I’ve answered some previous questions here about what Europeans, and specifically crusaders, knew about medieval Islam (Why and when did Westerners stop to refer Muslims as Mohammedans?, and I'm a Crusader heading towards the Holy Land in 1096. How much do I understand about Islam?).

I usually say something along the lines of “they didn’t know anything and they didn’t care” - and I think that’s still generally the correct answer. They didn’t need to know, and they didn’t want to know.

However, I was doing some more reading and I realized that there was at least one crusader who did know: William of Tyre, the court historian of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He was born in the east and was educated in Europe, and when he returned he rose through the church hierarchy to become Archbishop of Tyre, chancellor of the kingdom, a friend of King Amalric, and tutor to Amalric’s son, the future King Baldwin IV.

Amalric askedd William to write a history of the kingdom, which is still an extremely valuable source today. William also claimed to have written a history of Islam based on the books available to him in Jerusalem; unfortunately it does not survive, but some of it is included in his history of Jerusalem. He knew about the early successors of Muhammad and the Sunni-Shia split:

“…the fifth in the succession from Muhammad, namely Ali, was more warlike than his predecessors and had far greater experience in military matters than his contemporaries. He was, moreover, a cousin of Muhammad himself. He considered it unfitting that he should be called the successor of his cousin and not rather a great prophet himself, much greater, in fact, than Muhammad. The fact that in his own estimation and that of many others he was greater did not satisfy him; he desired that this be generally acknowledged. Accordingly, he reviled Muhammad and spread among the people a story to the effect that the Angel Gabriel, the profounder of the law, had actually been sent to him from on high but by mistake had conferred the supreme honor on Muhammad. For this fault, he said, the angel had been severely blamed by the Lord. Although these claims seemed false to many from whose traditions they differed greatly, yet others believed them, and so a schism developed among that people which has lasted even to the present. Some maintain that Muhammad is the greater and, in fact, the greatest of all prophets, and these are called in their own tongue, Sunnites; others declare that Ali alone is the prophet of God, and they are called Shiites. (Vol 2 pg 323)

He seems to have been using a pro-Sunni source, or maybe Christian sources (Greek? Syriac? Coptic?) that were not exactly neutral. Elsewhere in this chapter he dismisses Muhammad as a “deceiver”, which is typical for medieval Latin Christians. This section of his history deals with Amalric's invasion of Egypt, and William explains how the descendants of Ali founded the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt. He wanted to understand why the Muslim dynasties in Egypt and Syria differed. They were both enemies of the crusader kingdom, but why were they enemies of each other was well?

William wrote in Latin and spells “Sunni” just as we do in English now. But since Latin lacks an “sh” sound, he often spells the Arabic sound with two S’s; here he writes “Ssia.”

William’s history was very popular in medieval Europe; for example, it was used as a source for the history of Jacques de Vitry, who was bishop of Acre in the crusader kingdom in the 13th century. Jacques also wrote about the Sunni-Shia split.

William, though, was actually much more widely read in 13th-century French translations. There were several different “continuations”, which either translated the entire Latin text, or summarized it, before adding new material after 1185 (when William probably died). In the main French translation, the translator shortened this chapter a bit, and seems to have been a little confused sometimes; “Haly” is the uncle (rather than cousin) of “Mahomez” and the different branches of Islam are spelled “Sompni” and “Syha”.

So, while it’s probably still true that crusaders in general didn’t know or care about Islam, especially at the time of the First Crusade, at least one of them did care enough to investigate it in the 12th century.

Sources

William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond The Sea, trans. E. A. Babcock and A. C. Krey (Columbia University Press, 1943, repr. Octagon Books, 1976).

Alexis Paulin Paris, Guillaume de Tyr et ses continuateurs (Paris, 1879)

Philip D. Handyside, The Old French William of Tyre (Brill, 2015)

Pierre-Vincent Claverie, “L’Image de l’Islam dans les traductions vernaculaires de Guillaume de Tyr”, in Continuity and Change in the Realms of Islam, ed. K. D’Hulster and J. van Steenbergen (Leuven, 2008), pp. 117–134.

Week 141

 

On August 3^rd 1919 Mussolini's Popolo d'Italia opened with a headline announcing - “THE INGLORIOUS END OF THE BOLSHEVIK REGIME IN HUNGARY” - followed with a note on the installation of a new (and extremely short lived) provisional government led by one “Julis Beydel”, which had replaced the previous Soviet Government of Bela Kun on the eve of the Romanian occupation of Budapest. Interestingly enough, the short commentary – which appears to reproduce in substance the official statement released by the new Ministry – published before reproducing an excerpt of an interview released by the previous Prime Minister and President, the Count Karolyi, to the Arbeiter Zeitung, goes into the details of the composition of the new Government, listing a series of otherwise obscure figures (the Government would be immediately replaced by a new one, in Budapest, upon Romanian insistence, as well as by the loyalist Ministry already based in Szeged), here in the newspaper's own spelling: “Baxer” at the Interior, “Josef Ahybrich” at War, “Peter Agoston” at Foreign Affairs, “Alexander Garbay” at Public Education, “Carl Carany” at Justice, “Josef Takacz” at Agriculture, “Minskrits” at Finance, “Anton Dovesak” at Commerce and Industry, “Franz Mitelsler” at Supplies, “Vicknaller” at “Nationality”.

Despite the recent Hungarian developments offering compelling evidence of the disastrous results of Soviet regimes (the Popolo d'Italia had kept a consistent coverage of the Hungarian news, including a series of “particular reports” transmitted by way of Zurich, detailing the failure of the last Hungarian offensive), Mussolini's own leading column was dedicated to the necessary distinction between a critical examination of the conduct of the war and a critical examination of the war itself (Noi e loro - “Us and them”).

Is this trial of the war, opened, with different attitudes, but with the same end, by all those men who opposed the intervention, really something we, left-interventionists, who drove the masses during the “radiant May”, routing the social-boche coalition and bringing the “new fact” into reality, should concern ourselves with?

If someone wants to put the war on trial, we that wanted it, and never regret doing so, are then party to the dispute; but if it's the diplomatic, military, political and economical conduct of the war, we can proudly declare that we were FIRST, ahead of all those who are now posing as implacable prosecutors, since we were never fully content with “how” the war was directed. We never felt like associating ourselves with the governments of these last few years.

The distinction between the necessity of the war and the “how” of it, is not lawyering or sophistic, but an essential one. As long as the present critics, either of a certain public press [stampaioli - it's a pun on the neutralist newspaper La Stampa, which also sounds as a jab at cheap publicists for hire] or of the Pus, have not proven that the Italian war could not have been run any differently, we stand our extremely solid political and polemical ground. And one should also answer whether, even being absolutely certain that the war was going to be run they way it was – and no one could hold this supreme certainty in May 1915 – whether, I insist, our persistence in neutrality would not have led us to military and political conditions far worse than a war, no matter how poorly led and directed. Here our political and polemical position becomes impenetrable, since – regardless of “how” - our war ended in the complete defeat and dissolution of the enemy empire.

There are two points, two extremes in our recent, tragic and glorious history, which no present critic can erase and which make any convenient, day after, reevaluation both petty and pointless.

First point: the inevitability of the intervention. Second point: the triumphant victorious end of the war. Biting on these concrete facts, both Giolitti's snakes and the jackals of the Pus are going to have their teeth broken. What's left is a criticism of the men and of the methods of our war. Could our war have been “directed” better? Could it have been over sooner?

It's better to keep in mind that the “how” of the war have been subject to criticism in every country, during and after. […]

Who can claim, in all honesty – continued Mussolini after listing a series of examples of war inquests and accusations from foreign nations – that, had there been – let's say – Giolitti instead of Salandra, things would have been run better? The man from Dronero “led” a small colonial war, that of Libya; but even Frassati can't passably maintain that the “conduct” of the Libyan war was a masterpiece of military and diplomatic craft. Rather, the exact opposite.

We are willing to concede that other men might have led the nation better during the war. This is not a day after revelation. It has been our firm belief since the Summer of 1915. […] In my speech of the Augusteo [the Theater] in Rome, in February 1918, I “nailed” the main elements of the Italian tragedy as follows:

We, three years into the war, despite Caporetto, solemnly and openly reclaim everything deep, pure and immortal in those days of May.

Remember! It was in those very days of May 1915 that Italy stood fearless of death!

But, then, we made a dire mistake, which we had to atone for. We, that wanted the war, should have taken hold of power!

In May 1915 the Nation, as a whole, gave us a magnificent human material. It was a magnificent human material we delivered to people who run the war the way one performs a miserable corvée, a worse nuisance than they are used to.

We delivered them this material for a war that, after 20 centuries, was the first war of the Italian people, to people who could not understand it. To people who embodied the past, to bureaucrats who had poured much, way too much ink over the crimson wounds of the people.

And the censor, there – Mussolini continued after concluding his citation – suppressed a reference to career military men who, being of Germanophile mind, had “resigned themselves” to the war.

I maintain that we, left interventionists, are in the clear from the anti-war trial they are currently setting up. We are in the clear because, in so far as the inevitability and the UTILTY of the intervention, no one can best us; because any other solution to the problem which the Italian conscience solved in the interventionist direction, would have been outright catastrophic for the nation and humankind both. We are in the clear because, despite the internal politics of the trinity Salandra-Boselli-Orlando, despite the foreign policy of Sonnino, despite the strategy of Cadorna, and despite the propaganda and the treasonous action perpetrated by many of today's prosecutors, our war resulted in a military victory of Roman style and amplitude, celebrated back in the day […] by those same men who are now trying to slander and deny it. We are in the clear, furthermore, because, within the limits imposed by the censorship scissors, we did criticize “how” our war was being run.

It's obvious what kind of game the stampaioli and the Pus wish to play. The men, more or less inadequate, who “directed” the war, aren't the real target. They fire at them, but they want to strike deeper. They want to strike at the national war and – in second order – they want to lead us to believe that, with a few Giolittian ministers, Giolittian diplomats, Giolittian generals, we'd have taken Vienna in a week. Which is downright grotesque. But it's just as grotesque to see these [self appointed] judges chattering senselessly in an effort to reduce the grand epic of a people to the measure of their petty grudges and rancid obsessions, and to cover themselves in ridicule when they pretend to take council as a last appeal court for the supreme and, by now, unappealable verdicts of History.