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

INTRODUCTION
i7
in Jerusalem as "my friends" (infra, p. 164), and does not hesitate
to inform us that "a Frankish reverend knight" used to call him
"my brother" (infra, p. 161). His account of the impressions he
gained from his enemies, the Franks, gives us probably the best
index to his judicious character as a writer.
And now for the manuscript itself. The Kitab al-I'tibdr of the
Escurial is a unique manuscript of 134 folios, exclusive of the first
twenty-one folios, which are missing. It is written in black ink
in the style of Syrian calligraphy belonging to the thirteenth or
early fourteenth century and bears in the colophon the following:
At the end of the book the following words occurred:
"I have read this book from beginning to end in a number of sessions
under the direction of my lord . . . 'Adud-al-Din, the companion of
kings and sultans . . . And I have asked him to give me a certificate
authorizing me to transmit the contents of this book to others, which
he did, inscribing the certificate with his own noble hand. And that
was on Thursday, the thirteenth of Safar, in the year 610."
(Infra, p 255.)
§afar 13, 610 (July 4, 1213) I take to be the date of the writing
of the mother of our copy and not of our copy itself as Derenbourg
22 seems to think. The opening words of the colophon make
that clear. Our copy, therefore, is undated, but is taken from an
earlier one written twenty-six lunar years after the death of the
author and bearing a certificate of identification signed by his
favorite son, Murhaf. The colloquialisms used and the mistakes
in grammar and spelling committed leave no doubt that a copyist's
hand had played havoc with the original. Usamah may have
dictated his book in a more or less conversational style, but the
author of a Dlwan which was considered a classic and of a book
on al-Badi' (rhetoric) could not have been guilty of such inelegant
phrases as are common in the extant manuscript.
Many of the weaknesses common to Arabic transcription and
orthography characterize our copy — paucity of diacritical marks,
rarity of vowel points, absence of punctuation marks (including
those denoting the completion of a full sentence and those setting
off quoted matter) and lack of any system to indicate proper nouns.
Besides, there are other difficulties inherent in the task of
" Ousima Ibn Mounkidh, texte arabe (Paris, 1886), Avertissement, p. x.