in Damascus? The True Origins of the al-Salihiyya Suburb (with Daniella Talmon-Heller); An Early Muslim Reaction to the First Crusade?; Again: Genoa's Golden Inscription and King Baldwin I's Privilege of 1104; The Voyages of Giuàn-Ovadiah in Syria and Iraq and the Enigma of his Conversion; The Significance of a Twelfth-Century Sculptural Group: Le Retour du Croisé (with Nurith Kenaan-Kedar); Some New Light on the Composition Process of William of Tyre's Historia; The Fourth Crusade's Second Front; The Outer Walls of Frankish Jaffa; Civitas and Castellum in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: Contemporary Frankish Perceptions; The Latin Hermits of the Frankish Levant Revisited; On Books and Hermits in Nazareth’s Short Twelfth Century; The Eastern Christians in the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem: An Overview; Convergences of Oriental Christian, Muslim and Frankish Worshippers: The Case of Saydnaya and the Knights Templar; Problems in the Study of Trans-Cultural Borrowing in the FrankishLevant (with Cyril Aslanov); Index.

About the Author :
Benjamin Z. Kedar is an emeritus professor of history at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.