John on Malta until 1798. In recent decades historians have deployed new approaches borrowed from gender studies and literary theory to examine the validity of narrative sources, developing insight on the experiences and representation of women within the context of the Crusades. Arabic and Muslim historiography Many Arabic sources have been lost, remain untranslated or are extant only in manuscript making it difficult to research without a knowledge of the language. The motivations of the authors must be considered as well as acknowledging the Christian concept of crusade was alien to medieval Muslims, who often viewed the crusaders as motivated by avarice. Few Muslim works consider the crusading phenomenon and crusades are often documented in larger narratives of events, mentioned occasionally and lacking detail. Mainly Muslim, mostly Classical, Arabic writing produced several genres during the crusading period, but there are also Arabic works written by Christians and Jews. Some sources from the Jewish communities of the time used Arabic written in Hebrew characters known as Judeo-Arabic such as the Cairo Genizah found in the late 19thcentury at the Ben Ezra Synagogue, Cairo. The genres include: Universal chroniclesthe best known or The Complete History by Ali ibn al-Athir. Local histories were similar, but about particular cities or countries. Ibn al-Qalanisi wrote The Continuation of the History of Damascus in the 12thcentury and Ibn al-Jawzi The History of Aleppo. Al-Athir also wrote a history of the Zengid dynasty, The Dazzling History of the State of the Atabegs. Jamāl al-Din Muhammad ibn Wasil wrote of the Ayyubid dynasty. Abū Shāma Shihāb al-Dīn al-Maqdisī covered both dynasties. Information on the patriarchs of the Coptic church of Egypt is related in Biographies of the Holy Patriarchs by unknown authors after Severus ibn al-Muqaffa. Biographies and Autobiographies, Religious Texts, Geographical Works and Travel Literature, Popular Folk Literature, Legal Texts and Treaties, Suffixed curses. The Muslim world exhibited little interest in the Crusades as they were not considered significant events until the middle of the 19thcentury. One explanation is that they were considered a more marginal issue compared to the collapse of the Caliphate through the Mongol invasions and the replacement of Arab rule by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, who suppressed Arab nationalism for the following seven centuries. Carole Hillenbrand argued that Arab historians have often taken a Western viewpoint because they have historically been opposed to Turkish control of their homelands. Arabic-speaking Syrian Christians began translating