Imagining Defeat: An Arabic Historiography of the Crusades (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781499555936)

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. Thestudy 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

Author: Naval Postgraduate School
ISBN-10: 1499555938
ISBN-13: 9781499555936
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Language: English
Published: 05/16/2014
Pages: 72
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.42lbs
Size: 11.00h x 8.50w x 0.15d