Saladin's secretary's ornate account of the conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade, ending with Saladin's death in 1193. Nothing on 1200 itself, but it is the state's own record of the princes and emirs who held the Ayyubid lands in 1200 (al-Adil, al-Zahir, al-Afdal, al-Mansur of Hama, the Jazira lords) and of the frontier and truce terms the Franks inherited. His court history to 1193, al-Barq al-Shami, survives only in two parts and in Abu Shama's quotations. Imad al-Din died at Damascus in June 1201. Written in rhymed prose; events sit under rhetoric.
About this source
- Title
- al-Fath al-qussi fi'l-fath al-Qudsi
- Author
- Imad al-Din al-Isfahani (al-Katib)
- Author's dates
- 1125 to 1201
- Written
- about 1192 to 1193
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- 1187 to 1193
- Kind
- History
Landberg's Arabic (1888) is public domain; Masse's French is in copyright. The surviving parts of al-Barq al-Shami (vols 3 and 5) are edited in Amman (1987) and Cairo, not free. The Russian extracts on vostlit are from al-Bundari's abridgement of his Seljuk history, not from this work.
Where to read it
Editions
Translations
- H. Masse, Conquete de la Syrie et de la Palestine par Saladin, Documents relatifs a l'histoire des croisades 10 (Paris, 1972), French (not freely online)