Around 1865, the translation of French histories by Arabic-speaking Syrian Christians led to the first uses of the term al-hurub al-Salabiyya (the ‘Cross’ wars) for what before had been known as the wars of the Ifranj (the Franks). In 1872, an Ottoman Turk, Namik Kemal, published the first ‘modern’ Muslim biography of Saladin–a work seemingly written to refute Michaud’s triumphalist history that had recently been translated into Turkish.
