Department of English

• Monday, February 17, 2025 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm

Class of 1978 Pavilion, sixth floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library

We welcome James Wilson (University of Konstanz, Germany), for a talk titled: “Joseph Chahin: A Syrian Maronite Merchant and the Recueil des historiens des croisades.” Dr. Wilson writes: 

The Recueil des historiens des croisades: historiens orientaux is a five-volume collection of abridged editions and French translations of medieval Arabic texts published in Paris between 1872–1906. Even today, non-Arabists rely upon some of these materials to write the history of the crusades. The Recueil project is often associated with prominent Francophone Orientalist scholars like Silvestre de Sacy, Joseph Reinaud, or William McGuckin de Slane. But less focus has been placed on the important role played in the Recueil’s compilation by Joseph Chahin, an eighteenth-century Syrian-Maronite merchant from Aleppo. Between 1770–1777, Schahin was the first person to produce copies or “editions” of the Arabic manuscripts that form a key source corpus for modern crusade historians. This presentation will demonstrate how Chahin’s copies were drawn upon by the Recueil’s nineteenth-century editors, thereby shaping one of the most influential and enduring mass source compilation and translation projects in the field of medieval studies.

James Wilson is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg and the Department of History and Sociology at the University of Konstanz, Germany. He is currently conducting a short research visit to the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is under the Mentorship of the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and Director of the Middle East Center, Paul Cobb. James obtained his PhD from Queen Mary University of London in 2020. His book, Medieval Syria and the Onset of the Crusades, was published with Edinburgh University Press in 2023.