‘All ibn Tahir al-Sulami is one of the most important Muslim sources for the period of the First Crusade (1096-1099).
He was a Shafi‘ite teacher and scholar at the Great Mosque in Damascus who in 1105 dictated a series of public lectures calling the Muslims to jihad (holy war). Only parts of the original manuscript from which he dictated, entitled Kitab al-Jihad (Book of the Holy War), have survived. The manuscript has been partially edited, with a French translation, by Emmanuel Sivan. Al-Sulami’s text is vital to modern understanding of the crusades, representing one of the earliest extant calls to the jihad from the period. However, the impact of his work at the time seems to have been limited. Only later in the twelfth century did calls to the jihad begin to have significant effect.
-Niall Christie
Bibliography
Christie, Niatl, and Deborah Gerish, “Parallel Preachings: Urban II and al-Sulami,” Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 15 (2003), 139-148.
Eliseeff, Nikita, “The Reaction of the Syrian Muslims after the Foundation of the First Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” in Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, ed. Maya Shatzmiller (Leiden: Brill, 1993), pp. 162-172.
Hillenbrand, Carole, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999).
Sivan, Emmanuel, “La genese de la contre-croisade: Un traite damasquin du debut du Xlle siecle,” Journal Asiatique 254 (1966), 197-224.
World History
