Selections from An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades

📖 Public Domain Classic — Islamic Golden Age

Description

Usama ibn Munqidh lived to ninety, and for most of that long life he fought the Crusaders, hunted lions in the hills above his family's castle at Shayzar, served the courts of Damascus and Fatimid Egypt, and, in the end, found refuge and honor at the court of Saladin himself. In old age he set down his recollections in the Kitab al-I'tibar, and the result is unlike any other surviving account of the Crusades: not a chronicle of battles and treaties, but a nobleman's own memory of narrow escapes, favorite horses, and the odd, sometimes alarming customs of the Franks he had known for decades as neighbors, enemies, and occasionally friends.

This edition presents four selections from Philip K. Hitti's 1929 translation: Usama's early battles defending his family's castle, his celebrated hunting stories of lions, leopards, and even a tiger, his single most famous chapter — a series of candid observations on Frankish law, medicine, and customs that remains the most quoted eyewitness account of Crusader-Muslim contact to survive from the period — and his closing reflections on old age alongside his eulogy of the sultan who rescued him from obscurity. The complete memoir contains many more chapters of anecdote and campaign narrative; this edition selects the passages of broadest interest to the general reader.

Author & Genre

Author: Usama ibn Munqidh (1095–1188)
Genre: Memoir / History / Islamic Golden Age Non-Fiction
Translator: Philip K. Hitti (Columbia University Press, 1929)

"Mysterious are the works of the Creator, the author of all things! When one comes to recount cases regarding the Franks, he cannot but glorify Allah... for he sees them as animals possessing the virtues of courage and fighting, but nothing else."