So while looking through the texts I hadn’t yet hit for my thesis, I found a commentary on the “ships of women” who followed the Crusaders in the late 12th C, written by a Syrian chronicler. Reminded me of going to Manzy…
“There arrived by ship three hundred lovely Frankish women, full of youth and beauty, assembled from beyond the sea and offering themselves for sin. They were expatriates come to help expatriates, ready to cheer the fallen and sustained in turn to give support and assistance, and they glowed with ardour for carnal intercourse. They were all licentious harlots, proud and scornful, who took and gave, foul-fleshed and sinful, singers and coquettes, appearing proudly in public, ardent and inflamed, tinted and painted, desireable and appetizing, exquisite and graceful… Each one… swayed like a sappling, revealed herself like a strong castle, quivered like a small branch, walked proudly with a cross on her breast [eg, christian pilgrims] sold her graces for gratitude, and longed to lose her robe and her honor… They dedicated as a holy offering what they kept between their thighs; mounted breasts on backs, bestowed their wares on the poor [at least they were humanitarian], brought their silver anklets up to touch their golden ear-rings, and were willingly spread out on the carpet of amorous sport.”
[What follows are some of the greatest euphemisms i have ever seen…]
“…They were the permitted territory for forbidden acts, they offered themselves to the lances’ blows… They were the places where tent-pegs were driven in, they invited swords to enter their sheaths, they razed their terrain for planting, they made javelins rise toward shields, excited the plough to plough, gave the birds a place to peck with their beaks, allowed heads to enter their ante-chambers and raced under whoever bestrode them at the spur’s blow. The took the parched man’s sinews to the well, fitted arrows to the bow’s handle, cut off sword-belts, engraved coins, welcomed birds into the nest of their thighs, caught in their nets the horns of butting rams, removed the interdict from what is protected, withdrew the veil from the hidden. They interwove leg with leg, slaked their lovers’ thirsts, caught lizard after lizard in their holes, guided pens to inkwells, torrents to the valley bottom, streams to pools, swords to scabbards, gold ingots to crucibles, infidel girdles to women’s zones, firewood to the stove, guilty men to low dungeons, money-changers to dinar, necks to bellies, motes to eyes. They contested for tree-trunks, and maintained that this was an act of piety without equal, especially to those who were far from home and wives.”
Imad ad-Din, “Frankish women of Peace and War” – From Gabrielli Arab Historians of the Crusades
Ah, religious obligation…
teaser:
So while looking through the texts I hadn’t yet hit for my thesis, I found a commentary on the “ships of women” who followed the Crusaders in the late 12th C, written by a Syrian chronicler. Reminded me of going to Manzy…