SSCLE Awards Best First Book Prize 2026
- Jul 16
- 4 min read
As chair of the committee for the Ronnie Ellenblum Best First Book prize, Jessalynn Bird presented the nominated books and the winner of the prize at the 2026 SSCLE conference in Porto.
The committee members who took the time to carefully read and evaluate eight nominated books were Laura Morreale, Ahmed Sheir, Stephen Spencer, and Jonathan Phillips. Her comments reflected their thoughts as well as her own. She noted that it was a hard choice for the committee to make.
The shortlist included:
Adam Bishop’s meticulous reconstruction and contextualization of the life, times, and influence of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Robert of Nantes (Robert of Nantes, Patriarch of Jerusalem (1240-1254).
Naomi Pitamber compelling demonstration of the importance of exile for the creation of
identity through a groundbreaking study of Lascarid artwork and its influence on Paleologan
Gordon Reynolds' beautifully written and compellingly argued analysis of the many overlooked ways in which women encouraged, supported, and commemorated crusading in England (Laywomen and the Crusade in England, 1150–1300).
Elias Marcel convincing explanation of the ways in which late medieval vernacular
literature sought to surface and provide spaces for reflection on anxieties and emotions generated by crusading (English Literature and the Crusades: Anxieties of Holy War, 1291–1453).
James Wilson’s panoramic survey of history of Greater Syria, which is sure to replace Claude Cahen’s work and reshape perceptions of the political and religious alliances and tensions that influenced the formation of crusader polities (Medieval Syria and the Onset of the Crusades: The Political World of Bilad al-Sham, 1050-1128).
Gil Fishhof’s brilliant synthesis and reinterpretation of the varied patrons, artists, and audiences who produced and encountered various artworks in Frankish settlements, which not only updates but will certainly replace Jaroslav Folda’s foundational monograph on the subject (Shaping Identities in a Holy Land: Crusader Art in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: Patrons and Viewers).
Anna Gutgarts' use of cutting-edge digital humanities (her dataset of documents recording property transactions is freely available online) and methods from global urban studies to challenge prevailing models regarding Frankish settlement of Jerusalem and its surrounding hinterlands (Frankish Jerusalem: The Transformation of a Medieval City in the Latin East).
Anne Zimo’s study of Muslims living in what became the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, which similarly moves well beyond the longstanding models of either segregation or assimilation associated with the work of Joshua Prawer and R. C. Smail (In Plain Sight: Muslims in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem).
All of these fine books make significant contributions to the fields of crusade studies and
Mediterranean history. However, the committee agreed that one book deserved special
recognition as the winner of this year’s first best book prize. That award went to Ann Zimo for In Plain Sight: Muslims in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Ann makes a compelling argument that our focus as crusade historians must shift from privileging Frankish sources and perspectives when examining the lived environments and inhabitants of the Levant. Organised around a series of interconnected geographic, economic, legal, political, intellectual, and cultural “landscapes,” her study challenges long-standing assumptions that Muslims occupied only peripheral positions within the Latin East.
Her book draws on an exceptionally broad and interdisciplinary body of evidence, including Latin chronicles, Old French legal texts, Arabic chronicles and biographical dictionaries, pilgrimage accounts, treaties, fatwas, charters, archaeological reports, and material
evidence.
Applying various models of coexistence derived from Iberian and Sicilian studies and
Christopher McEvitt’s concept of rough tolerance punctuated by episodes of violence, she draws on a wide range of sources and methods and focuses on the relatively neglected thirteenth century to argue that Muslims did not exist merely as an external existential threat or as marginal groups within the Latin East: “Rather they occupied important, often central places in the economic and political landscapes, and lived not at the outskirts of the kingdom but at its very spiritual and political cores.”
Engagingly written, her book highlights the various activities and central roles played by Muslims in the Latin kingdom. Her interpretation avoids both romanticised notions of convivencia and rigid models of colonial domination, while acknowledging the realities of violence, legal inequalities, and exclusion.
By integrating Latin and Arabic textual traditions with archaeological and spatial approaches, Zimo’s book offers a more inclusive picture of society in the medieval Levant and opens new avenues for the study of identity, legal pluralism, and interreligious relations.
Deeply researched and methodologically sophisticated, the book represents a major contribution to Crusader studies and medieval Mediterranean history and is likely to shape future scholarship in the field. It is bound, in the best possible way, to provoke reexamination and debate of embedded assumptions. Ann’s dissertation supervisor, Michael Lower, would have been proud to see due recognition granted to a sustained application of Mediterranean studies models to the history of the Muslim communities living in the Levant and Greater Syria, as would Ronnie Ellenblum, whose own work challenged similarly embedded paradigms of the relationships between Frankish settlers and other groups.
