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Manuscripts and dating

Although set in the Carolingian era, the Song of Roland was written centuries later. There is a single extant manuscript of the Song of Roland in Old French, held at the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It dates between 1129 and 1165 and was written in Anglo-Norman. There are eight additional manuscripts and three fragments of other poems on the subject of Roland.

Scholars estimate that the poem was written between approximately 1040 and 1115 — possibly by a poet named Turold (Turoldus in the manuscript itself) — and that most of the alterations were completed by about 1098. Some favor the earlier dating, which allows that the narrative was inspired by the Castilian campaigns of the 1030s and that the poem was established early enough to be a major influence in the First Crusade, (1096–1099). Others favor a later dating based on brief passages which are interpreted as alluding to events of the First Crusade.

Relevant to the question of dating the poem, the term d'oltre mer (or l'oltremarin) occurs three times in the text in reference to named Muslims who came to fight in Spain and France. The Old French oltre mer (oversea, modern French outremer) was commonly used during and after the First Crusade to refer to the Latin Levant, which supports a date of composition after the Crusade. Those favoring an earlier dating argue that the term is used generically to refer to "a Muslim land." It is possible that the bulk of the poem dates from before the Crusades, with a few additions from the time of the First Crusade.

After two manuscripts were found in 1832 and 1835 and published in 1837, the Song of Roland became recognized as France's national epic.