Our first priority is to complete a calendar of sources produced in or addressed to people in the Latin East from 1099 to 1291 and to make sure that this date will continue to be available to future researchers.
We hope that this project will bring digital tools to the study of the crusades by providing aids for teaching and research, by engaging with ongoing discussions in the digital humanities, and by working together with others in the field. In particular:
- Introducing an innovative and open-access teaching tool to increase the appeal and accessibility of crusade studies to new generations of students.
- Introducing tools for spatial analysis. The mapping of the locations mentioned in the documents is already under way; this will provide the means for a new reading of the patterns of Frankish settlement, range and daily life.
- Interfacing with other databases of related source material, in other regions or in other periods in the Levant (for example, the 'Islamization of Palestine' database currently underway) and with databases dealing with other aspects of the crusades, such as 'material culture' and other digital humanities projects in medieval studies.
- Using our data set for experimenting with new AI technology such as GPT-4.
In the future we may incorporate a larger variety of sources including more inscriptions, art, artifacts, archaeological remains, pilgrims' accounts, chronicles, documents in other languages, and full text entries.
Collaboration is key to the success of this ambitious programme so we are happy to receive your comments and suggestions and will consider all contributions to this effort.
