The Prester John Legend Between East and West During the Crusades: Entangled Eastern-Latin Mythical Legacies

Author:   Ahmed M.A. Sheir
Publisher:   Trivent Publishing
ISBN:  

9786156405289


Pages:   367
Publication Date:   30 July 2022
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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The Prester John Legend Between East and West During the Crusades: Entangled Eastern-Latin Mythical Legacies


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Overview

This book considers the history of the Prester John legend and its impact on the Crusades, investigating its entangled mythical history between East and West during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The present study thus responds to the still pressing need for a comprehensive historical investigation of the twelfth and thirteenth crusading history of the legend and its impact on the Muslim-Crusader encounters, examining various Latin, Arabic, Syriac, and Coptic accounts. It further reflects on new eastern aspects of the legend, presenting a new Arab scholarly view. This book first charts a pre-history of the legend in the late ancient Christian prophecy of the Last Emperor down to the emergence of the legend in the mid-twelfth century. Second, the work presents a historical discussion of the legend and its association with actual occurrences in the Far East and the Levant, analysing the legend history under the crusading crisis and the imperial papal schism in Europe. Meanwhile, the work considers the vague Prester John Letter addressed to Manuel I Komnenus, Byzantine Emperor, and its elaborate conception of a mythical eastern kingdom, revealing imaginative parallels on the wondrous East and legendary Eastern Christian kings in Arabic Muslim and Christian accounts of the Muslim geographer and cartographer al-Idr?s?, the Coptic ?b? al-Mak?rim and the Syriac Ibn al-?Ibr? (Bar Hebraeus), among others. Moreover, the book examines how the legend impacted war and peace processes between the Ayyubids and the Crusaders during the Fifth Crusade against Egypt (1217-1221), revealing how it was mingled with Arabic and Eastern Christian prophecies at the time. The study concludes by investigating the perception of Prester John by the papal and European envoys to the Mongols in the thirteenth century, revealing how the legend was instrumentalised (and even weaponised) to establish a Latin-Mongol crusade through a parallel exploration of relevant Latin, Arabic and Syriac sources.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ahmed M.A. Sheir
Publisher:   Trivent Publishing
Imprint:   Trivent Medieval
Weight:   0.287kg
ISBN:  

9786156405289


ISBN 10:   6156405283
Pages:   367
Publication Date:   30 July 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgements Note of Transliteration and Style List of Figures and Maps List of Abbreviations INTRODUCTION Historiography: Prester John between Past and Present Objectives and Methodology CHAPTER 1. Setting a Geographic and Mythico-historical Stage for the Prester John Legend CHAPTER 2. Between Transmission and Reception: The Birth of the Prester John Legend and the Crusader-Muslim Conflict, 1122-1145 CHAPTER 3. The Prester John Letter and its Perception between the Crusading Crisis in the Levant and Imperial-Papal Schism in the West CHAPTER 4. Imaging the Prester John Kingdom in the Three Indias: The Legend's Entanglements with Alexander Romance, Jewish and Arab Muslim-Christian Imagination CHAPTER 5. Waiting for King David, Son of Prester John: The Impact of the Legend on Peace and War during the Fifth Crusade (615-618/1217-1221) CHAPTER 6. The Mongol Figure of Prester John: Remembering the Legend and the Enterprise of Latin-Mongol Crusade(s), 1222-1300 CONCLUSION Bibliography Index

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Author Information

Ahmed Sheir holds a PhD from Philipps-Universität Marburg in 2021, where he continued as a research fellow. He is recently appointed a postdoc researcher at the Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin. He is also an affiliated lecturer of medieval history at the University of Damanhour-Egypt. His research interests include the history of the crusades, myth, literature and history, medieval East-West relations and Jewish-Christian-Muslim interrelationships.

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