Introduction

This chapter has two minor goals: to clarify and to speculate. The subject of both of these goals is the twelfth-century Syrian Muslim historian and man of letters Hamdan b. ‘Abd al-Rahim al-Atharibi (d. 1147). For many scholars of the Crusades in Syria, his name and the few details we have about him will already be familiar: what follows is thus not so much anything that is radically new, as it is a clarification of the details we do have about him (and which, to my mind, have not received adequate scrutiny) and an opportunity to speculate about some details that we, frankly, do not have. But, for all that, I do hope it will at least stimulate some new thought on the worlds – political, economic and literary – that he inhabited. My clarification and speculation will be spread over three broad areas: first, Hamdan's context and career in northern Syria in the era of the First Crusade; second, his literary production, in particular his History of the Franks, which I feel is a somewhat misunderstood work; and finally, some thoughts about his place in the constellation of Syrian historiography so that we all might gain a better understanding of what Hamdan wrote, and what, therefore, we have lost.

The Syrian Context

As no complete works of his own survive, what little we know about Hamdan comes from the biographical entry (tarjama) devoted to him in Ibn al-‘Adim's biographical dictionary of Aleppo, the Bughyat al-talab fi ta’rikh Halab. This entry offers some important details about Hamdan's career, his prose writings and samples of his poetry. Moreover, Ibn al-‘Adim (d. 1262) knew some of Hamdan's descendants personally and they served as direct sources for him for some family lore that he reported in his own historical works. He also had in his possession some sections of Hamdan's writings, and he quoted them here and there in the Bughya. Ibn al-‘Adim also made use of Hamdan in compiling his chronicle, the Zubdat al-halab min ta’rikh Halab, but – as was usually the case in that work – he is nowhere acknowledged by name.