- Usama ibn Munqidh, Kitab al-I‘tibar, ed. Philip K. Hitti (Princeton, 1930). Translated by Philip K. Hitti as An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades: Memoirs of Usamah Ibn-Munqidh (New York, 1929). References in this article are to this edition (hereafter referred to as “KI”), followed by Hitti’s translation separated by a slash “/”.
- On Usama’s life and works, see Cobb, Usama. The classic biography of Usama is Hartwig Derenbourg, Ousâma ibn Mounkidh. Un emir syrien au premier siècle de croisades (1095–1188). Tome Premier: Vie d’Ousâma. (Paris, 1889), although many of Usama’s surviving works were unknown to Derenbourg.
- Usama ibn Munqidh, Lubab al-Adab, ed. A. M. Shakir (Cairo, 1935). For samples of traditions on holy war, see pp. 160 ff. On the Kernels, see now Paul M. Cobb, “Usama ibn Munqidh’s Kernels of Refinement (Lubab al-Adab): Autobiographical and Historical Excerpts,” Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 18 (2006), 67–78.
- P. M. Holt, The Age of the Crusades. The Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517 (London, 1986), p. 38.
- Robert Irwin, “Islam and the Crusades, 1096–1699,” in Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford and New York, 1997), p. 233.
- Robert Irwin, “Usamah ibn Munqidh: An Arab-Syrian Gentleman at the Time of the Crusades Reconsidered,” in Crusade Sources, pp. 78–79.
- On truces between Franks and Muslims, see M. A. Köhler, Allianzen und Verträge zwischen frankischen und islamischen Herrschern im Vorderen Orient (Berlin, 1991).
- KI, pp. 173/205; 177–178/208–09.
- Irwin, “Usamah,” p. 78, n. 36, notes that “It seems possible that the Banu Munqidh, like their allies, the Banu ‘Ammar clan of Apamea, were all Shi’ites.” The Banu ‘Ammar were the rulers of Tripoli, not Apamea. And their assumed Shi‘ism seems only attributed to them by association, since they were governors for the Fatimids. Moreover, even if the Banu ‘Ammar were Shi‘ites, it is not a contagious condition. And the Banu ‘Ammar did not shy from alliances with Sunnis. Indeed, while Usama’s grandfather did serve in the court at Tripoli, the leader of the Banu ‘Ammar refused the Banu Munqidh’s invitation to stay at Shayzar after Tripoli was taken by the Crusaders, but instead took service in the court of the (Sunni) Burid rulers of Damascus and, ultimately, in the court of the (Sunni) Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad. Irwin also says that, in Egypt, all of Usama’s enemies were Sunni. In fact, with the exception of the Fatimid ruling family, the religious elite and select officials (Shi‘ites, who were hardly all friends of Usama), almost everyone in Fatimid Egypt, friend or foe, was Sunni.
- On the religious world of Usama, see Cobb, Usama, ch. 4.
- Cited in Derenbourg, Ousâma, p. 602.
- For example, Usama, Lubab, pp. 13, 14, 21 (where Abu Bakr dictates his succession-document to ‘Uthman), 143 175, 179, 185, 303. This would be very unlikely in a Shi‘ite, but not unheard of. One Shi‘ite author, for example, for reasons of taqiyya, was obliged to write in defense of ‘A’isha, the Prophet’s wife and normally a focus of Shi‘ite antipathy. See Wilferd Madelung, “Imamism and Mu‘tazilite Theology,” in Le Shî’isme imâmite. Colloque de Strasbourg (6–9 mai, 1968) (Paris, 1970), p. 21.
- Usama’s treatise is entitled Manaqib ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab wa-manaqib ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz and remains in manuscript (Cairo, Dar al-Kutub: MS ta’rikh Taymur #1513 [11147]).
- For a study that involves this practice at an earlier period in Islamic history, see Michael Cooperson, Classical Arabic Biography. The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma’mun (Cambridge, UK, 2000).
- On the history of Imami Shi‘ite concepts of jihad, see Etan Kohlberg, “The Development of the Imami Shi‘i Doctrine of Jihad,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 126 (1976), 64–86. My thanks to Robert Gleave for points of clarification.
- yuqatil li’l-din la li’l-dunya. KI, pp. 16–17/41–42.
- KI, pp. 124/94–95.
- KI, pp. 192/222.
- KI, pp. 110–11/140–41.
- Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (London, 1999), pp. 274 ff.
- Cited in Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, p. 272. On the limited interest of Muslim geographers in the European sub-continent, see Eliyahu Ashtor, “La geografia dell’Europa nelle opere di Persiani e Arabi nell’undicesimo secolo,” in Popoli e paesi nella cultura altomedievale. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 23–29 aprile 1981 (Spoleto, 1983), pp. 647–99; 701–8.
- Cited in Hillenbrand, Islamic Perspectives, p. 271.
- KI, p. 132/161.
- KI, p. 137/166.
- KI, p. 138/167.
- KI, p. 134/163.
- KI, p. 91/121.
- KI, pp. 43/71; 85/114.
- KI, pp. 2/25; 149/178–79; 116/146.
- KI, p. 132/161.
- KI, pp. 84–85/167–68.
- KI, pp. 132–33/162. On Usama’s evaluation of Frankish law and medicine, see Cobb, Usama, ch. 5.
- KI, p. 74/93.
- KI, p. 66/95.
- KI, p. 130/159.
- KI, p. 134/163.
- KI, pp. 103–4/133–34.
- KI, p. 191/221.
- KI, pp. 55/84, 213/243.
- KI, p. 201/230.
- KI, p. 84/113.
- KI, p. 106/136.
- KI, p. 202/231.
- KI, pp. 125–26/154–55.
- KI, pp. 192–93/222–24.
- KI, p. 161/191.
- On Usama’s self-representation, see Cobb, Usama, ch. 6.
- The literature on the interdependence of the ‘ulama and the ruling strata in the medieval Near East is comparatively vast. Ira M. Lapidus, Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: 1967) is the starting-point. See also Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190–1350 (Cambridge: 1994).
- On al-Sulami, see the essay by Niall Christie in this volume.
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