1. Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Al-nawādir al-sultāniyya wa’l-maḥāsin al-Yūsufiyya, ed. Jamāl al-Dīn al-Shayyāl, Sīrat Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn: “al-sīra al-Yūsufiyya” (Cairo, 1964), 163. English translation: Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Al-nawādir al-sultāniyya wa’l-maḥāsin al-Yūsufiyya [The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin], trans. D. S. Richards (Aldershot, 2001), 153. Unless otherwise stated, all English translations of Ibn Shaddād are from Richards.
2. Bahā’ al-Dīn b. Shaddād, Nawādir, 201; trans. Richards, 193.
3. See Yvonne Friedman, "Peacemaking: Perceptions and Practices in the Medieval Latin East," in The Crusades and the Near East, ed. Conor Kostick (London, 2011), 229-57, at 238
4. and Michael Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East: Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in the Period of the Crusades, trans. Peter Malcolm Holt, ed. Konrad Hirschler (Leiden, 2013), 303.
5. While medieval writers in Latin, Old French, and Arabic all used one word (L: interpres; OF: drugemen; A: tarjumān) to refer to those engaged in both oral and textual translation, in this study, I reserve the term “interpreter” to denote individuals engaged in the act of oral translation and the term “translator” for individuals engaged in the act of written translation. This (somewhat artificial) distinction is meant to remind us of the significant differences between oral translation and written translation – and more broadly, the significant differences between oral and written communication.