Crusader Syria in the Thirteenth Century

The Old French ’Rothelin’ Continuation of William of Tyre’s Historia provides one of the best contemporary narratives of the history of the crusades and of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the mid-thirteenth century. Covering the period 1229-61, it has vivid accounts of the disastrous expeditions led by Count Theobald of Champagne (1239-40) and King Louis IX of France (1248-54) as well as of other events in the East. But the text contains far more than this, with a detailed description of Jerus