Learning in a Crusader City
Intellectual Activity and Intercultural Exchanges in Acre, 1191–1291

Offers an unprecedentedly rich portrait of the vibrant intellectual and intercultural exchanges sparked by the Crusades in thirteenth-century Acre.

Jonathan Rubin (Author)

9781316637715, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 5 March 2020

236 pages, 1 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.36 kg

'This lively and entertainingly formulated volume is thus a stimulating and profitable read for anyone who is researching the history of Syria-Palestine in the period of the Crusades.' Margit Mersch, Historische Zeitschrift

Did the Crusades trigger significant intellectual activity? To what extent and in what ways did the Latin residents of the Crusader States acquire knowledge from Muslims and Eastern Christians? And how were the Crusader states influenced by the intellectual developments which characterized the West in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? This book is the first to examine these questions systematically using the complete body of evidence from one major urban centre: Acre. This reveals that Acre contained a significant number of people who engaged in learned activities, as well as the existence of study centres housed within the city. This volume also seeks to reconstruct the discourse that flowed across four major fields of learning: language and translation, jurisprudence, the study of Islam, and theological exchanges with Eastern Christians. The result is an unprecedentedly rich portrait of a hitherto neglected intellectual centre on the Eastern shores of the medieval Mediterranean.

Introduction
1. Intellectual activity in Acre: socio-cultural characteristics
2. Acre's Christian and Jewish centres of teaching and learning
3. Language and translation
4. Acre as a meeting point of juridical traditions
5. The study of Islam
6. Theological exchanges with oriental Christians
Conclusion
Appendix: the relation of the used texts to Acre
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]