Number as a Numerical Reminder, a Signifier, among other numerical forms of Literary Expression - Employed in both Christian and Muslim Accounts of the First Crusade

Authors : Terrance Michael Duggan

Pages : 18-56

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Publication Date : 2020-12-31

Article Type : Research

Abstract :This article provides a brief excursus on some use of number in literature, on the vexed matter of misreading recorded numerical hyperbole, of the use of number as a literary form of expression, numerical figures of speech, and as signifiers, numbers which - perhaps more often than one might think, have been and are being misread - read in a modern literal fashion as a measure of quantity, rather than as an understood Medieval form of literary expression concerning not only the expression of hyperbole but also of relative numbers and sizes, common to both Christian and Muslim authors-chroniclers, numbers representing the concepts of relatively many, relatively very many and relatively, a multitude, as also for relative lengths of time. There was also the use of number to convey to the educated particular significant meaning associated with particular numbers that served as numerical reminders, as signifiers, linking the respective religious knowledge to chronicled historical events, as in accounts of the First Crusade - 600,000 and 10,000, employed by Fulcher of Chartres, 70,000 by ibn al-Athīr, and 600,000, 40,000 and 10,000 by Albert of Aachen.
Keywords : First Crusade, Holy Places, Numerical Reminders, Signifiers, Hyperbole