Award Information
My project seeks to address for the first time how the Muslim communities of the 13th-century Kingdom of Jerusalem experience life under crusader rule. Fleshing out the lives of these subjects is the key to better understanding this important period of history, and will offer insights into the ways in which cultures adapt and adjust to new rulership more broadly. By posing questions concerning the Muslim communities' relations among each other and with other groups, and their roles in political, economic, and cultural life of the kingdom, my research presents a new vantage point from which to consider the popularly accepted notion that the crusades, and by extension the crusader states, were a locus of a monolithic clash of West and East or Christianity and Islam. By untangling the relations between the Muslim communities and their rulers, my work will offer a more fully realized image of a society too multifaceted to be reasonably reduced to a black and white binary opposition. In order to achieve this, I will bring into direct conversation Latin, Old French, and Arabic sources typically used separately from one another as well as consider the role of the physical environment through an incorporation of extent archaeological remains. I will conduct this research while based at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in order to have access to its libraries which contain source editions not readily available elsewhere and to work in consultation with the primary experts in the field. Conducting research in Israel will also grant me critical access to archaeological sites from which I can attempt to reconstruct the daily lived experience of these communities.