Abstract:

It is crucial to have a good command of the sources for the topic to better understand the Crusades relevant to the Turkish history. The narrative sources for the Crusades are generally studied under two main categories: Eastern and Western. The Western sources are highly important, and they include sources especially in Latin, Old French, and Early New High German. However, there are not any systematically organized information in the aggregate the Western sources and writers of the First Crusade in the Turkish History literature. Therefore, we studied these by dividing them into groups of those who witnessed the events and joined the Crusade, or of those who created their work with the information they heard/obtained and by taking into account the chronological data. In addition to giving information relevant to the First Crusade, all these sources also give information about the Turks, Turkish rulers, especially the Turk-Crusader relationships. So, we aimed to introduce these works called main official Western sources of the First Crusade within the scope we mentioned above. While working on this study, we created our article by using various medieval sources, books, articles, and materials in order to give information about the sources that are not known very well and are not commonly used in our country and to emphasize the importance of these sources in terms of the Turkish-Crusader-Muslim relations.

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