When Jacques de Vitry (1160/70–1240) was writing his Historia orientalis (History of the East), likely composed in stages during his tenure as bishop of Acre (1216–27), the Latin-held territories of the Levant were significantly diminished in comparison to the first century of their existence. The former lands of the kingdom of Jerusalem south of the port city of Tyre, including the city of Jerusalem itself, had all been captured by the Ayyūbid sultan of Egypt and Syria, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, in the late 1180s, though some key footholds, such as the port of Acre, had been recovered in the intervening years. After the sultan's death in 1193, though, the focus of crusading endeavour in the eastern Mediterranean became firmly fixated on Egypt, then ruled by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn's brother, al-‘Ādil. Jacques himself participated in the Fifth Crusade between 1218 and 1221; a campaign that sought, and failed, to recapture Jerusalem by first subduing Egypt. The vast and varied landscapes and waterscapes of the Levant, then, many of which were viewed by Latin Christian contemporaries as sacred beyond any other places in God's created order, remained outside of Latin hands, having only briefly been held by them in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries – a fact lamented by Jacques. Indeed, this loss, and Jacques’ belief in the imperative that Latin Christendom recoup these territories, are central themes of the Historia orientalis.

The text is at once a crusade narrative, an itinerary of sacred sites, a history of the Holy Land, a treatise on the flora, fauna and peoples of ‘the East’, an anti- Islamic polemic and more besides. It draws on many textual influences, including the works of Augustine of Hippo, Pliny the Elder, Julius Solinus, Isidore of Seville, William of Tyre and, of course, the Old and New Testaments. Moreover, while Jacques’ discussion may reach out to the exoticised fringes of the known world, much like the mappa mundi he tells us he also consulted in the preparation of his narrative, the city of Jerusalem remains firmly positioned at its centre. Although it was composed in the Latin East, it was written for audiences in western Europe, where, as Jessalynn Bird has shown, it proved popular. Jean Donnadieu, the text's most recent editor, has counted no fewer than 124 manuscripts dating from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries.