Curating the enemy? : Re-reading the 'Recueil des historiens des croisades: historiens orientaux'

Abstract

Published under the auspices of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres between 1872 and 1906, the Recueil des historiens des croisades: historiens orientaux contains partial editions and French translations of medieval Arabic sources relating to the crusading period. Today, the five volumes of the Recueil remain the only access point to several important texts for non-Arabists when writing the history of the crusades. This article examines a series of curatorial and linguistic choices made by the Recueil’s editors, and traces the impact of these decisions upon the field of crusade studies. Particular emphasis will be placed upon the nineteenth-century translations of Ibn al-ʿAdīm’s (d. 1262) Zubdat al-ḥalab min taʾrīkh Ḥalab (‘The Cream of the Milk of the History of Aleppo’). The first part of the article provides an overview of the modern historiographical debates on the counter-crusade paradigm, the main analytical model used to interpret Islamic experiences of the Levantine crusading movement. The second part reviews the Recueil’s paratexts, related academic reports and editorial correspondence to reconstruct the chronology underpinning this influential translation project. The third part compares the translations themselves with the underlying Arabic manuscripts and editions, in order to evaluate the impact of specific linguistic choices and textual omissions. The conclusion then reflects upon how the nineteenth-century curation of medieval Arabic texts in the Recueil has shaped, and continues to shape, how modern crusade historians conceptualise and interact with this key source base.