Women and the Crusades

Helen J. Nicholson
Hereford Historical Association, Friday 22 Feb. 2008

Did women support crusades? Did women go on crusades? If they did, did they fight?
Did women on the other side fight? Cultural norms in western European Christian
and Muslim society in the middle ages did not expect women to take part in fighting.
Yet some of the contemporary sources indicate that they did take an active part in
crusade warfare. Is there any truth in these reports, or were they simply slander or
propaganda?

Before going any further with this question, I would like to lay down a few basic
foundations. The first question is was what was a crusade? Then, when were the
crusades? Scholars dont agree on the answers to these questions. They all agree that
the crusades involved a journey, and involved religion and fighting, but disagree on
almost everything else.

What were the crusades?

Recently the American historian Giles Constable divided the different opinions into
four general categories. I summarise:1
(i)

The generalists: define a crusade as any Christian religious war fought

for God, and see the modern attempts to define a crusade as artificial and
misleading. They would argue that, in arguing over precise definitions of this
medieval undertaking, modern scholars are trying to impose modern forms of
thinking on to a society that had a very different world view.

(ii)

The popularists: regard the crusade as essentially a religious

undertaking for the masses and/or for warriors (not for the clergy).
(iii)

The traditionalists: believe that the crusades were military-religious

expeditions which set out to recover or defend Jerusalem.

(iv)

The pluralists: look at how crusades were recruited and organized and

argue that any military campaign which fitted that pattern of recruitment and
organization was a crusade, while those that do not fit were not.
All these scholars would agree that the crusades were essentially a medieval
occurrence: crusading had almost disappeared by 1600. They generally agree that
those who went on crusades believed that taking part in a crusade was a form of
penance for sins. A common form of penance in the middle ages was to go on a
pilgrimage, a journey to a particularly holy place. Jerusalem was a common goal of
pilgrimages, and the crusade to Jerusalem was in fact called a pilgrimage.
Scholars also generally agree that a crusade was a holy war: a religious war
fought for God, to advance what the crusaders believed to be Gods plan. Typically it
was a defensive war, but it could involve trying to win back territory which had once
been ruled by Christians.
Scholars also agree that those who took part in crusades made the vow to join
the expedition and sewed a cross on to their clothing as a symbol of the vow. The
terms to be signed by the cross or to take the cross(se croisier in medieval
French, and crux suscepit, crux accepit or crucizo in medieval Latin) were already
being used by writers during the twelfth century, but the word crusade did not
come into use in English until the late sixteenth century, and the equivalent word
croisade appeared in France in the fifteenth century.2 In the Middle Ages, people
took the cross, but they called the expedition a pilgrimage, or a passage

(meaning voyages or journeys) or Christs business. So you will realise that the
definition of what we now call a crusade was actually quite imprecise during the
Middle Ages.

When did crusades begin?

Again, scholars dont agree! Some historians argue that the first crusade was the
campaign of Spanish Christians against the Muslim-ruled city of Barbastro in the
Iberian Peninsula in 1064. This campaign included Christian warriors from outside
the Peninsula and may have had the support of the pope. In 1087 a naval force from
the Italian maritime cities of Pisa and Genoa and others attacked and plundered the
North African coastal city of al-Mahdiyyah. Countess Matilda of Tuscany (d. 1115)
was one of the sponsors of that naval campaign. Contemporary Christian descriptions
of the campaign depicted it in similar terms to the later crusades, as a holy war led by
Christ, fighting against the godless Muslims. The Pisans wore a pilgrims badge,
whereas as the crusaders would later wear a cross. If crusaders must wear a cross
then these campaigns were not crusades, but they certainly foreshadowed the later
campaigns in their personnel and their motivation.
Most scholars agree that the crusades began in November 1095 when Pope
Urban II preached a sermon at the Church Council of Clermont in south-eastern
France. The result was the First Crusade, a military expedition against the Turks of
Asia Minor, which recovered territory that had until recently belonged to the
Byzantine emperor. The expedition went on to capture further fortresses and towns in
Syria and Palestine, culminating in the capture of the city of Jerusalem in July 1099.
The crusaders set up new Christian states in Syria and Palestine.

Other crusading fronts included the Iberian Peninsula (now Spain and
Portugal), where Christian warriors fought to capture territory that had been ruled by
Christians until the eighth century; the Baltic area, where Christian warriors fought in
defence of Christian territory and to persuade pagan peoples, to convert to
Christianity; wars between popes and their enemies in Italy; and wars against heretics,
Christians who rejected the authority of the institutionalized Church. Some scholars
argue that the crusade mentality was important in the voyages of exploration and
conquest of the New World in the sixteenth century.

For this evening, however, lets limit ourselves to the expeditions from the eleventh to
the fifteenth centuries.
Contemporaries of the first crusade noted that this military undertaking allowed
a way for people who were on the sidelines of religion to win Gods favour. Guibert
of Nogent, one of the monks who wrote about the First Crusade after it had
happened, described it as follows:
In our time God has ordained holy wars, so that the knightly order and the
wandering crowd--who had previously been engaged in slaughtering each
other, like their ancient pagan forebears--could find a new way of earning
salvation.3
But Guiberts talk of slaughter seems to apply only to men.

Did women support crusades?

Women were involved in crusading in various roles from the beginning of the
crusading movement. Ive already mentioned Countess Matilda of Tuscanys
involvement in the al-Mahdiyyah campaign in 1087. But the crusades did present a

contradiction for women. Pious Christian women could play an important spiritual
role in prayer support for the expeditions, give vital financial support (like Countess
Matilda), and could encourage their menfolk to go on crusade. But Christian
commentators saw them as a sexual threat to the spiritual purity of the Christian
warriors. So the crusade needed women but the Church authorities tried to
discourage them from actually going on crusade.
As crusades were also pilgrimages, initially women were involved in
crusading expeditions as peaceful pilgrims. Christian women joined the First Crusade
(1095-1099) also as partners and family of male pilgrims. Raymond of St Gilles,
count of Toulouse, brought his wife with him on the expedition (although the
contemporary writers dont tell us her name). Women performed various support
tasks, such as bringing water to warriors on the battlefield,4 undertaking labouring
tasks and hurling missiles at the enemy. They undertook basic medical and hygienic
care and encouraged warriors to fight.5 They acted as traders, selling food to the army,
or craftspeople, making arrows and bowstrings. But when the crusade was going
badly they were blamed for introducing sexual temptation to the crusaders, and the
religious leaders of the army sent all women out of the military camp as part of a
ceremonial cleansing intended to recover Gods approval for the undertaking. I doubt
that all women included the married noblewomen. I suspect it meant only the
women who did not have formal legal partners.
Crusade preachers depicted women as holding back their male relatives from
going on crusade, and warned that if they did there would be dire consequences,
telling stories of babies overlaid by mothers who had refused to allow their husbands
to join the crusade. In fact, research by Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith has shown
that women were often promoters of crusades, encouraging their male relatives to take

part. An English priest who was an eyewitness of the Third Crusade wrote about the
recruitment for that crusade in 1187, in a work called the Itinerarium Peregrinorum
(the Pilgrims journey):
The enthusiasm for the new pilgrimage was such that already it was not a
question of who had received the cross but of who had not yet done so. A great
many men sent each other wool and distaff, implying that if they exempted
themselves from this expedition they would only be fit for women`s work.
Brides urged their husbands and mothers incited their sons to go, their only
sorrow being that they were not able to set out with them because of the
weakness of their sex.
Itinerarium Peregrinorum, Bk. 1 ch. 17
Noblewomen continued to accompany their husbands on crusade. Eleanor of
Aquitaine accompanied King Louis VII of France on the Second Crusade, 1147-8;
Richard the Lionheart took his newly-wed wife, Berengaria of Navarre, and his sister,
Joanna, dowager queen of Sicily, to the Holy Land with him in 1191 on the Third
Crusade. In 1247-54, Margaret of Provence accompanied her husband, King Louis IX
of France, on crusade to Egypt. In 1271 Eleanor of Castile accompanied her husband
the Lord Edward, soon to be King Edward I of England, on his crusade to the Holy
Land.
What did these queens do on crusade? Eleanor of Aquitaine does not seem to
have taken any part in military operations. Jane Martindale has recently written in the
new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Statements that Eleanor raised a
military company of armed and mounted ladies are based upon fanciful imaginings of
the Amazons and their queen by the Byzantine writer Nicetas; it is more reliably
recorded that she and the German-born Empress Bertha communicated by letter, and

that the Emperor Manuel I Komnenos tried to arrange a Greek marriage for one of the
ladies accompanying the French army. So Eleanor acted as a diplomat. She also
caused scandal by her friendly relations with her uncle, Prince Raymond of Antioch.
Presumably the prince was hoping that Eleanor could persuade her husband King
Louis to send him permanent military aid against Nr al-Dn of Aleppo instead,
Louis set off for Acre, and the crusade did more harm than good to the European
settlers in the East.
Queens Berengaria and Joanna are hardly mentioned during the events of the
Third Crusade; they arrived in the East with Richard the Lionheart; the Muslim
writers mention a suggestion during negotiations between Richard and Saladin that
Joanna should marry Saladins brother (but she refused); the queens left the east
shortly before Richard left in autumn 1192. Richards cousins, Queens Sybil and
Isabel of Jerusalem, played much more active military roles, commanding fortified
cities against Sultan Saladins forces. But even they never fought on the battlefield. In
1259, when King Louis IX was taken prisoner by Egyptian forces during his crusade,
his queen, Margaret of Provence, commanded the crusaders defence from her
childbed. Eleanor of Castile did not play an active military role on crusade, although
one source credited her with saving her husbands life after he was stabbed by an
assassin.
So these crusading queens or queens-to-be generally limited their activities to
diplomacy or medical care. Only Queen Margaret of France actually played any
military role, and that was in a case of emergency, when the king was a prisoner and
she was acting in his place. And even she was acting purely in a defensive capacity,
and did not wield any weapon herself.

Information about non-noble women on crusade is more difficult to come by.

Two accounts of the Third Crusade mention a woman among the Christian forces
besieging Acre in 1189-90 (it had been captured by Saladin in 1187); she was helping
to fill in the defensive ditch around the city, but was killed by a missile, and asked her
husband to bury her body in the ditch so that she could continued helping the siege
even after her death.6 One Muslim writer mentions old women urging on the
crusaders to fight;7 a Christian writer describes old women picking fleas and lice off
the male soldiers.8
Margaret of Beverley (born in the 1130s? died around 1210?) was present in the
Holy Land during the Third Crusade and took some part in the fighting. According to
the account of her life written down by her younger brother Thomas, Margaret was
conceived in England, but as her parents Sibil and Hulno then set out for Jerusalem on
pilgrimage, she was born in the Holy Land. Back in England the family settled in
Beverley in Yorkshire, where Margarets brother Thomas was born, eleven years her
junior. As an adult, Margaret returned to the kingdom of Jerusalem, and was in
Jerusalem when it came under siege from Saladin in September 1187. Thomas depicts
his sister saying: like a fierce virago, I tried to play the role of a man, improvising a
helmet from a metal cooking pot: a woman pretending to be a man terrified, but I
pretended not to be afraid. She brought water to the men who were fighting on the
city walls, and was hit by a fragment of a stone hurled by one of Saladins siege
engines; the wound healed, but she carried the scar.
When the city surrendered to the Muslims she paid for her freedom and set off
for Lachish (Laodicea?), where her party believed that they would be safe; but they
were captured by Muslims and enslaved. At last a man from Tyre (now Sr in
Lebanon; still held by the Christians in 1187) paid their ransom. Margaret set off

through the desert, hungry, alone and terrified, heading for Antioch, for she had taken
a vow of pilgrimage to visit the tomb of St Margaret there.
While she was in the city, it came under siege from Saladins army (July 1188),
but the enemy was defeated. Margaret set off south, but on the road not far from
Tripoli she was again arrested by Muslims and thought her end had come. In her
distress she called on Saint Mary: the Turkish lord recognized the name of Jesuss
mother, and released her. She reached Acre after the forces of the kings of England
and France, Richard the Lionheart and Philip II, had arrived there, and embarked for
the West. She finally found her brother Thomas in a French monastery. He persuaded
her to leave the secular life and enter a nunnery. She was a nun for eighteen years
until her death. Thomas does not tell us exactly when she died.9
Margaret was not a crusader in that she never took the cross: she became
involved in the Third Crusade as a bystander who took part in the defence of
Jerusalem and as a pilgrim, but she did not fight. Her brother presented her
experiences in the East as proof of her piety, not as examples of warfare.
An account of the Fifth Crusade mentions women present during one battle
outside the city of Damietta, on the banks of the river Nile, 19 August 1219. By the
waterside were the Romans and women who carried fresh water for the infantry to
drink. The Bedouins, who were above the river, charged them and killed them.10
Again, these women were playing an important support role; like Margaret of
Beverley, they carried water to the thirsty fighters. But they did not actually fight.
Some scholars have argued that even if women were present on crusades, they
were not true crusaders because they could not take the crusading vow. The
Australian nun and historian Maureen Purcell admitted that women took part in
crusades but denied emphatically that they were true crusaders, crucesignata, except

for a brief period in the second half of the thirteenth century. When they accompanied
a crusade (she wrote), they did so as pilgrims rather than as crusaders, and they
certainly did not fight.11 However: the English royal clerk, Roger of Howden, an
eyewitness of the Third Crusade, noted in his Chronicle that when King Bla III of
Hungary died (1196) his wife Margaret, sister of King Philip of France and formerly
queen of England as wife of Henry the young king, took the cross for the journey to
Jerusalem, accepit crucem Jerosolimitanae profectionis, and remained in the land of
Jerusalem at Acre in the Lords service until the end of her life. So she was a
crucesignata, a crusader. Yet Purcell is correct in one point: there is no evidence that
she took part in warfare when she reached the Holy Land.12
In medieval canon (Church) law women could go on crusade if they had their
husbands consent, or fathers consent if unmarried.13 A widow could go on crusade
without anyones consent. Pietro Collivaccino, a notary of the Roman curia under
Pope Innocent III who finished his work on canon law in 1209, wrote that a woman
should normally redeem her crusading vow by paying a sum of money so that a man
could go in her place, unless she was wealthy and would be accompanied by a retinue
of soldiers.14
Many noblewomen did hire and command warriors who fought on their behalf.
In the Iberian peninsula in the 1120s Countess Teresa of Portugal (1097-1128) and
Queen Urraca of Castile (1109-26) pursued war against their Muslim neighbours; they
did not fight themselves, but raised armies and fortified and equipped fortresses. In
1288 Countess Alice of Blois travelled to the city of Acre in Palestine with a large
military force and financed the construction of a tower to defend against Muslim
attack.15 The historian Anthony Luttrell has traced a crusade plan put together by a
group of Genoese women in 1301. They selected a leader, the famous Genoese

10

admiral Benedetto Zaccaria, and planned to join the crusade themselves; Pope
Boniface VIII approved the scheme, noting that the women were venturing where the
men had refused to go, but like many such plans it came to nothing.16
Later in the fourteenth century, Catherine of Siena, mystic and writer, promoted
the concept of a crusade against the infidel, to be made up of both men and women. In
1372 a Tuscan hermit wrote that he had heard that a group of pious young men and
women wished to go overseas a euphemism for going on crusade; by 1374
Catherine of Siena had asked the pope for permission to go on pilgrimage to
Jerusalem with a group of holy women, and wrote of her intended journey as if she
envisaged it as a crusade; in 1375 she wrote about a crusade against the Turks. But
her plans came to nothing.17

Did women fight on crusade?

The crusaders themselves never mentioned that their women fought in the battlefield.
The medieval writers who were eyewitnesses of the Baltic crusades in the thirteenth
century recorded that the pagan Prussian and Lithuanian women fought against the
Christians; but their own Christian women did not fight.18 However, Muslim writers
did record that crusading women fought against them.
The contemporary Muslim historians Imd al-Dn and Bah al-Dn ibn
Shaddad agreed that women took an active role in the fighting during the Christian
siege of Acre in the Third Crusade, 1189-91. Imd al-Dn recorded that a woman of
high rank arrived by sea in late autumn 1189, with an escort of 500 knights with their
forces, squires, pages and valets. She paid all their expenses and also led them in raids
on the Muslims. He went on to say that there were many female knights among the
Christians, who wore armour like the men and fought like men in battle, and could not

11

be told apart from the men until they were killed and the armour was stripped from
their bodies.19
No Christian chronicler mentions this European noble woman warrior, whom
Imd al-Dn does not name; nor do they mention the female knights, although Imd
al-Dn claims that these women saw their participation in warfare as an act of
devotion, thanks to which they believe themselves assured of their salvation.
However, these rather vague anecdotes receive more substantial support in incidents
recounted elsewhere in Imd al-Dn's work, and by Bah al-Dn. On 25 July 1190,
the Christian crusading army, which was besieging Acre, made an attack on Saladin's
camp. Although initially successful, the attack was heavily defeated and the field of
battle was left littered with Christian bodies. Imd al-Dn and Bah al-Dn rode out
together to examine the dead. Bah al-Dn recorded: I noticed the bodies of two
women. Someone told me that he had seen four women engaged in the fight, of whom
two were made prisoners. Imd al-Dn recorded: We remarked a woman killed in
the fighting, and we heard her express herself by the tears she was still shedding.20
In July 1191, both of them record the presence of a female archer among the
Christian besiegers of Acre. Bah al-Dn gives the fullest description:
One very intelligent old man ... was amongst those who forced their way
into the enemy's trenches that day. Behind their rampart, he told me,
was a women, wrapped in a green mellta, [a kind of mantle] who kept
on shooting arrows from wooden bow, with which she wounded several of
our men. She was at last overpowered by numbers; we killed her, and
brought the bow she had been using to the Sultan, who was greatly
astonished.21

12

Imd al-Dns account is briefer: There was a woman on one of the points of
the defence holding a bow of wood, firing well and drawing blood; she did not stop
fighting until she was killed.22
These are the only specific accounts of women fighting. Interestingly, Bah
al-Dn also records the presence of women in the army as it marched south from Acre
in late August/early September 1191, although the Christian writers specifically
inform us that all women except washerwomen had been left behind at Acre. Bah
al-Dn informs us that a knight, fourteen Franks and a woman, the knight's daughter,
were captured by the Muslims during the march south. These were all put in prison
and later executed on Saladins orders.23 After the battle of Arsr, four Franks and a
woman were captured by the Arabs and taken to Saladin, who ordered them to be kept
in strict confinement.24
Another Muslim historian of the Third Crusade supports the picture given by
Imd al-Dn and Bahal-Dn. Ibn al-Athr was an eye witness of some of the events
of the war between Saladin and the Franks, although for the siege of Acre he seems to
have used second hand sources, including writings of Bah al-Dn and Imd al-Dn.
In his Universal History he explains that when the European Christians were stirred
up to come to Palestine to recover Jerusalem, many women came with the men and
fought alongside them in the siege of Acre. He also recounts a conversation he had
with a Christian prisoner, who told him that although he was his mother's only son she
had sold the family home in order to equip him for the crusade and sent him out to
recover Jerusalem - a story which endorses the picture painted by the writer of the
Itinerarium Peregrinorum that European Christian women were urging their menfolk
to join the crusade.25

13

Ibn al-Athr mentions two specific instances of women's involvement in the

crusade. After a description of the battle outside the city of Acre on 4 October 1189
he adds: Three Frankish women who had been fighting on horseback were found
among the prisoners. Their sex was recognised when they were captured and their
armour was removed. He later records that in August 1190 a queen among the
Franks who lived beyond the sea left her country accompanied by around a thousand
combatants. She was made prisoner in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, and her
companions were also captured.26
But are these accounts true?
The first of Ibn al-Athrs stories is reminiscent of Imd al-Dns general
statement that European Christian women fought among the crusader cavalry and
were only recognised when they were captured and their armour removed. But Imd
al-Dn did not say that the women were on horseback, and didnt specifically refer to
this battle. If it was, it is odd that he did not recount the incident himself. As Imd alDns account of the battle of 4 October 1189 is eyewitness, while Ibn al-Athrs is
not, it is tempting to think that the latters anecdote about women fighting in this
battle is a fanciful assertion based on Imd al-Dn's claim that women were
sometimes found among the prisoners. The bitterly fought battle of 4 October 1189
could have seemed to Ibn al-Athr to have been a reasonable occasion for this to have
occurred.
In the same way, Ibn al-Athrs anecdote about the European queen who was
captured near Alexandria seems to be a combination of half-remembered stories in
Imd al-Dns history: his story about the European Christian noblewoman who came
to the siege of Acre and led her troops into battle, and his account of the capture on 17
October 1190 outside Acre of two crusader ships with all those on board, including a

14

woman of high birth, rich and very respected. As the capture of this European queen
is not mentioned by Imd al-Dn nor by Bah al-Dn, nor by any European source, it
is probably an invention.27
A problem with all these Muslim accounts is that they are not supported by
any of the crusaders own writings. Probably all these stories are untrue. In both
European Christian and Muslim culture, it was expected that good, virtuous women
would not normally fight, because in a civilised, godly society women should not
have to fight. Conversely, women were regarded as being particularly susceptible to
evil. Therefore Christian writers would not record women fighting in the crusading
army, because this would discredit the crusaders who had to appear as godfearing in
all their actions. On the other hand, Muslims would gladly depict Christians as
allowing their women to fight, as this would show that they were barbarous,
degenerate people.
The Muslims believed that European Christians were careless in guarding the
virtue of their womenfolk, and this demonstrated their essential barbarity. The
Muslim nobleman Usma ibn Munqidh, writing in the late twelfth century, described
in shocked tones how a European Christian in Palestine would leave his wife alone in
the street, talking with another man, or allow a male barber to shave his wife, and
would not be excessively distressed to find a strange man in his wifes bed.28 He
described the courage of certain Muslim women in the face of attack, showing that
Muslim women were prepared to fight or to assist Muslim warriors in defence of
home and family; but they did not go out on campaign, and he regarded such women
as exceptional.29
Imd al-Dn laid particular stress on the sufferings of Christian women during
the Holy War, as if implying that these womens sufferings revealed the utter failure

15

of Christianity: the Christians could not even protect their women, who fell prey to
the victorious Muslims.30 Even Christian castles became women who would fall
before the victorious Muslims. The Hospitallers castle of Kaukab was an inviolable
woman, a maid who could not be asked for in marriage; the captured castle of ashShughr was a virgin fortress taken by force.31 The sultan Saladin going to besiege
the city of Jerusalem was like a lover going to ask Allah for the hand of the city in
marriage; going to besiege the Templars fortress of Baghras he was like a lover going
to beg for a woman to yield to him.32 The mangonels of the Christian besieging force
which hurled rocks at the walls of the city of Acre as pregnant women, who gave
birth to the worst calamities.33 In using such imagery he underlined the alien culture
of the European Christians, their otherness, and the threat which they presented to
Muslim normality, where the public sphere was male-dominated and womens sphere
of operation was strictly within the home.
So if these Muslim authors described crusader women fighting and the
presence of women in the Christian forces only to underline the perverted fanaticism
of the Christians, did any crusading women actually fight?
They may have done, because Christian women did sometimes fight in
Europe. There has been considerable debate over the last three decades as to whether
women did actually take part in warfare during the medieval period. The question
remains undecided, but at present the best summary seems to be by Carolyne
Larrington: there is some historical evidence for women actually taking to the field
themselves women may never have fought as a matter of course, but writers
throughout the period relished the depiction of fighting women.34
The fact that fighting women made a good story, and the fact that medieval
writers were influenced by various traditions and social expectations of womens

16

involvement in warfare, means that the narrative sources on the subject are very
difficult to interpret. Women warriors in classical literature were invariably regarded
as operating outside the proper scheme of things and were firmly returned to their
place in society - usually by being killed by the hero.35 Thus in Virgils Aeneid, Book
IX, the warrior Camilla is killed through the intervention of the god Apollo because
she is a serious military threat to her male foes. However, among the Germanic
peoples whose government superseded the Roman Empire in the West, the women of
the warrior class were expected to take an active role in warfare. They should support
their menfolk in battle, lend them their resources, encourage them to fight and advise
them wisely, and if necessary fight in place of their husbands/ father/ brothers/ sons if
the menfolk were absent, killed or defeated. In the twelfth-century Old French
translation and adaptation of the Aeneid, Camilla dies not because she is acting
beyond her proper role in society but because she commits the tactical error of
pausing to take booty, thus laying herself open to surprise attack.36 Women fighting in
medieval vernacular fictional literature were usually portrayed favourably, and were
often used by the author to show the failings of the male characters.37 So, for example,
in the thirteenth-century prose romance Le Roman de Laurin, the Lady Maligne dons
armour, takes up weapons and defeats her enemy herself because her menfolk are too
afraid to do so.
In the Old French Crusade Cycle, begun in the early twelfth century and
repeatedly expanded and rewritten in the following centuries, Christian women acted
as supporters of their men folk on the battlefield, while Muslim women appeared as
intelligent and well educated, advising their men folk on the danger presented by the
Christians. Muslim princesses were depicted in fiction as potential converts to
Christianity, as authors assumed that women would see what they regarded as the

17

essential truth of Christianity more readily than men, and then converted their men
folk. This fictional image was perhaps reflected in the suggestion by the French writer
Pierre Dubois, made in the early fourteenth century, that noble Christian girls could
be married to Muslim princes in order to bring about their conversion to Christianity.
In real life, women landowners owed military service to their lord. They were
not expected to serve in person, but should provide a substitute.38 A noble woman was
responsible for the defence of her own estates, if they were threatened. Thus in the
eleventh century Countess Matilda of Tuscany commanded her army against King
Henry IV of Germany,39 and in the fifteenth century Christine de Pisan instructed
noblewomen that they must learn military skills in order to defend their own
property.40 Nicola de la Haye, hereditary castellan of Lincoln Castle, defended her
fortress in 1191 and 1216-7.41 This was also the case in the Holy Land: in 1187, Lady
Eschiva of Tiberias commanded the defence of her castle of Tiberias against Saladins
besieging forces.42
The noblewoman was also deemed to be responsible for defending her
husbands lands if he were unable to do so; and as the mother of an underage son, she
was responsible for the defence of his inheritance. So thelfld of Wessex (d. 918),
wife of thelred, lord of Mercia, became ruler of the Mercians after her husbands
death (and possibly before he died), and initiated and led military activity.43 The de
Braoses were powerful and influential lords of the Welsh March in the late twelfth
century and early thirteenth. According to the writer of the Histoire des ducs de
Normandie et les rois dAngleterre, Matilda de Braose
was a beautiful woman, very wise and doughty and very vigorous. People
said nothing about her husband compared to what they said about her. She

18

was responsible for keeping up the war against the Welsh and conquered
much from them.
This certainly implies that Matilda fought in the field in person. Presumably her
husband was at the kings court while she was carrying on the war, as he was a close
friend of King John.44 It is interesting that this commentator, writing in the early
1220s, saw nothing wrong in the noblewoman carrying on a war.
In 1341 Jeanne of Flanders, countess of Montfort, rallied support for her infant
son Jean, who was heir to Montfort and claimant to the county of Brittany. She not
only gathered an army to fight Charless forces, but also armed herself and led a
daring raid on the enemy. Yet despite this, her men would have surrendered
Hennebont to the enemy behind her back if English help had not arrived.45 Following
the death of Charles, his widow continued to promote her cause in Brittany. Froissart
described the knights of the two commanders Jeanne of Flanders and Jeanne of
Brittany as claiming to fight for love of their ladies, in chivalric fashion; but
perhaps this was a joke, simply an excuse for a fight.46
For women who were not landowners, warfare was not a duty, except insofar as
a mother must protect her children, and a wife support her husband. Women were
inevitably present in armies as the partners of warriors, but they were seldom noticed
by chroniclers, except to be dismissed as loose women.47 But even these lower-class
women were trusted to defend a fortress when their menfolk were elsewhere.48
Married or single women would be criticised for involvement in warfare when they
were acting outside or against the authority of husband or father.
Yet male pride and social norms demanded that when men were present they
should perform the active martial roles. There were sound reasons for this: as
womens prime social function was the production and care of children, their bodies

19

should not be risked in the heavy physical exertion of warfare. There was also the fact
that the men were likely to be distracted by having women in the front line, and spend
more time trying to protect the women than fighting the enemy. In addition, the
presence of women in the military camp could lead to rivalry and arguments among
the men. As a result, a military commander would prefer to limit womens presence in
an army to a minimum.49
I described earlier how Muslim writers depicted the European Christian
women as warriors to underline the otherness of Christians. European Christian
writers mentioned women fighting and defeating their enemies to emphasise the
rightness of their cause. According to the author of the Chanson de la croisade
albigeois, who opposed the Albigensian crusade, women brought about the death of
the leader of the crusade, Simon de Montfort (25 June 1218). He was besieging the
city of Toulouse when he was killed by a stone hurled by a catapult operated by
ladies, girls and married women.50 So De Montforts actions were so abhorrent to
God that He permitted weak and feeble women to kill him a shameful death for such
a renowned warrior.
The Catalan writer Ramon Muntaner, writing in the early fourteenth century,
recorded an incident during the French crusade against Aragon in 1285 (Philip III's
campaign in Aragon had been approved as a crusade by the pope because the
Aragonese had helped the Sicilians rebel against their French king). Na Mercadera, a
woman of Peralada in Aragon, went out of her house armed with a lance and shield so
that she could defend herself if necessary against the French crusaders, who were
besieging the town. She encountered a French knight, whom she captured.51 Again,
clearly God supported the Catalans, for even their weak women could defeat the
supposedly superior French knights.

20

Anthony Luttrell has noted that in 1350 an English woman pilgrim was reputed,
presumably with considerable exaggeration, single-handedly to have killed more than
a thousand Turkish captives at Rhodes. The event was recorded by the traveller
Ludolph von Sudheim, who admitted that that story was only rumour.52 Still, it
demonstrated the power of even weak Christian women over their Muslim enemies. A
Greek woman was reported to have died as a martyr fighting at Rhodes against the
Turks in the siege of 1522: she was apparently the partner of a Hospitaller officer.53
Neither of these women were crusaders in the modern sense, but their heroism against
the Turks demonstrated Gods support for their cause.
On 14 June 1419 the people of Prague, including many women, held off a fierce
attack by the army of King Sigismund, king of Hungary and heir to Bohemia. Prague
had declared for the Hussite heresy; Sigismund and his army had come to enforce
orthodox Roman Catholicism. A Czech contemporary takes up the story:
They strongly attacked the wooden bulwark. They succeeded in
crossing the moat, and they took the old watchtower on top of the
vineyards. And when they tried to scale the all erected from earth and
stone, two women and one girl together with about 26 men who still held
the bulwark defended themselves manfully, hurling stones and lances, for
they had neither arrows nor guns. And one of the two women, though she
was without armour, surpassed in spirit all men, as she did not want to
yield one step. Before Antichrist, so she said, no faithful Christian must
ever retreat! And thus, fighting with supreme courage, she was killed and
gave up her spirit.54
A German writer mentioned the capture of 156 Hussite women, in mens clothes
and armed.55

21

This was a crucial day in the formation of the Czech nation: it was the battle
which saved Prague, and the Hussite faith, from German and Hungarian invasion. For
the Czech writer, the presence of courageous women among the fighters underlined
the rightness of the Czech cause. For the Germans, the presence of women dressed
and armed as men among the enemys forces demonstrated their otherness.
Clearly women in Europe did take up arms sometimes, in certain circumstances,
in cases of dire necessity. The crusade was arguably for the greatest necessity of all;
the defence of Christendom and the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel.
What was more, chroniclers made approving mention of women who used weapons
against bad or misguided crusaders in Europe. So is there any reason why women
should not have fought on crusades in the Holy Land?
Some of the Muslim writers stories must be fiction. European chroniclers were
happy to record the deeds of women who had fought in a crisis to defend their
menfolk or to shame their menfolk into fighting. But they did not mention women on
crusade fighting in the field against Muslims. Perhaps Imd al-Dn had heard that
European noblewomen did sometimes lead their troops into battle in Europe; and he
inserted his story of women disguised as warriors to underline the strangeness,
barbarity and ungodliness of the European Christians.
Again, when crusades failed, one of the obvious accusations against the
crusading army was that women had been involved who tempted the crusaders to sin,
so bringing Gods wrath down on them. The chroniclers of the First Crusade had
made this complaint against women in the crusading armies, and some commentators
on the Second Crusade had also blamed the failure of that crusade on the misconduct
of the women.56 But none of these writers accused the women of going so far beyond
accepted norms that they fought on the battlefield. During the Third Crusade, the

22

author of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum stated that although women supported the
crusade and encouraged their menfolk to go, they did not go themselves; later writers
on that crusade insisted that all the women were left behind in Acre in August 1191,
whereas Bah al-Dns account shows that this was not the case. Any women who
were mentioned by Christian writers on the Third Crusade had to be respectably
married women.57 In later crusades, ordinary women were mentioned only in support
roles.
Did women on the other side fight?
Finally, one Muslim noblewoman did command military forces against crusaders,
although she did not fight herself.
Shajar al-Durr (d. 1257) was originally a Turkish slave and from 1240 concubine of
. She became the sultans favourite and

al-

was promoted to being his wife. The couple had one son, Khall, who died young.
Shajar or Shajarat al-Durrs period of power and fame came after her husbands death,
when she played a role in bringing about the end of Ayybid power in Egypt and the
rise of the Mamluks.58
In November 1249, while King Louis IX of Frances first crusade was attacking
Egypt, Sultan al-

al-

Maqrz, writing nearly two centuries later, Shajar al-Durr called together the emir
Fakhr al-Dn ibn Shaykh al Shuykh, commander of her late husbands armies, and
Djaml alkeep the death a secret, for fear of demoralizing the Muslims and encouraging the
invaders. The three worked together to keep the government going until the heir, alMalik al-

-Shh Ghiyath al-

(now Hasankeyf in south-eastern Turkey). Shajar persuaded the emirs and

23

government officials to swear to acknowledge Trn-Shh as heir. The people

suspected that the sultan was in fact dead and that Fakhr al-Dn intended to seize the
throne, but Shajar continued to act as if he were still alive and told everyone that he
was ill and could not see anyone.
The crusaders, who had already captured the important port of Damietta, heard
rumors of the sultans death and advanced towards Cairo. Fakhr al-Dn led the
Muslim defense. After a series of battles, the crusaders were defeated at Man
and forced to withdraw (8 February 1250), but Fakhr al-Dn himself was killed.
Shajar al-Durr continued to conduct affairs of state in the name of her dead husband
until Trn-Shh arrived at Cairo and was proclaimed sultan. The crusaders,
meanwhile, began to retreat, but were surrounded by Muslim troops and forced to
surrender. Many were executed--the leaders, including King Louis himself, were held
for ransom. Having dealt with this danger, Trn-Shh demanded that Shajar al-Durr
hand over the dead sultans treasure to him. Shajar al-Durr denied having the treasure
and appealed to her late husbands mamluks for aid.
These were a crack fighting force of Turkish Muslims who were originally
slaves but who had been trained by the sultan to be his personal elite troops and who
had been rewarded with lands and rights. They murdered Trn-Shh, and made
Shajar al-Durr sultana. Ruling in her own name, Shajar negotiated with the captive
King Louis IX and with his wife Queen Margaret, who was defending Damietta, for
the surrender of Damietta and the release of King Louis and his fellow crusaders on
payment of a ransom. Louis and his army left Egypt.
However, the Syrian emirs would not acknowledge Shajar al-Durr as ruler of
Egypt and threatened to invade Egypt, so the Mamluks appointed a military
commander to rule jointly with Shajar, and she then abdicated.

24

As with the Christian women who were involved in crusades, Shajar came into the
public sphere only because she was acting on behalf of her late husband, and her
authority lasted only until a replacement was found.

Conclusion
Overall, clearly women did take part in crusades, but their involvement was generally
in traditional womens support roles: diplomacy, health and hygiene, bringing water
for those fighting, helping to build siege works, encouraging their menfolk. Wealthy
women organised their own expeditions, hired fighting men and paid for the
construction of fortifications. Noblewomen commanded the defence of fortresses;
royal women, such as Queen Margaret of France and Shajar al-Durr, took command
when their husbands could no longer act as commander. However, as no European
Christian sources, not even those critical of the crusaders, mention Christian women
fighting on the battlefield during crusades, it seems unlikely that women ever played a
prominent role in the fighting. The Muslim writers who claimed that female crusaders
fought, did so to demonstrate the Christians barbarity. Probably crusading women
fought on foot only in emergency situations, as when the Muslims broke into the
Christian camp, and they never fought on horseback in the battlefield.

25

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28

NOTES
1

. Jonathan Riley-Smith, What were the Crusades? 3rd edn (Basingstoke: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2002), pp. xi-xii; Giles Constable, The Historiography of the Crusades,
in Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh, eds., The Crusades from the
Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks,
2001), pp. 1-22, here pp. 12-15.
2

. Le Robert Dictionnaire, vol. 3, p. 64.

Guibert of Nogent, The Deeds of God through the Franks: Gesta Dei per Francos,

trans. Robert Levine (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, NY: Boydell, 1997), p. 28
(amended).
4

For instance, at the battle of Dorylaeum, 1 July 1098, during the First Crusade:

Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum: The Deeds of the Franks and the
Other Pilgrims to Jerusalem, ed. Rosalind Hill (London: Nelson, 1962), Bk 3 ch. 9, p.
19.
5

Gesta Francorum, Bk 3 ch. 9, p. 19.

Itinerarium Peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. W. Stubbs, (Rolls Series 38.1,

London, 1864); Bk 1, ch. 50, pp. 101-2.

7

Imd al-Dn in Ab Shma, vol. 4, 434.

L'Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, histoire en vers de la troisime croisade (1190-1192)

par Ambroise, ed. G. Paris (Paris, 1897), line 5698.

9

. Thomass life of Margaret is printed in Paul Gerhard Schmidt, Peregrinatio

periculosa. Thomas von Froidmont ber die Jerusalem-Fahrten seiner Schwester

Margareta, in Ulrich Justus Stache, Wolfgang Maaz and Fritz Wagner, eds.,
Kontinuitt und Wandel: Lateinische Poesie von Naevius bis Baudelaire. Franco
Munari zum 65. Geburtstag (Hildesheim: Weidemann, 1986), pp. 461-85. For a

29

translation see Julia Bolton Holloway, Margaret of Jerusalem/Beverley and Thomas

of Beverley/Froidmont, her brother, her biographer, at
http://www.umilta.net/jerusalem.html
10

Fragmentum de captione Damiatae, in Quinti Belli Sacri Scriptores Minores, ed.

Reinhold Rhricht (Geneva, 1879), p. 187.

11

M. Purcell, Women crusaders: a temporary canonical aberration?' in:

Principalities, powers and estates: Studies in medieval and early modern government
and society, ed. L. O. Frapell (Adelaide, 1979), 57-64.
12

Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols. (Rolls Series 51, London,

1868-71), vol. 4, 14.

13

J. A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the crusader (Madison, 1969), 77.

14

Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, 77.

15

Annales de Terre Sainte, Archives de lOrient Latin, 2 (1884, repr. 1978), pp. 459-

60.
16

Anthony Luttrell, Englishwomen as Pilgrims to Jerusalem: Isolda Parewastell,

1365, in Equally in Gods Image: Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Julia Bolton
Holloway, Constance S. Wright and Joan Bechtold (New York and Bern: Peter Lang,
1990), pp. 184-97.
17

Luttrell, Englishwomen as Pilgrims to Jerusalem, pp. 188-9.

18

Rasa Mazeika, Nowhere was the Fragility of their Sex Apparent: Women

Warriors in the Baltic Crusade Chronicles, in From Clermont to Jerusalem: The

Crusades and Crusader Societies, 1095-1500, ed. Alan V. Murray (Turnhout, 1998),
pp. 229-48.
19

Imd al-Dn, quoted by Ab Shma, in Le livre des deux jardins, in vols. 4 and 5

of Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Historiens Orientaux (RHC Or.), pub.

30

Acadmie des Inscriptions et de Belles-Lettres, 5 vols. (Paris, 1872-1906), vol. 4,

433-4.
20

Bah al-Dn, The life of Saladin, trans. A. Stewart (Palestinian Pilgrims Text

Society, London, 1897), p.195 (the Arabic text of this work, with French translation,
is in RHC Or. vol. 3, 3-370); Imd al-Dn al-Isfahni, Conqute de la Syrie et de la
Palestine par Saladin, trans. H. Mass (Documents relatifs l'histoire des croisades
10, Paris, 1972), 239-240
21

Bah al-Dn, 261.

22

Imd al-Dn, 312.

23

Itinerarium Peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, p. 248; Ambroise, Estoire, lines

5690-4; Bah al-Dn, 281.

24

Bah al-Dn, 294.

25

Ibn al-Athr, El-Kmel Altevarykh, in RHC Or., vol. 2, 4-5. For an assessment of

this historian see H. A. R. Gibb, The Arabic sources for the life of Saladin,
Speculum, 25 (1950), 58-72. Although this is only a secondary source, in that it draws
heavily on the work of Imd al-Dn, it nevertheless reflects the attitudes of Muslims
at the time of the Third Crusade
26

Ibn al-Athr, vol. 2, pp. 13, 29

27

Imd al-Dn in Ab Shma, vol. 4, 433-4; and in Conqute de la Syrie, 258.

28

Usma ibn Munqidh, in: An Arab-Syrian gentleman and warrior in the period of

the crusades: Memoirs of Usmah ibn-Munqidh, trans. P. K. Hitti (Princeton, 1929),

pp. 164-5.
29

Usma ibn Munqidh, pp. 152-4.

30

Imd al-Dn, 34, 50, 202, 258 (the Franks tried to rescue them but in vain) 286

(the sultan gave them to those who captured them).

31

31

Imd al-Dn, pp. 81, 135.

32

Imd al-Dn, pp. 94, 143.

33

Imd ad-Dn, p. 320.

34

Carolyne Larrington, Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook

(London and New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 158. On women in warfare see, for
instance, my Women on the Third Crusade, Journal of Medieval History, 23 (1997),
335-49, and the other works cited therein, especially Megan McLaughlin, The
woman warrior: gender, warfare and society in medieval Europe, Womens Studies
an Interdisciplinary Journal, 17 (1990), 193-209; see also now Gendering the
Crusades, ed. Susan Edgington and Sarah Lambert (Cardiff: University of Wales
Press, 2001), which includes an extensive bibliography on womens involvement in
warfare in the medieval period. On noble womens involvement in warfare see also
Jean A. Truax, Anglo-Norman Women at War: Valiant Soldiers, Prudent Strategists
or Charismatic Leaders?, in The Circle of War, ed. Kagay and Villalon, pp. 111-25.
35

On classical precedent see, for instance, Michael R. Evans, Unfit to Bear Arms:

the Gendering of Arms and Armour in Accounts of Women on Crusade, in

Gendering the Crusades, ed. Edgington and Lambert, pp. 45-58, here pp. 49-51.
36

Eneas: roman du XIIe sicle, ed. J.-J. Salverda de Grave, 2 vols (Paris: douard

Champion, 1925-1929), vol. 2, lines 7177-224; translated as Eneas: A TwelfthCentury French Romance, trans. John A. Yunck (New York and London: Columbia
University Press), pp. 196-7.
37

See, for example, Maligne in Le Roman de Laurin, fils de Marques le senchal, ed.

Lewis Thorpe (Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1995), pp. 290-3, 300-2, 361-2; Silence in
Heldris de Cornualle, Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance, ed. and trans.
Sarah Roche-Mahdi (Michigan, 1992); and the anonymous noblewoman in Les

32

Prophesies de Merlin, ed. Anne Berthelot (Cologny-Geneva: Fondation Martin

Bodmer, 1992), pp. 147-8.
38

Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare, p. 59.

39

H. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1998), pp. 296-307.

40

Christine de Pisan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, or the Book of the Three

Virtues, trans. Sarah Lawson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), part 2 ch. 9, p. 129.
41

The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes, ed. J. Appleby (London and Edinburgh,

1963), 30-1; Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d'Angleterre, ed. F. Michel
(Socit de l'histoire de France 18, Paris, 1840; reprinted New York, 1965), 182; M.
McLaughlin, The woman warrior: gender, warfare and society in medieval Europe,
Women's Studies - an interdisciplinary journal, 17 (1990), 193-209: here 199.
42

La continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184-1197), ed. M. R. Morgan (Paris, 1982),

43, 44-45, 56.

43

Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1971), pp. 324-9, 333, 335, 529; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation,
ed. Dorothy Whitelock with David C. Douglas and Susie I. Tucker (London: Eyre and
Spottiswode, 1965), pp. 62-7.
44

Histoire des ducs, p. 111. For King John and William de Braose see R. Turner,

King John (London, 1994), p. 55.

45

Chronique de Jean le Bel, ed. Jules Viard and Eugne Dprez, Socit de lhistoire

de France (Paris: Renouard, 1904, repr. Paris: Slatkine/H. Champion, 1977), vol. 1,
ch. 47, pp. 271-8, Froissart, Chroniques: manuscrit dAmiens, vol. 2, pp. 157-8, ch.
351; pp. 198-210, chs 374-80; pp. 213-14, ch. 382.
46

Froissart, Chroniques: manuscrit dAmiens, vol. 3, p. 54, ch. 531, lines 20-24.

33

47

Froissart, Chroniques. Dernire rdaction, pp. 892-3, ch. 721; Antoine de la Salle,

Jehan de Saintr, ed. J. Misrahi and Charles A. Knudson (Geneva: Droz, 1967), p. ix.
48

See for instance, the women of the Catalan company defending Gallipoli (1305), in

Ramon Muntaner, ch. 227; women defending Montalban (1366), in Froissart,

Chroniques: manuscrit dAmiens, vol. 3, p. 389, ch. 702, lines 55-60.
49

Vaughan, Charles the Bold, p. 209. Charles apparently reckoned that one prostitute

was as good as another, and did not expect the men to fight over the common women,
nor the women over the men. In addition he was apparently unaware of the risk of
spreading venereal disease among the troops - although the sexual transmission of
disease was becoming known at this time. See Claude Qutel, History of Syphilis,
trans. Judith Braddock and Brian Pike (London: Polity Press/Basil Blackwell, 1990),
pp. 11-12. I am indebted for this reference to Rachel Bowen, doctoral student at
Cardiff University. For one version of the medieval story of army prostitutes fighting
between themselves over the men see The Avowing of Arthur, lines 909-72, in Middle
English Metrical Romances, ed. Walter Hoyt French and Charles Brockway Hale
(New York: Russell and Russell, 1930), pp. 607-46.
50

Janet Shirley, trans., The Song of the Cathar Wars: a history of the Albigensian

Crusade (Aldershot, 1996), p. 172.

51

Ramon Muntaner, Chronicle, translated by Lady Goodenough as The Chronicle of

Muntaner, 2 vols. (Hakluyt Society second series nos. 47 and 50, London, 1920,
1921), vol. 1, pp. 311-2.
52

Luttrell, Englishwomen as Pilgrims to Jerusalem, pp. 187, 194 n. 20.

53

LAbb Vertot, Histoire des Chevaliers Hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jerusalem,

appellez depuis Chevaliers de Rhodes, et aujourdhui Chevaliers de Malthe, 5 vols

(Paris, 1726), vol. 3, pp. 342-3 and note.

34

54

Frederick G. Heymann, John ika and the Hussite Revolution (Princeton, NJ,

1955), p. 138, quoting Lawrence of Bezov.

55

Ibid., p. 138 n. 7.

56

James Brundage, 'Prostitution, miscegenation and sexual purity in the First

Crusade', in: Crusade and Settlement: papers read at the first conference of the
Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East and presented to R. C. Smail,
ed. Peter W. Edbury (Cardiff, 1985), pp. 57-65: here pp. 58-9; Elizabeth Siberry,
Criticism of Crusading, 1095-1274 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 45-6.
57

Das Itinerarium Peregrinorum: eine zeitgenssische englische Chronik zum dritten

Kreuzzug in ursprnglicher Gestalt, ed. Hans E. Mayer, (Schriften der Monumenta

Germaniae historica 18, Stuttgart, 1962), pp. 339-340.
58

For a summary of studies of Shajar al-Durr see David J. Duncan, Scholarly Views

of Shajarat al-Durr (1998), at http://www.ucc.ie/chronicon/duncan.htm, accessed 11

June 2003. For al-Maqrz, see R. J. C. Broadhurst, A History of the Ayybid Sultans
of Egypt, translated from the Arabic of al-Maqrz (Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1980).

35