Travelling in troubled times: a Latin letter of safe passage for a Muslim merchant issued during the Frankish-Fatimid wars

A single photograph of a letter of safe passage is all that remains of the documentary trail of a Muslim merchant travelling through the northern reaches of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem decades after the city’s violent takeover by the first crusaders in 493/1099. The document can be classed as a letter close, or royal writ granting permission for an action, intended to be opened and used only once. It is the only known example of a letter close issued by a sovereign of Latin Jerusalem in its original format. The majority of the chancery’s original documents were likely lost during the conquest of the reduced Kingdom of Jerusalem by the sultan of Cairo, al-Ashraf Khalīl (reigned 689–693/1290–1293), in 690/1291.3