Primary Sources on the Crusades

First Crusade

Eyewitness accounts of the First Crusade

Siege of Antioch from Peter Tudebode's Historia de Hierosolymitano Itinere

Letters of the Crusaders Written from the Holy Land  

Early Crusader States

Contemporary reactions to the foundation of the Templars

The Siege of Tyre in 1111-12, according to the Chronicle of Ibn Al-Qalanisi

Hugh ‘The Sinner’: Letter to the Knights of Christ in the Temple at Jerusalem

The Siege of Ascalon (1153)

Letter from Aymeric, Patriarch of Antioch, to Louis VII, King of France (1164)

The Battle of Hattin and the Third Crusade

The Battle of Hattin from a Muslim source  

Naval Battle off of Acre (1190)

Itinerary of Richard I and others to the Holy Land, by Richard of Holy Trinity, (once ascribed to Geoffrey of Vinsauf) (PDF)

The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes (PDF)

Two accounts of the conquest of Cyprus by Richard I (1191)

Fourth Crusade

The Sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade

Robert of Clari's account of the Fourth Crusade

Selected texts concerning the Fourth Crusade

Letters of Innocent III concerning the Fourth Crusade and the Latin Empire of Constantinople  

Later Crusades

Jacques de Vitry: Sermons to a Military Order

The Sixth Crusade (1249), according to Abu al-Faraj Gregory Bar Hebraeus

Fall of the Crusader States

The Mongol Invasion of the Middle East (1258-1260), according to Rashiduddin Fazlullah  

The surrender of Gaston castle (1268), according The Catalan Rule of the Templars

Accounts about the Loss of Acre (1291)

Crusade planning in the late thirteenth century

Adh-Dhababi's Record of the Destruction of Damascus by the Mongols in 1299-1301

Crusades outside of the Middle East

Documents Relating to the Baltic Crusade (1199-1266)

The Siege of Termes (1210), according to the Song of the Cathar Wars

The Siege of Termes (1210), according to the Historia Albigensis

The Siege of Toulouse in 1217-18, according to The Chronicle of William of Puylaurens

Crusading in the Later Middle Ages

A plan to regain the Holy Land from the Master of the Hospitallers (c.1305)

Naval Contract by the Papacy against the Turks (1334)

The Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, according to Johann Schiltberger

Sources on Tamerlane (1336-1405), including the Battle of Angora (1402)

Bartolomeo de Giano, A Letter on the Cruelty of the Turks (1438) (PDF) 

The Siege of Constantinople (1453), according to Nicolo Barbaro

The Siege of Constantinople (1453), according to George Sphrantzes


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