[Sca-cooks] Crusades and cannibalism

[Ana Valdés]

By the way and apologizing for not intervening in the list too often. My
"mundane" life takes all available time. I was in effect in Palestine twice this
last year, writing rapports from the cruel situation in the Middle East, with
civilian being killed from both sides and a deep militarizing in the region. I
was in Jerusalem and did research about old texts about the Crusade time (I am
planning to make a big art exhibition about the Crusades in Stockholm), mest
based this time in Arabian chronicles. The most knowledge we have from the time
is based in English and French texts and its Runciman who is the most known
scholar in the field.
I came across same years ago into the book "The Crusades Through Arab Eyes",
written by Amin Maalouf, a writer living in France. He wrote a book with sources
and material from Crusade time based in Greek, Turkish and Arabian sources. One
of his texts deals with cannibalism, it states that the French army (at that
time France was not France, but a generical name for multiple different ethnics
groups, including Germans and Catalans and English as well) needed meat, since
they couldn't take any proviant and the regions hostility made impossible to
forage for food. Selon  the book they went into small villages and charned the
small babies and used the meat as salt meat during their trips. The description
struck me as unusual and cruel and I went to the respective texts written by
French and English (Geoffrey De Villehardouin, among others).
In the modern versions of the text from Villehardouin I didnt find any
description of cannibalism, but I went to Paris and bought the edition of the
same book from a 1800-century edition. It was there, very clear and very logic
"Since we did'nt have any fresh meat with us and the population was hostile we
went to the villages and killed the gentle's small children and we salted the
meat to use it as proviant". My question is, why the modern edition of the same
book expurged the quotation? And was it true?
I discussed the issue with different researchers and many agreed it was the
biggest army who was gathered, their need of proviants was huge, nobody in the
region wanted to help them and it was a poor region with not so much cattle. And
for them, these children was "impure", devil's children, non bauptized children,
not "humans".
Someone who came across similar issues related to Crusades?

Ana

"Laura C. Minnick" wrote:

> At 10:05 PM 12/11/02 -0800, you wrote:
> >--
> >Speaking of silly articles.  I wrote to the guy in Israel who wrote the
> >Crusader food article.  Since everyone else got on him about the rancid
> >meat thing, I asked him about his recipes.  If they 900 years old as he
> >claims, why is he using corn syrup and can he please tell me what primary
> >sources he used for the recipes?  Multiple choice answer on his reply.
> >
> >a) zip
> >b) nada
> >c) zilch
> >d) none
> >e) any or all of the above.
> >
> >AEduin
>
> Really? I wrote a similar letter to him, about the whole article, and
> including the recipes. Cited sources and examples, waved my degree around a
> bit (that seems to be the magic ticket) and I got a reply- he politely
> thanked me for the info and said he'd get back to me when he'd had a chance
> to check out the references I gave.
>
> Maybe I shouldn't hold my breath, but it was so much nicer than the usual
> snotty response we get...
>
> 'Lainie
> ____________________________________________________________________________
> Sometimes Life makes drastic changes without our permission...
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