David Kloster Final Project Description
William of Tyre and A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea
William of Tyre was born in 1130 and died in 1186, just before the battle of Hattin which led to the eventual capture of Jerusalem by Saladin. He was elected the Archbishop of Tyre on June 6th, 1175. In 1170 it is believed that King Amalric tasked William with writing a history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Many believe that the two volume work that we have today is a result of this requested endeavor. A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea is the most complete and comprehensive history we have of what transpired in the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem during the period that Jerusalem was under Christian rule.
Project Goals:
I hope to make William of Tyre’s two volume magnum opus more accessible, especially to students and those teaching the Crusades. By making the text available for text mining and even providing some interesting results using R the text and the Crusades will hopefully seem less daunting.
I also hope to create an interactive temporal map that displays events mentioned in William’s history and when they transpired to assist with understanding of the text. The events and locations will pop up as the timeline is played. In addition, when a user moves the mouse over one of the map points, information about the event or location will be displayed.
In addition, I hope to have some images related to events or locations mentioned to further enhance the learning experience.
The overall goal is to increase interest in and understanding of the Crusades through an interactive website that allows users to explore the primary source most used by Crusade historians. Too often the Crusades are blamed on one side or the other, when the truth often lies somewhere in the middle as both sides are responsible for atrocities committed. For this reason I hope to eventually include Muslim primary source material from the same time period.
Project Resources (primary and, perhaps, secondary materials and where you are getting them from):
My primary material is the two volume work A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea
By: William, Archbisop of Tyre
Translated by Emily Babcock and A.C. Krey
I will also draw upon some secondary source material such as The Crusades by Hans Eberhard Meyer and the 3 volume work by Sir Steven Runciman A History of the Crusades.
My images will mostly be from Wikipedia and so will mostly fall under the creative commons license.
Tools to be Used and How Applied:
I will use Omeka to build and manage the website, including the text and the images.
I will use R for text mining
I will link out to CartoDB to show a map of the various events and locations that William of Tyre mentions in his history of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Anticipated Outside Consultants (if any):
Theresa Quill
William Cowan
Tassie Gniady