NML490H1S - Readings in Classical Arabic from the Age of the Crusades (original) (raw)

Course Description: Using the extant medieval Arabic literary corpus as primary sources, coupled with secondary scholarly literature in English, this course will provide a historical and historiographical survey of the Crusades from an Arabo-Islamic perspective. It will examine the Muslim responses to the Crusades, from the beginning of the movement at the 1096 call for the First Crusade to Salah al-Din’s conquest of Frankish Jerusalem and the stalemate of the Third Crusade (1093). The course will examine each period within this era by sampling in Arabic the remarkably rich, Arabo-Islamic corpus dating from the classical medieval period. Students will read historiographical sources, such as passages from universal chronicles, regnal biographies, dynastic histories, and biographical dictionaries; literary sources, such as poetry, travelogue literature, and autobiography; as well as religious texts, such as Qur’an, hadith, tafsir, jihad treatises, and fada’il (religious merits of cities) literature that inform the Islamic response to the Crusades. The course will conclude by examining the legacy of the Crusades in the modern Middle East and their depiction in modern politics, history, religion, and culture. By the end of the course, students will develop gradual proficiency and familiarity in Classical Arabic through reading different samples of historical, religious, and cultural literature pertaining to the Age of the Crusades.