WILLIAM OF TYRE’S ART OF WAR

illiam, a Latin clergyman, was born and raised in the Frankish principalities that had been established in the Holy Land following the success of the First Crusade, and he enjoyed a long and illustrious career as a prominent prelate: his various capacities included serving as the archdeacon of Nazareth, tutor to the young Baldwin IV at the request of King Amalric, chancellor during the regency of Count Raymond III of Tripoli, and finally bishop of the Latin see of Tyre. Completed very shortly before its author’s death in 1186, the ’s ambitious narrative scope (spanning from the reign of the seventh-century Roman emperor Heraclius until the author’s own day) has frequently deterred scholars from attempting to analyze the as a coherent whole. As Peter Edbury and John Gordon have aptly observed, the Historia has most often been treated