The Women who Bought Back the Holy Land: A Study of Latin Motives for Purchasing Property in Mamluk Jerusalem

Multiple forms of endemic malaria existed in the Mediterranean Basin from the 3rd millennium BCE until eradication regimes were imposed in the 20th century, with major societal health impacts across the history of the region. Little attention has been paid to the role endemic malaria played during the high medieval period, especially during the Crusades, when large Christian armies transited the Mediterranean to conquer the Levant, forging new states, trade lanes and pilgrimage routes in the process. This study utilizes a recent GIS-enabled malaria risk model validated for the pre-modern Mediterranean to re-evaluate contemporary accounts of illness and epidemics in the Crusader Levant. While medieval sources often provide ambiguous descriptions of disease, careful consideration of these accounts in light of the demonstrable spatial and temporal risk of malaria infection provides substantial evidence of these kinds of epidemics. The resulting evidence suggests that several malaria species, either on their own or in concert with other pathogens, afflicted numerous Crusade campaigns in low-lying landscapes during the warmest periods of the summer and fall in the Levant. In turn, these malaria epidemics had a major impact on the history of the Crusades and the Crusader States.

On everyday life in the military orders of the Crusader states While everyday life in the military orders was supposed to be regulated (i.e., in compliance with rules and other normative texts), geographical location was a determining factor in how individual members experienced their environment and human interaction, and there appear to have been significant variations in this regard between East and West. Focusing on select examples pertaining to Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights in the Crusader states of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and drawing from letters, charters, inventories, narrative sources, and archaeological evidence, this article considers three particular aspects to illustrate this observation, namely, (1) materialized culture, (2) the need for translators, and (3) bathhouses. While all three had their respective equivalents in northern and western Europe, it is noteworthy that ‒ in the Near East ‒ materialized culture (e.g., in the form of weapons and textiles) was more diverse and luxurious; the need for translation was more frequent and complex (e.g., resulting in the outsourcing of such tasks to Oriental Christians with a knowledge of Arabic); and the bathhouses were more sophisticated and numerous, which confounded western clergymen who considered military prowess rather incompatible with a visit to the Hammam (i.e., an Oriental bathhouse).

ABSTRACT Available documentation of medieval music is almost exclusively limited to bound codices. Against this backdrop, this article explores how musical information was also communicated via more easily transportable, inexpensive material forms during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with an emphasis on leaflets that circulated independently of codices. I shall focus on three song genres that can be found in the context of the crusading enterprise: the Old French political song; the Latin liturgical prosa; and the Latin secular lament. Transmission across long distances was especially relevant in this crusading context – between the east and west of the Mediterranean as well as within the so-called crusader states. By integrating textual, musical, musico-palaeographical, and codicological methods of analysis, this article assesses the social and political significance of these songs and uncovers the motivations to disseminate them using such patterns of communication among crusader communities.

To assess the interaction between the military orders and women of the nobility in the Crusader states neither the narrative sources’ scattered anecdotes nor the normative texts’ stipulations pertaining to women are particularly useful or representative. Focusing on the kingdom of Jerusalem and, to a lesser extent, the principality of Antioch and the county of Tripoli in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this article considers examples from the charter evidence to appreciate the impact of queens, princesses, countesses, and noble ladies on the history of Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights. The first part highlights the significance of consent-giving; the second part takes a closer look at activities where ladies functioned as primary agents, namely, as issuers of charters; and the third part presents a case study of Lady Juliana of Caesarea ‒ a benefactress of both Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries ‒ whose husbands (despite their dominus/“lord” titles) only participated in the administration of her lordship iure uxoris (i.e., on the basis of Juliana’s legal title); who became a consoror (i.e., a “fellow sister”) and chose the Hospital of St. John as her final resting place; and whose second husband, Aymar of L’Ayron, later joined the Hospitallers and served as their conventual marshal during the Crusade against Damietta.

Abstract The study examines the role and perception of Hungarians in the Chronicle of Morea (Τὸ Χρονικὸν τοῦ Μορέως). It presents the passages in which the Chronicle mentions the Hungarian people or the Kingdom of Hungary, and compares them with passages in other contemporary literary and historical works in Old French and Byzantine Greek that also mention Hungarians. It seeks to answer the question why the Chronicle, which tells the history of the hostile crusader states, speaks of the Hungarians, who were generally close to Byzantium and helped the successor states of the Byzantine Empire, in a more laudatory tone and in more praiseworthy terms than other contemporary sources closer to the Hungarians. The study also examines the role of the descendants of Béla III, the Saint-Omer brothers, and the literary role of Sir Nicolas II de Saint-Omer. Finally, it analyses the Chronicle's excerpt of the succession dispute of Akova, which is closely linked to the descendants of Béla III.

In this impressive analysis of the thirteenth-century Bible historiale, Jeanette L. Patterson blends a detailed history of the text’s manuscript tradition with a sharp enquiry into the intellectual priorities that animated its translation into French by Guyart des Moulins as well as subsequent expanded versions produced in later centuries. It is argued that Guyart des Moulins, his successors, and the lay public for whom they wrote shared literary expectations that were determined by a range of historical factors: the waning importance of the Latin Crusader states; the emerging popularity of reading among the laity; and specific understandings of literature’s capacity to convey truth in biblical texts as well as in secular poetry and prose. On this last score, Patterson maintains that the author and his lay readers commonly evaluated the truth of a text by the spiritual edification that the written work produced in the reader. Such an approach to literary truth did not oppose truth and fiction, thereby allowing even the more fantastical stories of the Bible to advance the sanctification of laypeople without compromising exacting standards of credibility. In one especially compelling illustration, Patterson describes how two different versions of the Book of Job (one complete, one highly redacted) were juxtaposed in certain copies of the Bible historiale. By combining the more theologically conservative redaction with the unabridged text, the French translator gave lay readers the power to discern which version of Job they were spiritually equipped to read. Thus, Patterson helpfully uncovers how Guyart des Moulins’s Bible did not simply embody a clerical conservatism but actively empowered the laity through specific redaction and translation strategies. By interpreting the Bible historiale in this way, Patterson identifies a culture of biblical translation and reader reception that valued transformative reader responses above overly literal translation, historical facticity, or the imperatives of ecclesiastical control. The success of these arguments should make this book of interest not just within a range of disciplines in medieval studies but also in hermeneutics and literary theory. In fact, one of the most compelling aspects of Patterson’s argumentative approach is the way that she identifies the latent origins of hermeneutical thinking in the medieval translation practices studied here. We come to learn that Guyart des Moulins and his heirs were not simply rendering sacred text from Latin into the vernacular; they were engaged with the biblical text in playful, nuanced, and even daring ways that prioritized reader response as the engine of translation. Patterson’s project also offers a crucial anglophone counterpart to a growing investment in the study of medieval French Bibles within francophone scholarship, evident in the recent collection Écrire la Bible en français au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance (ed. by Véronique Ferrer and Jean-René Valette (Geneva: Droz, 2016)). Given Patterson’s thorough philology and insightful analysis, one hopes her book will occasion new interactions between francophone and anglophone discussions of vernacular biblical translations and their relation to medieval secular literatures.

Throughout the period of the Arab National Renaissance (al-nahḍa), which unfolded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Arab intellectuals frequently referred to the age of the crusades, drawing parallels between that historical epoch and modern-day relations between Europe and the Muslim world. After analyzing the works of representatives of the three major ideological movements of that period: pan-Islamism, pan-Ottomanism, and Arab nationalism, the present article formulates the following major interpretations of the role of the crusades in the history of the Arab Middle East: (a) as a punishment for the distortion of the original Islam of the Prophet and his companions (for which some blamed the Seljuk Turks, others the Muslim mystics or Sufis); (b) as a reason for the subsequent prosperity and progress of Western societies after their contact with a superior Muslim civilization; (c) as a source of religious fanaticism in the Middle East; (d) as the events that foreshadow the modern military conflicts around the Mediterranean and beyond, especially the Mahdist rebellion in the Sudan and the Crimean War; (e) as an era that demonstrated the weakness of religion as a force of mass mobilization; (f) as a period when the Muslims of the Middle East protected Middle Eastern Christians from the Westerners. Moreover, at the end of the nineteenth century, some Arab intellectuals for the first time described the medieval crusader states of the Levant as ‘colonial’ (al-duwal al-musta’mira al-ifranjiyya).

The specifics of the monetary circulation of the Taurica during the classical Middle Ages are well known to modern specialists in Byzantine numismatics. It is characterized by the diversity of the money market and a wide variety of issuers. There appeared new discoveries expanding the geography and direction of the Crimean numismatic monuments from the Late Byzantine Period and replenishing them with important information. Among the numismatic finds from the period when the Byzantine Empire collapsed and, later, restored, there are local issues along with, so to speak, the money “brought from across the sea,” which circulated in the markets of the Taurica in this or that way. The coins in question comprised of the money minted by the Empires of Trebizond and Nicaea, Crusader states, and renovated Byzantium. Today, the said interpretation gets extra support from the finds to be introduced into the scholarship: the coins of Megaloi Komnenoi, such as a follaro of John III (1342–1344) and aspri of Manuel III (1390–1417) and John IV (1446–1458); a hyperpyron nomisma of Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes (1222–1254) of Nicaea; a denier tournois of Doux Guillaume (William) I de la Roche (1280–1287) of Athens; a denaro tornese minted by the Genoese government of Chios in 1477–1487; a copper tetarteron of Andronikos II Palaiologos (1282–1328); and some other finds. These new coins are important evidence of trade and economic relations of the south-western Taurica with the regions of the Southern Black Sea, the Balkans and the Mediterranean and an impressive illustration of the administrative and political processes in the Black Sea area in Late Byzantine Period.

Orta Çağ’da Selçuklular ve diğer Anadolu beylikleri arasında pek çok yönden mücadeleler yaşanmıştır. Bu mücadelelerin bir tarafını da entelektüel bilgiye sahip olmak oluşturmuştur. Bunun için Anadolu beyleri Dârü’s-sıhha, Dârü’ş-şifâ ve Mâristanlar inşâ etmişler ve bu binalarda çalışanlar için her türlü gereksinimi karşılamaya çalışmışlardır.
 Özellikle Haçlı Devletleri kurulduktan sonra Doğu Akdeniz’den Anadolu’ya doğru kayan ticaret yolları bölgede çok sayıda kervansaray kurulmasına sebep olmuştur. Güvenli ticaret yollarının etrafında bulunan sağlık binaları birçok hekimin Ortadoğu’dan Anadolu’ya geçmesine vesile olurken burada sentezlenmiş olan Yunan-İran-Hint tıbbının İslâm dünyası içinde geliştirilmiş hali Anadolu’ya taşınmıştır.
 Bu tıbbi bilgi hastalıkların tedavisinde öd ağacı, misk, kâfur, belsam ve helile gibi pek çok bitkinin kullanılmasını mümkün kılıyordu. Fakat bu bitkilerin hepsi Anadolu’da bulunamazdı. Sağlık binalarının yakınlarından geçen ve bilinen Dünya’nın her yerine ulaşan ticaret yolları vasıtasıyla bitkiler bu binalarda çalışan entelektüellere sağlanmaya başlandı.
 Bitkilerden bazıları ipek yolu üzerinden temin edilirken bazıları ise Çin’in doğu kıyılarında bulunan ticaret limanlarından çıkıp Serendib’e bağlanıyor ve Baharat yolundaki bitkilerle birlikte kuzey-batı yolundan Anadolu’ya doğru getiriliyordu. Ayrıca Endülüs yolu da Orta Çağ’da bitki taşınan ticaret yollarından biri idi.

The Lusignan dynasty ruled in Cyprus for about three hundred dec from the XIII to the XV centuries. The Lusignan family administrative structure was similar to that of the Crusader states. In order to facilitate the administration, the Kings have appointed people they trust at the state level. In this article, the seneschals who served during the Lusignan period in Cyprus have been identified and examined in chronological order. Seneschals were important civil servants who occupied the first place in the hierarchy. In the early periods of the Kingdom of Lusignan of Cyprus, the people who served as seneschals were chosen from the Lusignans or Ibelins, who were from prominent families. Towards the end of the kingdom, other people from families of Catalan and Spanish origin also became seneschals. Although it is difficult to determine the names of seneschals in the early periods of the kingdom, the appointments made by the Kings in recent periods have been more clearly included in the sources. The duties of the seneschals were determined by examining the documents in the sources. Seneschals are appointed in cases of marriage of the royal family. It was also seen that they took part as representatives of the King when the expedition was to be launched. Besides, they were with the King and supported him.

Kudüs, Orta Doğu’nun en eski tarihi dönemlerinden itibaren çekim merkezi olmuş, üç semavi din için önemli bir mevkide bulunması nedeniyle de orta çağ süresinde başat devletler bu şehre hâkim olmak istemişlerdir. Selahaddin Eyyübi döneminde Kudüs’ün kaybedilmesiyle büyük darbe alan Haçlılar, Orta Doğu’da yitirdikleri konumlarını geri alabilmek için yeni seferler düzenlemiş ancak bunlar kısa süreli başarılar bir tarafa bırakılırsa muvaffakiyetsizlikle neticelenmiştir. Eyyübi Devleti tarih sahnesinden çekilmesinden sonra onların hâkim oldukları toprakların büyük kısmına hâkim olan Memlukler tüm dünyayı dehşet içerisinde bırakan Moğol askeri ilerleyişini 1260 yılında Ayn Calut Savaşı’nda durdurmuşlardır. Moğolların askeri güçleri ve taktiklerinin bölgedeki Ermenilerin ve Gürcülerin askeri desteğine rağmen bu yeni düşman karşısında yetersiz kalması onları zorunlu olarak yeni müttefikler aramaya itmiştir. Bu minvalde İlhanlıların Memlûklara karşısında Avrupalılar ve onların Ortadoğu’daki uzantıları Haçlı Devletleriyle ittifak kurma çabaları başlamıştır. Hülagü döneminde başlayıp İlhanlıların yıkılışına kadar başta papalık olmak üzere İngiltere ve Fransa kralları gibi Avrupa’nın güçlü hükümdarlarına elçiler Memlukler üzerine ortak bir sefer organizasyonu için defalarca gönderilmiş aynı şekilde Avrupa’dan da İran’a elçiler gelmiştir. Bu temaslar sırasında İlhanlılar Avrupa’nın desteğini almak ve yeni bir Haçlı seferi düzenlenmesini sağlamak için Hristiyanların kutsal şehri Kudüs’ü alıp onlara vermeyi teklif etmişler ancak Avrupalılar ise Hıristiyan olmayan bir topluma her zaman şüpheyle bakmışlardır. Avrupa ve Moğollar arasındaki tüm elçilik teatilerine rağmen Avrupa’daki siyasi karışıklıklar, mesafe problemi ve senkronizasyon zorlukları gibi nedenlerle Memlûklar’a karşı ortak bir harekât tanzimi mümkün olmamıştır. Bu çalışma İlhanlı-Avrupa ilişkilerini Kudüs ekseninde ele alacaktır.

Abstract The article offers a contribution to wider dialogues on history creation and the analytical superstructures that influence how authors use the past to construct and legitimise identities tied to conquest and settlement. It takes as its case study the twelfth‐century Chronicon of the Jerusalemite writer William of Tyre, and his crafting of an account of the First Crusade that demonstrated the legal validity of the new Latin polities created in the Levant and Syria (the so‐called crusader states). It demonstrates his use of translatio imperii (translation of empire) to frame settlement as a continuation of Christian authority in the East. This work also marks the changing purpose of his writing away from a solely Eastern Latin audience towards promoting crusading from Europe. In paying attention to this shift, this article demonstrates how subsequent edits he made to his work(s) led to narrative dilemmas and discontinuities that spoke to the fragmented social and political value of crusading between the Latin East and Latin West. In other words, this article offers an important window onto not only the historians’ craft, but also the value of incorporating premodern works into modern historiographical debates, especially those surrounding notions of European settler identities.

Article Bernard Hamilton / Andrew Jotischky, Latin and Greek Monasticism in the Crusader States. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2020 was published on April 1, 2022 in the journal Historische Zeitschrift (volume 314, issue 2).

The mills of god grind slowly: the Na’aman River milling dispute and the thirteenth-century hydraulic crisis in the Crusader States

John II Komnenos was the son of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos and Eirene Doukaina, and brother of Princess Anna Komnene, the author of the Alexiad. Born in 1087, he was crowned soon after his fifth birthday as co-emperor with his father, and in 1105, he was married to Piroska Árpád, daughter of King Ladislaus I of Hungary and Adelaide of Rheinfelden. He is principally known for continuing his father’s work of stabilising Byzantium after the crises of the eleventh century. This included major wars of defence and conquest in both the Balkans and Anatolia, and especially a major eastern expedition in 1137–1139. During this campaign, he conquered Cilicia, but he was recalled to defend his borders against the Turks before he could make further conquests in Syria and bring the crusader states under his aegis. He died in a hunting accident just before he returned to Syria, with intentions to go to Jerusalem as well. His best-known iconographic representation is a mosaic of him and his wife in the Great Church of Sophia. Whilst there is also an image of him in a contemporary ornate gospel book, his most common representations are found on his many coin issues and seals.

The PhD dissertation “Social and political roles of Women connected with power and authority in Crusader States and Byzantium from the first to the fourth Crusade” was written under the supervision of dr hab. Rafał Kosiński prof. UwB. The work concerns women’s participation in power and authority and their hidden influence in Crusader States and Byzantium in the twelfth century. Its purpose is to compare women’s roles in politics in Western Europe, Outremer and Byzantine Empire. Moreover this work is concentrated on establishing differences and similarities between overmentioned countries and it attempts to explain their causes. It uses mostly narrative sources in Latin and Greek. Sociological theory of social roles (created by Florian Znaniecki and Erving Goffman) was used as an analytical method. Thanks to it the work established nine basic tasks connected to the social role of queen, empress or generally female ruler. Based on that were created models of ideal female ruler in the West, Crusader states and Byzantium, which could be compared relatively easily.

Abstract This article examines how the introduction of western European crusaders and settlers to northern Syria from 490/1097 onwards impacted upon two important mechanisms of regional diplomacy; the ransom of prominent political prisoners and tributary relationships. Discussion begins with a comparison of the capture and ransom of high-ranking captives in northern Syria between 442-522/1050-1128, where it is argued that the establishment of the crusader states led to an increase in both the rate at which prisoners of elite status were ransomed and the financial sums involved in these interactions. This is followed by a reassessment of the various peace treaties, tributary arrangements and condominia or munāṣafa agreements concluded between the rulers of Antioch and Aleppo during the late fifth/eleventh and early sixth/twelfth centuries. Ultimately, this article seeks to place key features of northern Syrian diplomacy from the early crusading period within the context of regional norms in the decades preceding the crusaders’ arrival.

Environment, Colonization, and the Baltic Crusader States. Terra Sacra I, and Ecologies of Crusading, Colonization, and Religious Conversion in the Medieval Baltic. Terra Sacra II. Edited by Aleksander Pluskowski. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers n.v., 2019. Author’s studies funded by the National Science Centre, Poland’s (NCN) PRELUDIUM grant no. 2016/23/N/HS3/00660.

This article is dedicated one of the most remarkable kings of Jerusalem Baldwin IV, also calked the “Leper King”. The goal lies in analyzing the role of Baldwin IV in military-political history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The central task is to determine historical veracity of the positive image of Baldwin IV described in literature and cinematography. The historiographical framework is comprised on the works of national and foreign authors devoted to the history of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem; works of the Latin chronographers, as well as fragments from Arabic sources that were translated into English by M. C. Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson in their monograph “Saladin: the Politics of the Holy War”. The article raises the question of whether it is possible to advance a thesis that Baldwin IV is the prominent ruler of his time based on the analysis of personal traits and actions. Special attention is given to consideration of the domestic policy of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the late XII century, as well as relationship of the young king with different political alliances. The conclusion is made that by virtue of his personal traits and actions, Baldwin IV significantly contributed to ensuring security of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. However, serious illness alongside critical internal challenges, led to the siege of Crusader state in the Battle of Hattin. Baldwin IV was unable to prevent it. The personality of Baldwin IV has not previously become the object of separate comprehensive study, which defines the scientific novelty of this paper. The article also views the events that took place in the Kingdom of Jerusalem over the period from 1160 to 1180 from the perspective of personality approach.