Ray Saintonge wrote
We never know whether we will find the key source in the next place that we look. Fermat's Last Theorem remained unproven for three centuries because nobody could find the killer counterexample.
No, because no one could find a proof. We _now_ know that was the reason.
Until recently the only available sources for writing about the Crusades were European ones.
The Receuil des historiens des croisades (1881 onwards) included Arabic language sources in translation. Amin Maalouf's book mentions at least one other 1890s translation. 'Only' is certainly wrong.
Charles
----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote
We never know whether we will find the key source in the next place that we look. Fermat's Last Theorem remained unproven for three centuries because nobody could find the killer counterexample.
No, because no one could find a proof. We _now_ know that was the reason.
That's the benefit of hindsight. During those three centuries people would have been satisfied with either proof or disproof.
Until recently the only available sources for writing about the Crusades were European ones.
The Receuil des historiens des croisades (1881 onwards) included Arabic language sources in translation. Amin Maalouf's book mentions at least one other 1890s translation. 'Only' is certainly wrong.
Nearly 600 years after the Battle of Acre is recent. Judging from Maalouf's notes there does not appear to be any serious attempt to look at the Arab perspective until the 1950s with Gabrieli (1957 not 1969) and the French translations of Ibn Jubayr and Ibn al-Qalanisi. Maalouf (p.270) makes an interesting about the suppression of stories of Frankish cannibalism: "In the twentieth century, however, these accounts have generally been concealed - perhaps in the interests of the West's'civilizing mission'?"
Ec