Lives of Frankish princes from al-Ṣafadī’s biographical dictionary, al-wāfī bil-wafayāt

This article endeavours to bring to the English reader unpublished historical sources about Frankish figuers in the fourteenth century biographical dictionary al-Wāfī bil-wafayāt. This work, one of the largest biographical dictionaries in the history of the genre in Arabic, was written by Khalīl b. Aibak Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, al-Ṣafadī who was born in 1297 to a Mamluk father and a respected amir of the Mamluk military troops in Ṣafad. This article analyse nine biographies of Frankish historical figures and endeavours to answer the question: how original were al-Ṣafadī’s biographies on Frankish princes?.