Introduction

The famous Historia Hierosolymitana of William ofTyre and its translation into French as L \Estoire de Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la Terre d 'Outremer inspired many later writers to continue this work and to note down events in and affecting the Holy Land in their own time. William’s text described the history of the crusades and the Latin East from the time of the First Crusade (1095-99) until 1184. The large family of continuations, some written in Syria, others in France, dates from the thirteenth century and represents the efforts of various people to fill the gap between 1184 and their own day. Together these form a rich corpus of source material for the later crusades to the East, including the mid-thirteenth-century campaigns of Theobald, count of Champagne and king of Navarre, and Richard, earl of Cornwall, in Syria and of King Louis IX of France in Egypt.