| Abstract: | Usāma ibn Munqidh (d. 584/1188) is best known to historians for his “memoirs” entitled Kitāb al-i‘tibār, which provides a very personal and detailed window into the world of an aristocratic Syrian Muslim in the period of the Crusades. But historians have almost completely ignored a lesser-known work by Usāma called Kitāb al–‘a.(s)ā, or The Book of the Staff. This anthology consists mostly of poetic excerpts relating to walking-sticks and staves, but, scattered throughout, it also contains a handful of narrative anecdotes about Usāma and his times very much akin to the material found in his “memoirs”: tales of miracles, of encounters with the Franks, of Usāma's family, and the courts of the amirs and atabegs of his day. This article presents these extracts translated into English for the first time, with commentary, in the hope that the Book of the Staff will attract the attention of historians that it deserves. |
