Introduction

This first volume contains the first six books of Albert of Aachen’s twelve-book Historia Ierosolimitana. The Latin title is difficult to translate in a few words: it is ‘the story of people and things to do with Jerusalem’. More precisely, the Historia offers a narrative of the First Crusade (Books 1-6) and of the careers of the first generation of Latin settlers in Outremer (Books 7-12). It is a long and detailed account of events between 1095 and 1119, and the more important because its author apparently did not know the contemporary accounts written by Fulcher of Chartres, Raymond of Aguilers and the anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum.1 Since these histories were to an extent interdependent, Albert’s very different perspective on the same events is at the same time invaluable and – where his evidence differs from theirs – problematical.