- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Al-nawādir al-sultāniyya wa’l-maḥāsin al-Yūsufiyya, ed. Jamāl al-Dīn al-Shayyāl, Sīrat Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn: “al-sīra al-Yūsufiyya” (Cairo, 1964), 163. English translation: Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Al-nawādir al-sultāniyya wa’l-maḥāsin al-Yūsufiyya [The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin], trans. D. S. Richards (Aldershot, 2001), 153. Unless otherwise stated, all English translations of Ibn Shaddād are from Richards.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 201; trans. Richards, 193.
- See Yvonne Friedman, “Peacemaking: Perceptions and Practices in the Medieval Latin East,” in The Crusades and the Near East, ed. Conor Kostick (London, 2011), 229–57, at 238; and Michael Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East: Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in the Period of the Crusades, trans. Peter Malcolm Holt, ed. Konrad Hirschler (Leiden, 2013), 303.
- While medieval writers in Latin, Old French, and Arabic all used one word (L: interpres; OF: drugemen; A: tarjumān) to refer to those engaged in both oral and textual translation, in this study, I reserve the term “interpreter” to denote individuals engaged in the act of oral translation and the term “translator” for individuals engaged in the act of written translation. This (somewhat artificial) distinction is meant to remind us of the significant differences between oral translation and written translation – and more broadly, the significant differences between oral and written communication.
- Two recent exceptions include Kevin James Lewis, “Medieval Diglossia: The Diversity of the Latin Christian Encounter with the Written and Spoken Arabic in the ‘Crusader’ County of Tripoli,” Al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean 27 (2015): 119–152; and K. A. Tuley, “A Century of Communication and Acclimatization: Interpreters and Intermediaries in the Kingdom of Jerusalem,” in East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin, 2013), 311–39. For an earlier (and very brief) survey of the role of dragomans in the Latin East, see Laura Minervini, “Les contacts entre indigènes et croisés dans l’Orient latin: le rôle des drogmans,” in Romania Arabica: Festschrift für Reinhold Kontzi zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Jens Lüdtke, Jens and Reinhold Kontzi (Tübingen, 1996), 57–62.
- For example, prominent studies of crusader diplomacy by Michael Köhler, P. M. Holt, and Hadia Dajani-Shakeel, while occasionally mentioning interpreters in passing, spend little time reflecting on the role these intermediaries played in diplomacy. See Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East; P. M. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 1260–1290: Treaties of Baybars and Qalāwūn with Christian Rulers (Leiden, 1995); and Hadia Dajani-Shakeel, “Diplomatic Relations between Muslim and Frankish Rulers, 1097–1153 a.d.” in Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, ed. Maya Shatzmiller (Leiden, 1993), 190–215.
- For examples, see R. C. Smail, Crusading Warfare, 1097–1193 (Cambridge, 1956); John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994); idem, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (Ithaca, 1999); and David Nicolle, Crusader Warfare (London, 2007).
- As a result, this study will be “archeological” in nature – mining the relevant primary source material in Latin and Arabic for mentions of interpreters and descriptions of their practices. Though some might prefer a more critical approach to the sources, there are at least three good reasons for a straightforward reading of the narrative sources. First, there are enough primary source accounts of Third Crusade diplomacy from both Frankish and Ayyubid perspectives to help historians evaluate the reliability of particular narrative accounts for discrete events and encounters. Second, the fact that interpreters are usually mentioned in passing and often not mentioned at all (even when we know from another source that an interpreter was in fact present) gives us confidence that their presence in a given diplomatic encounter is not serving some literary or partisan function. Third, even if it turned out that some of these mentions were less than historical, they still provide valuable insight into the identities and functions of interpreters in this period. Whether or not a particular narrative account tells us exactly “what really happened” in a given interaction involving an interpreter, we can know that the interpreter in the text represents a plausible (or even predictable) interpreter identity and that their role in diplomatic negotiations would be what contemporary readers would expect from a diplomatic interpreter in the period.
- Niketas Choniates recounts the chilling fate of a duplicitous court interpreter named Aaron Isaakios of Corinth. When Emperor Manuel became aware of Aaron’s double-dealing, he ordered that his tongue be cut out: Niketas Choniates, O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniatēs, trans. Harry J. Magoulias (Detroit, 1984), 83.
- According to Ibn Shaddād, Richard “fully appreciated its significance and realised that he could only achieve any aim by adapting to what would satisfy the sultan”: Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 201; trans. Richards, 194.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 202–04; trans. Richards, 194–95.
- Though Ibn Shaddād claims that Saladin took neither Frankish proposal seriously, Saladin’s meeting with his emirs and his continued negotiations with both Frankish contingents suggest that he was serious about finding a diplomatic end to the conflict. Considering that it was Ibn Shaddād’s goal to boost Saladin’s jihad credentials, it should not surprise us that he consistently claims that Saladin’s preference was for war, not peace. Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 203.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 204; trans. Richards, 196.
- See Joshua Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (London, 1972), 369; and Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (New York, 2000), 333. For a more optimistic take on the language situation in the Levant, see Hussein M. Attiya, “Knowledge of Arabic in the Crusader States in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Journal of Medieval History 25 (1999): 203–13.
- Lewis, “Medieval Diglossia,” 123.
- Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 522.
- Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, 333.
- For examples, see Ernst Strehlke, Tabulae ordinis Theutonici (Berlin, 1869), 15–16, no. 16; and Cart Hosp nos. 2925 and 3213. For discussions on the role of indigenous scribes in local administration, see Benjamin Kedar, “The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant,” in Muslims Under Latin Rule, 1100–1300, ed. James M. Powell (Princeton, 1990), 157–58; and Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Some Lesser Officials in Latin Syria,” The English Historical Review 87 (1972): 1–26, at 23.
- The complex local politics are outlined in great detail in Jonathan Riley-Smith’s The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174–1277 (London, 1973), 101–20.
- See La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184–1197), ed. Margaret Ruth Morgan (Paris, 1982), 34, 105–106; and Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, ed. William Stubbs (London, 1864), 96–97, book 1, ch. 46, and 119–20, book 1, ch. 63.
- See Itinerarium Peregrinorum, 337, book 5, ch. 24; and Ambroise, The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, ed. Marianne Ailes (Woodbridge, 2003), lines 8690–93.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 77, 182, 187, 202, 204, 205, 234; trans. Richards, 74, 173, 179, 194, 196, 198, 231.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 182; trans. Richards, 173. Here Humphrey IV is referred to as the “son of Humphrey” [ibn Humfrī] because his father and grandfather were both named Humphrey.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 202; trans. Richards, 194.
- Ibn Shaddād’s perception of his prominence as a Frankish noble certainly stemmed from the reputation of his grandfather, Humphrey II, who also had close dealings with Saladin as constable of Jerusalem.
- On his work as an interpreter, see ‘Imād ad-Dīn, Conquête de la Syrie et de la Palestine par Saladin: (Al-fatḥ al-qussī fī l-fatḥ al-qudsī), trans. Henri Massé (Paris, 1972), 340; for other mentions, see ibid., 27, 31, 97, 105–7, 304–5.
- See ‘Imād ad-Dīn, Conquête de la Syrie, trans. Massé, 159–62; and Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī al-tārīkh, ed. Carl Tornberg, 14 vols. (Leiden, 1851–76; repr. Beirut, 1967), 12:27–28.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 97–98; trans. Richards, 90–91.
- For more on the grand officers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, see John La Monte, Feudal Monarchy in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1100 to 1291 (Cambridge, MA, 1932), 114–18, 252–53.
- WT 17.17. English translation: William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, trans. Emily Atwater Babcock and August C. Krey, 2 vols. (New York, 1943), 2:211–12.
- I raise the possibility of Turkish because scholars often uncritically assume that Muslim Seljuk nobles in Syria spoke Arabic. Of course, some did, but the mother tongue of the ruling Seljuks was Turkish, and the language of Seljuk administration was Persian. See Claude Cahen, The Formation of Turkey (Harlow, 2001), 140–41; and Rustam Shukurov, “Harem Christianity: The Byzantine Identity of Seljuk Princes,” in The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East, ed. A. C. S. Peacock and Sara Nur Yildiz (London, 2013), 129–30.
- WT 21.8; trans. Babcock and Krey, 2:410.
- One curious piece of evidence that further links Humphrey II with Saladin is found in the Itinerarium Peregrinorum, which claims that in his youth Saladin “went as a candidate for knighthood to Enfrid [Humphrey II of Toron, or Tibnin] … and received a belt of knighthood from him in accordance with the rite of the Franks”: Itinerarium Peregrinorum, 9, book 1, ch. 3. English translation: The Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, trans. Helen J. Nicholson (Aldershot, 1997), 27. This fantastic and unsupported claim, which is given little credence by Saladin’s modern biographers, may tell us more about Humphrey than it does about Saladin, namely, that decades after his death, Humphrey II was widely-known as the kind of Frankish noble who might enlist a Kurdish-Muslim warrior in his retinue.
- For more on this incident, see Yvonne Friedman, “Gestures of Conciliation: Peacemaking Endeavors in the Latin East,” in In Laudem Hierosolymitani: Studies in Crusades and Medieval Culture in Honour of Benjamin Z. Kedar, ed. Iris Shagrir, Ronnie Ellenblum, and Jonathan Riley-Smith, Crusades Subsidia 1 (Aldershot, 2007), 31–48, at 36–38.
- For a similar assessment of Hugh’s linguistic abilities, see Tuley, “A Century of Communication and Acclimatization,” 327; and Yvonne Friedman, Encounter between Enemies: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Leiden, 2002), 118.
- WT 19.29; trans. Babcock and Krey, 2:339–40.
- In the immediate aftermath of the siege of Alexandria, Hugh and Arnulf of Turbessel may well have encountered Saladin who was briefly a prisoner of the Franks. WT 19.30, pp. 906–907. (My thanks to Professor Jonathan Phillips for raising this point.)
- L’estoire de Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la terre d’Outremer in RHC Oc 2:111; see also Thomas C. Van Cleve, “The Crusade of Frederick II,” in Setton, Crusades, 2:453–54.
- Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 11:548–49; Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 234. Köhler places Balian of Ibelin in company with Reynald of Sidon and Humphrey IV of Toron as Arabic-speaking Franks employed as envoys and interpreters; however, the evidence does not support this attractive hypothesis. See Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East, 303. To the contrary, Ibn Shaddād notes that Balian used a dragoman in a private conversation between the two of them – evidence that all but eliminates the possibility that Balian was an able Arabic-speaker: RHC Or 3:21, 346; trans. Richards, 26.
- Jean de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, ed. Natalis de Wailly (Paris, 1868), 125, ch. 70. English translation: John of Joinville, Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. Caroline Smith (London, 2008), 233.
- Of course, this claim has potentially significant implications for our understanding of nature of Franco-Syrian society in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is beyond the scope of this article, but I explore this question at some length in William Murrell, “Dragomans and Crusaders: The Role of Translators and Translation in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean, 1098–1291” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 2018); see Introduction, Chapter 1, and Conclusion.
- Fulcher of Chartres famously claims, “Some [Franks] have taken wives not merely of their own people, but Syrians, or Armenians, or even Saracens who have received the grace of Baptism.” FC III, 37.5. English translation: Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095–1127, trans. Frances Rita Ryan and Harold S. Fink (Knoxville, TN, 1969; repr. New York, 1973), 271–72. On this topic, see Natasha Hodgson, “Conflict and Cohabitation: Marriage and Diplomacy between Latins and Cilician Armenians, c. 1097–1253,” in The Crusades and the Near East, 83–106.
- See Anna Komnene, The Alexiad, trans. E. R. A. Sewter, ed. Peter Frankopan (London, 2009), 303–4, book 11, ch. 2.
- The most important work on captivity (and language-learning in captivity) in the Frankish period is Friedman, Encounter between Enemies. For a discussion on the link between captivity and language-learning in the early modern Mediterranean, see John Gallagher, “Language‐learning, Orality, and Multilingualism in Early Modern Anglophone Narratives of Mediterranean Captivity.” Renaissance Studies 33 (2019): 639–61.
- ‘Imād ad-Dīn estimates 100,000, while Latin sources say 12,000. So large was the number of Frankish prisoners entering the slave market, one Muslim chronicler observes, that the price for slaves in Syria plummeted in the years after Hattin. See Friedman, Encounter Between Enemies, 44, 86 n. 59.
- Anna Komnene, The Alexiad, trans. Sewter, ed. Frankopan, 303, book 11, ch. 2.
- Niketas Choniates, O City, trans. Magoulias, 83.
- Friedman, Encounter Between Enemies, 118.
- We do not know Humphrey’s exact date of birth, but we do know that when he was betrothed to Isabella in 1180 he was probably a young teenager since William of Tyre observes that “young Humphrey… had now reached man’s estate.” WT 22.5; trans. Babcock and Krey, 2:451–52.
- Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, ed. William Wright and M. J. de Goeje (Leyden, 1907), 301.
- Banyas was in the same frontier region as Toron and by the late 1170s was held by the lords of Toron. See WT 22.5.
- Caffaro, De liberatione civitatum Orientis, in RHC Oc 5:67. English translation: Caffaro, Genoa and the Twelfth-Century Crusades, trans. Martin Hall and Jonathan Phillips (London, 2016), 115.
- L’estoire de Eracles in RHC Oc 2:111.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 97.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 206–8.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 205–6.
- Both Friedman and Köhler argue that the procedure described by Ibn Shaddād was the dominant model for diplomatic negotiations in the medieval eastern Mediterranean; and it is this model that we see operating in negotiations between Richard and Saladin in 1191–92. See Friedman, “Peacemaking: Perceptions and Practices in the Medieval Latin East,” 238; and Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East, 303.
- The Arabic literally says that Abu Bakr was “alone with” [infirad bihi] Richard when he reportedly made his counter proposal for Saladin: Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 231–32; trans. Richards, 228.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 193, 196; trans. Richards, 185, 188. See also ‘Imād ad-Dīn, Conquête de la Syrie, trans. Massé, 353.
- See Ibn al-‘Adim, Zubdat al-halab, ed. S. Dahan, 3 vols. (Damascus, 1954), 3:75.
- Another interesting question raised by al-Ṣanī‘at is that of literacy. As a secretary [kātib], he would have been tasked with drafting diplomatic correspondence. Should we imagine that al-Ṣanī‘at was not only fluent in French but literate in Latin and was tasked with drafting diplomatic correspondence for Richard during the Third Crusade negotiations? It is difficult to come to any firm conclusions based on the available evidence; however, even if it turns out that al-Ṣanī‘at was not literate in Latin, someone else in al-Adil’s entourage must have been. Konrad Hirschler’s important work on the Ashrafīya library in Damascus, which it turns out contained Latin and Old French texts, has opened up new discussions about Latin literacy in medieval Syria. See Konrad Hirschler, Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library: the Ashrafīya Library Catalogue (Edinburgh, 2016); and Gabriele Giannini and Laura Minervini, “The Old French Texts of the Damascus Qubba,” in The Damascus Fragments: Towards a History of the Qubbat al-khazna Corpus of Manuscripts and Documents, ed. Arianna D‘Ottone Rambach, Konrad Hirschler, and Ronny Vollandt (Beirut, 2020), 331–62.
- This dominant perspective can be summarized by Hillenbrand: “The Islamic sources suggest that very few Muslims were concerned to learn the languages of the Crusaders. In fact, although there is some awareness of their ethnic diversity on the part of the Muslim chroniclers… there seems to be no perception that there was more than one ‘Frankish language.’” Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, 331.
- For examples of Muslim polyglots leveraging their linguistic skills on the battlefield or as spies, see Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl tarikh Dimashq, ed. H. F. Amedroz (Leiden, 1908), 332; Itinerarium Peregrinorum, 91–92, book 1 chapter 41; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 12:32–33.
- See Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 11:398–99; and Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 223.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 206.
- Itinerarium Peregrinorum, 383–85, book 6, chapter 3; Ambroise, The History of the Holy War, line 10239.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 231.
- Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 233–35.
- Though little documentary evidence survives from the twelfth century, we know that from the earliest days of Frankish-Muslim war and diplomacy, peacemaking involved both written treaties and spoken oaths of ratification. For early examples, see FC 2.41.3, p. 532; and Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl tarikh Dimishq, 190. For a detailed discussion on the significance of oath-taking in Christian-Muslim diplomacy in the western Mediterranean context, see Belen Vicens, “Swearing by God: Muslim Oath-Taking in Late Medieval and Early Modern Christian Iberia,” Medieval Encounters 20 (2014): 117–51.
- Friedman, “Peacemaking: Perceptions and Practices in the Medieval Latin East,” 247.
- See Jean de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, 127–28, ch. 71; trans. Smith, 234–35.
- WT 19.19; trans. Babcock and Krey, 2:321. William does not specify the language of the oath. I would argue that the caliph repeated the oath in his own language (Arabic), as seems to have been the diplomatic custom. However, Köhler hypothesizes, based on the fact that the caliph repeated “syllable by syllable,” that perhaps Hugh dictated the oath to the caliph in French or Latin. See Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East, 305.
- To date, the most detailed and insightful analysis of written treaties in this period is Benjamin Z. Kedar, “Religion in Catholic-Muslim Correspondence and Treaties,” in Diplomatics in the Eastern Mediterranean 1000–1500, ed. Alexander D. Beihammer, Maria G. Parani and Christopher D. Schabel (Leiden, 2008), 407–21, at 416–19.
- For example, al-Qalqashandi provides the text of a 1283 treaty between the Mamluks and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, as well as the texts of the oaths of ratification that were uttered by al-Mansur Qalawun and the Frankish envoys in his multi-volume chancery guide, Al-Qalqashandi, Ṣubḥ al-a‘shā fi sinā‘at al-inshā, ed. Muhammad ‘Abd al-Rasūl Ibrāhīm, 14 vols. (Cairo, 1913–20), 13:311–14. English translation: see Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, 1260–1290, 73–91.
- For example, according to Ibn al-Furāt, Baybars traveled with a translator who knew “the Frankish script [qalam al-faranjī].” And on the Frankish side, even the military orders employed Arabic scribes to translate diplomatic correspondence and treaties. See Ibn al-Furāt, Ayyubids, Mamlukes and Crusaders: Selections from the Tārīkh al-duwal wa’l-Mulūk of Ibn al-Furāt in Two Volumes: The Text, ed. and trans. U. Lyons, M. C. Lyons, and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Cambridge, 1971), 1:139 and 2:110; and Ibn Nazif al-Ḥamawī, Al-ta’rikh al-Mansuri, ed. Abū-’l-ʻĪd Dūdū (Damascus, 1982), 203 and 261.
- For example, in 1248, an envoy of the Mongols delivered a letter to King Henry of Cyprus written in Persian. According to Eudes de Chateauroux, the Frankish king “had a translation made word for word”: see Peter Jackson, The Seventh Crusade, 1248–1254: Sources and Documents (Aldershot, 2007), 76.
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