The period of the Crusades in the history of the eastern Mediterranean is usually purveyed by its historians (medieval and modern) as a period of fierce military conflict or cultural exchange. Yet given the intense, and in some cases unprecedented, human relationships that formed as a result of these conflicts, it would seem to form an ideal laboratory for the study of medieval emotions. This talk will probe the advantages and limitations of such a study by examining the concepts of love and friendship as expressed in first-person sources, particularly those written by Muslim authors, whose works are not as widely available as those of their Latin Christian counterparts.

Paul M. Cobb is Professor and Department Chair in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a social and cultural historian of the pre-modern Islamic world. His areas of interest include the history of memory, historiography, Islamic relations with the West, and travel and exploration. He is, in particular, a recognized authority on the history of the medieval Levant and of the Crusades in their Islamic context. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including White Banners: Contention in ‘Abbasid Syria, 750-880 (2001); Usama ibn Munqidh: Warrior-Poet of the Age of Crusades (2005); and The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades, a translation of the “memoirs” and other works of Usama ibn Munqidh (2008). He is also the co-editor (with Wout van Bekkum) of Strategies of Medieval Communal Identity: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2003) and (with Antoine Borrut) of Umayyad Legacies: History and Memory from Syria to Spain (2010). His latest book is The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (2014).

Free and open to the public.

This event is part of the Thursday Series of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.