Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum

Also known as William of Tyre's Chronicle

William of Tyre's Latin chronicle — the central narrative source for the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1095 to 1184.

William of Tyre's Historia is the largest and most ambitious Latin chronicle to survive from the 12th-century kingdom. Begun about 1170 at the request of King Amalric I and continued by William until shortly before his death in c. 1186, it covers the First Crusade, the foundation of the kingdom, and the reigns of every king down to Baldwin IV.

Its value is twofold. As an insider document it preserves political detail that no other source records — court manoeuvres, the workings of the Haute Cour, individual barons' marriages and intrigues. As a piece of historical writing it is unusually self-conscious about its sources: William cites Fulcher of Chartres, Albert of Aachen, and now-lost archival material, weighs them against each other, and is willing to admit when he does not know.

The Historia ends abruptly in 1184. The continuations (the so-called Eracles in Old French) carry the story forward to 1277 in versions associated with Acre and Cyprus, and it is mainly through the Eracles that William's text reached its broadest medieval audience.

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