The Conquest of Mallorca: The Last Crusade 1229 - History, #1 - E-book - ePub

King James of Aragon, who believed his birth to be a will of God and that the fate of his lineage was to 'Conquer or to die in Battle', carried the Reconquista of Mallorca on behalf of the Christian kingdoms, between 1229 and 1231. As was expected from a Templar prince, he recorded, brilliantly and in detail, the events of the Crusade in his 'Llibre dels fets. This honest and emotional memoir served as the primer source to study and to authenticate the chain of happenings during and before the conquest of the Balearic Islands.
Unfortunately, others perceive the tale to be partial and perhaps more bias, as Winston Churchill said: 'History is written by the Victor'.      During 1875, John Forster, a close friend and biographer of Charles Dickens, started the translation of the king's diary from Catalan into English, and describes it as 'one of the most remarkable historical productions of the thirteenth century'. Unfortunately, John Forsterwas found dead in his library on January 7, 1878, surrounded by the incomplete translation of the Royal chronicle and a few other manuscripts related to that work.
Due to the insufficient English sources on the subject, in addition to Forster's translation, I relied in my research on Sir Markham's book 'The Story of Majorca and Minorca', published in 1908. In 2005, Professor Ben Mamar discovered the 26 folios manuscript 'Kitab Tarikh Majorca' (the Story of Mallorca) at a library in Tindouf while he was performing worldwide cataloguing and digitization work on Arab documents.
The author of the manuscript is Ibn Umayrah Al-Mahzumi, an Andalusian born scholar [1184-1260], who fled to North Africa during the Reconquista. His account is considered to be of important historical and literary value, since it is the only document that recounts the the campaign by the conquered. In 2009, Majorcan archeologist, Professor Guillermo Bordoy translated it into Catalan, and since its introduction, it rapidly became a best seller in the book-fairs of the Balearics.
The focus of the following book is to first, translate the manuscript from Arabic into English, second to articulate a brief comparison between the memoir of King James, the conqueror, and the narrative of Ibn Umayrah, the conquered. This critique will be interesting since both Crusaders and Saracens fought a devastating war and suffered heavy losses, while both claimed it to be Holy and on behalf of God.