Ibn al-Athir - The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fil-Tarikh. Part 1

The Years 491-541/1097-1146
The Coming of the Franks and The Muslim Response

Translated by

D.S. Richards

Ibn al-Athrs chronicle, al-Kmil fl-tarkh , which one could translate as The Perfect or Complete Work of History , is an impressive achievement. Within the wide chronological and geographical scope of its pages it presents a narrative that starts with Creation, passes through those areas of pre-Islamic history that Muslims were aware of, that is, accounts of Persian, Roman and Jewish history and the traditions of the Arabs before Islam, and then traces in a broadly annalistic fashion the history of the caliphate and the various dynasties that succeeded one another in the Islamic world from Spain to the borders of central Asia.

His narrative ends abruptly towards the end of the second decade of the thirteenth century just a little before his death. The standard nineteenth-century edition reproduces from the manuscripts the rubric that announced the year 629/1231-2 but was never followed by any further text. Other, mainly minor, indications within the text indicate that the work did not ever receive a final revision.

In the manuscript age the relative paucity of books and the fragility of stored knowledge meant that there was a continual reprocessing of previous writings. Especially in the field of historiography, as time passed and historys tale grew longer, there was a strong tendency to reduce previous material to manageable proportions and then append an account of ones own times. This is clearly what Ibn al-Athr was about over the whole range of his work. For the first centuries of Islam his main source was the chronicle of al-abar. The introduction to the Kmil that Ibn al-Athr wrote makes it clear that his aim was to produce a discrete work which would enable students of history to dispense with the need to consult a variety of works. This may well be described as an undertaking of abbreviation but the result is a work of considerable dimensions. The edition used for this translation amounts to twelve substantial volumes. It is the comprehensiveness of his narrative that gives this work its value, as does the fact that, following on from those parts that are based on al-abar, this chronicle preserves sources that have not otherwise survived. That these sources are not always explicitly identified is regrettable. However, it is a generally held opinion that the study of Islamic history would be much the poorer without Ibn al-Athrs Kmil .

This volume appears in the series Crusader Texts in Translation. Ibn al-Athrs account of the Muslim struggle with the Crusaders is, of course, the justification for its inclusion and this translation starts from the point at which Ibn al-Athr introduces into his narrative reference to the background and initial progress of the First Crusade, that is, the year 491/1097-8, which comes in the tenth volume of the Beirut edition. This translation ends with the death of Zank in 541/1146, which may be understood to mark the end of a stage in the response of Islam to the phenomenon of the Crusades.