William of Tyre - Works

Works

William reports that he wrote an account of the Third Council of the Lateran, which does not survive. He also wrote a history of the Holy Land from the time of Muhammad up to 1184, for which he used Eutychius of Alexandria as his main source. This work seems to have been known in Europe in the 13th century but it also does not survive. August C. Krey thought William's Arabic sources may have come from the library of the Damascene diplomat Usama ibn Munqidh, whose library was looted by Baldwin III from a shipwreck in 1154. Alan V. Murray, however, has argued that, at least for the accounts of Persia and the Turks in his chronicle, William relied on Biblical and earlier medieval legends rather than actual history, and his knowledge "may be less indicative of eastern ethnography than of western mythography."

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