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229-569: The Kingdom of Jerusalem , also known as the Crusader Kingdom , was a Crusader state that was established in the Levant immediately after the First Crusade . It lasted for almost two hundred years, from the accession of Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099 until the fall of Acre in 1291. Its history is divided into two periods with a brief interruption in its existence, beginning with its collapse after

458-506: A new crusade . Passionate sermons raised religious fervour, and it is likely that more people took the crusader oath than during recruitment for the previous crusades. War of the Lombards [REDACTED] Kingdom of Cyprus [REDACTED] Anti-Imperial faction in the Kingdom of Jerusalem The War of the Lombards (1228–1243) was a civil war in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and

687-494: A pilgrimage in 1120. He brought Jerusalem into the sphere of the Angevin Empire , as the father of Geoffrey V of Anjou and grandfather of the future Henry II of England . Not everyone appreciated the imposition of a foreigner as king. In 1132 Antioch, Tripoli, and Edessa all asserted their independence and conspired to prevent Fulk from exercising the suzerainty of Jerusalem over them. He defeated Tripoli in battle, and settled

916-482: A Muslim garrison to occupy his fief in Tiberias , probably hoping that Saladin would help him overthrow Guy. Saladin, meanwhile, had pacified his Mesopotamian territories, and was now eager to attack the crusader kingdom; he did not intend to renew the truce when it expired in 1187. Before the truce expired, Raynald of Chatillon, the lord of Oultrejourdain and of Kerak and one of Guy's chief supporters, recognized that Saladin

1145-642: A borderland of the Muslim world , Syria was an important theatre of jihad , though enthusiasm for pursuing it had faded by the end of the 11th   century. In contrast, the Catholic ideology of religious war quickly developed, culminating in the idea of crusades for lands claimed for Christianity. Most crusades came from what had been the Carolingian Empire around 800. The empire had disintegrated, and two loosely unified successor states had taken its place:

1374-451: A child in Jerusalem. The few European knights who did travel to Jerusalem did not even see any combat, since the truce with Saladin had been re-established. William V of Montferrat was one of the few who came to his grandson Baldwin V's aid. Baldwin V's rule, with Raymond of Tripoli as regent and his great-uncle Joscelin of Edessa as his guardian, was short. He was a sickly child and died in

1603-633: A few details with regards to the beginning of Conrad's rule and the end of Frederick's regency that cannot be found elsewhere. According to him, Tommaso of Aquino , Count of Acerra , left for the Holy Land in June 1242 in connexion with Conrad's assumption of power to be the king's representative in the East. He also mentions that Raymond VII of Toulouse met the emperor at Melfi in September 1242 and intervened on behalf of

1832-556: A fourth time, to Aimery of Lusignan , Guy's brother. Aimery had already inherited Cyprus from Guy, and had been crowned king by Frederick Barbarossa's son, Emperor Henry VI . Henry led a crusade in 1197 but died along the way. Nevertheless, his troops recaptured Beirut and Sidon for the kingdom before returning home in 1198. A five-year truce was then concluded with the Ayyubids in Syria in 1198. The Ayyubid empire had fallen into civil war after

2061-528: A group of pious knights about a monastic order for deeply religious warriors was likely first discussed at the council of Nablus. Church leaders quickly espoused the idea of armed monks, and within a decade, two military orders , the Knights Templar and Hospitaller , were formed. As the Fatimid Caliphate no longer posed a major threat to Jerusalem, but Antioch and Edessa were vulnerable to invasion,

2290-522: A large Byzantine fleet of some 300 ships to assist Amalric, and the town of Damietta was placed under siege. However, the Byzantine fleet sailed with enough provisions for only three months. By the time the Crusaders were ready, supplies were already running out and the fleet retired. Each side sought to blame the other for the failure, but both knew that they could not take Egypt without the other's assistance:

2519-467: A large force, committing all of his kingdom's available resources. The leadership divided on tactics. Raynald urged an offensive, while Raymond proposed defensive caution, although Saladin was besieging his castle at Tiberias. Guy decided to deal with the siege. The march towards Tiberias was arduous, and Saladin's troops overwhelmed the exhausted Frankish army at the Horns of Hattin on 4   July 1187. Hattin

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2748-419: A later compilation called Les gestes des Chiprois , and it is sometimes difficult to determine if a detail was amended by the compiler. His account, written contemporaneously with events, only covers the years 1228–33, 1236, and 1241–42. He wrote the last part of his account between 1242 and 1247, adding interpolations until as late as 1258. It is Philip that gives the name "Longuebars" (Lombards) to

2977-512: A marriage alliance with the Byzantines. Baldwin married Manuel's niece, Theodora , and received a significant dowry. With his consent, Manuel forced Raynald into accepting Byzantine overlordship. The childless Baldwin   III died in 1163. His younger brother Amalric had to repudiate his wife Agnes of Courtenay on grounds of consanguinity before his coronation, but the right of their two children, Baldwin IV and Sibylla , to inherit

3206-678: A military campaign against the Turks who had attacked Byzantine territories in Anatolia. Turkic migration permeated the Middle East from the 9th   century. Muslim border raiders captured unconverted Turkic nomads in the Central Asian borderlands and sold them to Islamic leaders who used them as slave soldiers. These were known as ghilman or mamluk and were emancipated when converted to Islam. Mamluks were valued primarily because

3435-488: A month after Baldwin's arrival, a Christian mob killed Thoros and acclaimed Baldwin as doux , the Byzantine title Thoros had used. Baldwin's position was personal rather than institutional, and the Armenian governance of the city remained in place. Baldwin's nascent County of Edessa consisted of pockets separated from his other holdings of Turbessel, Rawandan and Samosata by the territory of Turkic and Armenian warlords and

3664-552: A new, better-organized crusade against Egypt. In late 1217 King Andrew II of Hungary and Duke Leopold VI of Austria arrived in Acre and, along with John of Brienne, raided territory further inland, including Mount Tabor , but without success. After the departure of the Hungarians, the remaining Crusaders set about refortifying Caesarea and the Templar fortress of Château Pèlerin throughout

3893-648: A refusal to pay tribute to Jerusalem, and requests were sent to Nur ad-Din for assistance; in response, Amalric invaded , but was turned back when the Egyptians flooded the Nile at Bilbeis . The Egyptian vizier Shawar again requested help from Nur ad-Din, who sent his general Shirkuh , but Shawar quickly turned against him and allied with Amalric. Amalric and Shirkuh both besieged Bilbeis in 1164, but both withdrew due to Nur ad-Din's campaigns against Antioch, where Bohemond III of Antioch and Raymond III of Tripoli were defeated at

4122-533: A second unsuccessful siege of Damascus by the two brothers, Al Afdal accepted a fief consisting of Samosata and a number of other towns. Az-Zahir of Aleppo submitted to his uncle in 1202, thus re-uniting the Ayyubid territories. Meanwhile, schemes were hatched to reconquer Jerusalem through Egypt. A Fourth Crusade was planned after the failure of the Third, but it resulted in the sack of Constantinople in 1204, and most of

4351-617: A split in the Ismā'īlist branch of Shia Islam. The Persian missionary Hassan-i Sabbah led a breakaway group, creating the Nizari branch of Isma'ilism. This was known as the New Preaching in Syria and the Order of Assassins in western historiography. The Order used targeted murder to compensate for their lack of military power. The Seljuk invasions, the subsequent eclipse of the Byzantines and Fatimids, and

4580-483: A truce with Saladin. Gümüshtekin released Raynald of Châtillon and Baldwin's maternal uncle, Joscelin III of Courtenay , for a large ransom. They hastened to Jerusalem, and Raynald seized Oultrejourdain by marrying Stephanie of Milly . As Baldwin, a leper, was not expected to father children, his sister's marriage was to be arranged before his inevitable premature death from the disease. His regent, Raymond, chose William of Montferrat for Sybilla's husband. William

4809-441: The atabeg kept power after his ward reached the age of majority or died. The Seljuks adopted and strengthened the traditional iqta' system of the administration of state revenues. This system secured the payment of military commanders through granting them the right to collect the land tax in a well-defined territory, but it exposed the taxpayers to an absent lord's greed and to his officials' arbitrary actions. Although

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5038-667: The Abbasid caliph in Baghdad . The kingdom was ruled by King Aimery of Lusignan (1197–1205), the King of Cyprus , another crusader state founded during the Third Crusade. Dynastic ties also strengthened with Tripoli, Antioch, and Armenia. The kingdom was soon increasingly dominated by the Italian city-states of Venice and Genoa . The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (reigned 1220–1250) had ambitions in

5267-677: The Battle of Agridi in Cyprus that his support on the island dwindled to zero within a year. In 1241 the barons offered the bailliage of Acre to Simon de Montfort , the Earl of Leicester , a cousin of Philip of Montfort, and a relative through marriage to both the Hohenstaufen and the Plantagenets . He never assumed it. In 1242 or 1243 Conrad declared his own majority and on 5 June the absentee monarch's regency

5496-493: The Battle of Cresson near Nazareth. Raymond and Guy finally agreed to attack Saladin at Tiberias, but could not agree on a plan; Raymond thought a pitched battle should be avoided, but Guy probably remembered the criticism he faced for avoiding battle in 1183, and it was decided to march out against Saladin directly. On 4 July 1187, the army of the kingdom was utterly destroyed at the Battle of Hattin . Raymond of Tripoli, Balian of Ibelin, and Reginald of Sidon escaped, but Raynald

5725-582: The Battle of Harim . It seemed likely that Antioch itself would fall to Nur ad-Din, but he withdrew when Emperor Manuel sent a large Byzantine force to the area. Nur ad-Din sent Shirkuh back to Egypt in 1166, and Shawar again allied with Amalric, who was defeated at the Battle of al-Babein . Despite the defeat, both sides withdrew, but Shawar remained in control with a crusader garrison in Cairo. Amalric cemented his alliance with Manuel by marrying Manuel's niece Maria Komnene in 1167, and an embassy led by William of Tyre

5954-605: The County of Edessa (1097–1144), the Principality of Antioch (1098–1268), and the County of Tripoli (1109–1289). While all three were independent, they were closely tied to Jerusalem. Beyond these to the north and west lay the states of Armenian Cilicia and the Byzantine Empire , with which Jerusalem had a close relationship in the twelfth century. Further east, various Muslim emirates were located which were ultimately allied with

6183-711: The Fatimid vizier , Al-Afdal Shahanshah at Ascalon . When Daimbert of Pisa , the papal legate, arrived in the Levant with 120 Pisan ships, Godfrey gained much-needed naval support by backing him for the Patriarchate of Jerusalem , as well as granting him parts of Jerusalem and the Pisans a section of the port of Jaffa . Daimbert revived the idea of creating an ecclesiastic principality and extracted oaths of fealty from Godfrey and Bohemond. When Godfrey died in 1100, his retainers occupied

6412-558: The Franks were Crusaders. Medieval and modern writers use the term "Outremer" as a synonym, derived from the French word for overseas . By 1098, the Crusaders' armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem was passing through the Syria region . Edessa, under the rule of Greek Orthodoxy , was subject to a coup d'état in which the leadership was taken over by Baldwin of Boulogne , and Bohemond of Taranto remained as

6641-699: The Greek patriarch of Antioch . Bohemond never returned. He died, leaving an underage son Bohemond II . Tancred continued as regent of Antioch and ignored the treaty. Richard's son, Roger of Salerno , succeeded as regent on Tancred's death in 1112. The fall of Tripoli prompted Sultan Muhammad Tapar to appoint the atabeg of Mosul, Mawdud , to wage jihad against the Franks. Between 1110 and 1113, Mawdud mounted four campaigns in Mesopotamia and Syria, but rivalry among his heterogeneous armies' commanders forced him to abandon

6870-489: The Holy Roman Empire , which encompassed Germany , part of northern Italy , and the neighbouring lands; and France. Germany was divided into duchies , such as Lower Lorraine and Saxony , and their dukes did not always obey the emperors. Northern Italy was even less united, divided into numerous de facto independent states, and the authority of the emperor was barely felt. Carolingian's western successor state, France,

7099-568: The Ibelin family . Baldwin asserted his independence by mediating disputes in Antioch and Tripoli, and gained the support of the Ibelin brothers when they began to oppose Manasses' growing power, thanks to his marriage to their widowed mother Helvis of Ramla . In 1153 Baldwin had himself crowned as sole ruler, and a compromise was reached by which the kingdom was divided in two, with Baldwin taking Acre and Tyre in

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7328-615: The Iberian Peninsula to fight the Moors of Al-Andalus ; and Italian fleets launched pillaging raids against the north African ports. This shift of power especially benefited merchants from the Italian city-states of Amalfi , Genoa , Pisa , and Venice . They replaced the Muslim and Jewish middlemen in the lucrative trans-Mediterranean commerce, and their fleets became the dominant naval forces in

7557-660: The Jordan River . The northern states covered what is now part of Syria, south-eastern Turkey, and Lebanon. These areas were historically called Syria (known to the Arabs as al-Sham ) and Upper Mesopotamia . Edessa extended east beyond the Euphrates . In the Middle Ages the Crusader states were also called Syria or Syrie . From around 1115, the ruler of Jerusalem was styled 'king of

7786-894: The Kingdom of Cyprus between the "Lombards" (also called the imperialists), the representatives of the Emperor Frederick II , largely from Lombardy , and the Eastern aristocracy led first by the Ibelins and then by the Montforts . The war was provoked by Frederick's attempt to control the regency for his young son, Conrad II of Jerusalem . Frederick and Conrad represented the Hohenstaufen dynasty . Frederick had been King of Jerusalem —and as such claimed suzerainty over Cyprus—in right of his wife Isabella II until her death in 1228. That year he arrived first in Cyprus, where he antagonised

8015-426: The Kingdom of France , as were the knights and soldiers who made up the bulk of the steady flow of reinforcements throughout the two-hundred-year span of its existence; its rulers and elite were therefore predominantly French . French Crusaders also brought their language to the Levant, thus establishing Old French as the lingua franca of the Crusader states, in which Latin served as the official language. While

8244-482: The Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291). The three northern states covered an area in what is now southeastern Turkey , northwestern Syria , and northern Lebanon ; and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the southernmost and most prominent state, covered an area in what is now Israel , Palestine , southern Lebanon, and western Jordan . The description "Crusader states" can be misleading, as from 1130 onwards, very few people among

8473-530: The Lusignan dynasty , sided with Frederick, whose father had crowned Aimery of Lusignan king in 1197. At Limassol , Frederick demanded that John give up not only the regency of Cyprus, but also John's own lordship of Beirut on the mainland. John argued that Frederick had no legal authority to make such demands and refused to give up either title. Frederick then imprisoned John's sons as hostages to guarantee John's support for his crusade. John did accompany Frederick to

8702-573: The People of the Book , like Christians and Jews. The dhimmi were second-class citizens, obliged to pay a special poll tax , the jizya , but they could practise their religion and maintain their own law courts. Theological, liturgical, and cultural differences had given rise to the development of competing Christian denominations in the Levant before the 7th-century Muslim conquest . The Greek Orthodox natives, or Melkites , remained in full communion with

8931-473: The Roman Empire had previously held, would be handed to Alexios' Byzantine representatives. Only Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse refused this oath, instead promising non-aggression towards Alexios. The Byzantine Tatikios guided the crusade on the arduous three-month march to besiege Antioch , during which the Franks made alliances with local Armenians. Before reaching Antioch, Baldwin and his men left

9160-623: The Third Crusade . The study of the Crusader states in their own right, as opposed to being a sub-topic of the Crusades , began in 19th-century France as an analogy to the French colonial experience in the Levant, though this was rejected by 20th-century historians. Their consensus was that the Frankish population, as the Western Europeans were known at the time, lived as a minority society that

9389-614: The Tower of David to secure his inheritance for his brother Baldwin. Daimbert and Tancred sought Bohemond's help against the Lotharingians, but the Danishmends captured Bohemond under Gazi Gümüshtigin while securing Antioch's northern marches. Before departing for Jerusalem, Baldwin ceded Edessa to his cousin, Baldwin of Bourcq . His arrival thwarted Daimbert, who crowned Baldwin as Jerusalem's first Latin king on Christmas Day 1100. By performing

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9618-497: The Treaty of Ramla negotiated in 1192; Saladin allowed pilgrimages to be made to Jerusalem, allowing the crusaders to fulfil their vows, after which they all returned home. The native crusader barons set about rebuilding their kingdom from Acre and the other coastal cities. For the next hundred years, the Kingdom of Jerusalem remained a tiny kingdom hugging the Syrian coastline. Its capital

9847-506: The siege of Jerusalem in 1187 and its restoration after the Third Crusade in 1192. The original Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted from 1099 to 1187 before being almost entirely overrun by the Ayyubid Sultanate under Saladin . Following the Third Crusade, it was re-established in Acre in 1192. The re-established state is commonly known as the "Second Kingdom of Jerusalem" or, alternatively, as

10076-476: The "Kingdom of Acre" after its new capital city. Acre remained the capital for the rest of its existence, even during the two decades that followed the Crusaders' establishment of partial control over Jerusalem during the Sixth Crusade , through the diplomacy of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen vis-à-vis the Ayyubids. The vast majority of the Crusaders who established and settled the Kingdom of Jerusalem were from

10305-472: The "noble party", led by Raymond of Tripoli and the lesser nobility of the kingdom, who favoured peaceful co-existence with the Muslims. This is the interpretation offered by William of Tyre, who was firmly placed in the "noble" camp, and his view was taken up by subsequent historians; in the 20th century, Marshall W. Baldwin , Steven Runciman , and Hans E. Mayer favoured this interpretation. Peter W. Edbury , on

10534-563: The Anatolian Sultanate of Rum by Kilij Arslan I , and in Syria by his brother Tutush I , who died in 1095. Tutush's sons Fakhr al-Mulk Radwan and Duqaq inherited Aleppo and Damascus respectively, further dividing Syria amongst emirs antagonistic towards each other, as well as Kerbogha , the atabeg of Mosul . This disunity among the Anatolian and Syrian emirs allowed the Crusaders to overcome any military opposition they faced on

10763-409: The Arab Banu Munqidh seized Shaizar , and Tutush's sons Duqaq and Ridwan succeeded in Damascus and Aleppo respectively, but their atabegs , Janah ad-Dawla and Toghtekin were in control. Ridwan's retainer Sokman ben Artuq held Jerusalem; Ridwan's father-in-law, Yağısıyan , ruled Antioch; and a warlord representing Byzantine interests, called Thoros , seized Edessa. During this period

10992-426: The Byzantine Empire, by marrying Theodora Comnena , a niece of emperor Manuel; Manuel married Baldwin's cousin Maria . As William of Tyre put it, it was hoped that Manuel would be able "to relieve from his own abundance the distress under which our realm was suffering and to change our poverty into superabundance". The relationship between Byzantium and Jerusalem has divided historians, with some historians supporting

11221-448: The Byzantine alliance. This dispute resulted in the march stalling in north Syria. The crusaders were becoming aware of the chaotic state of Muslim politics through frequent diplomatic relations with the Muslim powers. Raymond indulged in a small expedition. He bypassed Shaizar and laid siege to Arqa to enforce the payment of a tribute. In Raymond's absence, Bohemond expelled Raymond's last troops from Antioch and consolidated his rule in

11450-423: The Byzantine imperial church, and their religious leaders often came from the Byzantine capital, Constantinople . In the 5th   century, the Nestorians , and the Monophysite Jacobites , Armenians , and Copts , broke with the Byzantine state church. The Maronites ' separate church organisation emerged under Muslim rule. During the late 10th and early 11th   centuries, the Byzantine Empire had been on

11679-422: The Byzantine interpretation that Amalric recognised Manuel as his overlord, while other scholars such as Andrew Jotischky see the relationship as one of Byzantine protection of Orthodox Christians in Jerusalem. When Baldwin died childless in 1162, a year after his mother Melisende, the kingdom passed to his brother Amalric, who renewed the alliance negotiated by Baldwin. In 1163 the chaotic situation in Egypt led to

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11908-408: The Byzantines and Franks jointly besieged Aleppo and Shaizar but could not take the towns. Zengi soon seized Homs from the Damascenes, but a Damascene–Jerusalemite coalition prevented his southward expansion. Joscelin made an alliance with the Artuqid Kara Arslan , who was Zengi's principal Muslim rival in Upper Mesopotamia. While Joscelin was staying west of the Euphrates at Turbessel, Zengi invaded

12137-450: The Byzantines from campaigning in the Levant. In theory, Saladin was Nur ad-Din's lieutenant, but mutual distrust hindered their cooperation against the crusader states. As Saladin remitted suspiciously small revenue payments to him, Nur ad-Din began gathering troops for an attack on Egypt, but he died in May 1174. He left an 11-year-old son, As-Salih Ismail al-Malik . Within two months, Amalric died. His son and successor, Baldwin   IV,

12366-435: The Byzantines, Arabs, and Turks squeezed populations of Armenians . The Seljuks contested control of southern Palestine with Egypt, where Shia rulers ruled a majority Sunni populace through powerful viziers who were mainly Turkic or Armenian, rather than Egyptian or Arab. The Seljuks and the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt hated each other, as the Seljuk saw themselves as defenders of the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate and Fatimid Egypt

12595-566: The Cilician Armenian prince, Ruben   III . Saladin granted a truce to Bohemond and made preparations for an invasion of Jerusalem where Guy took command of the defence. When Saladin invaded Galilee, the Franks responded with what William of Tyre described in his contemporaneous chronicle as their largest army in living memory but avoided fighting a battle. After days of fierce skirmishing, Saladin withdrew towards Damascus. Baldwin dismissed Guy from his position as bailli , apparently because Guy had proved unable to overcome factionalism in

12824-498: The Cilician plain. In 1133, the Antiochene nobility asked Fulk to propose a husband for Constance, and he selected Raymond of Poitiers , a younger son of William IX of Aquitaine . Raymond finally arrived in Antioch three years later and married Constance. He reconquered parts of Cilicia from the Armenians. In 1137, Pons was killed battling the Damascenes, and Zengi invaded Tripoli. Fulk intervened, but Zengi's troops captured Pons' successor Raymond   II , and besieged Fulk in

13053-510: The Crusader state, claiming the kingdom by marriage, but his presence sparked a civil war (1228–1243) among the kingdom's nobility. The kingdom became little more than a pawn in the politics and warfare of the Ayyubid and Mamluk dynasties in Egypt, as well as the Khwarezmian and Mongol invaders. As a relatively minor kingdom, it received little financial or military support from Europe; despite numerous small expeditions, Europeans generally proved unwilling to undertake an expensive journey to

13282-447: The Crusades . The terms Crusader states and Outremer ( French : outre-mer , lit.   'overseas') describe the four feudal states established after the First Crusade in the Levant in around 1100: (from north to south) the County of Edessa , the Principality of Antioch , the County of Tripoli , and the Kingdom of Jerusalem . The term Outremer is of medieval origin, whilst modern historians use Crusader states, and

13511-473: The Ecumenical Patriarch against the Papacy, but the East–West Schism was not yet inevitable, and the Catholic and Orthodox Churches remained in full communion . The Gregorian Reform enhanced the popes' influence on secular matters. To achieve political goals, popes excommunicated their opponents, placed entire realms under interdict and promised spiritual rewards to those who took up arms for their cause. In 1074 Pope Gregory VII even considered leading

13740-403: The Euphrates. As the crusaders marched towards Antioch, Syrian Muslims asked Sultan Barkiyaruq for help, but he was engaged in a power struggle with his brother Muhammad Tapar . At Antioch, Bohemond persuaded the other leaders the city should be his if he could capture it, and Alexios did not come to claim it. Alexios withdrew, rather than join the siege, after Stephen, Count of Blois (who

13969-454: The Frankish army against Saladin's incursions into the kingdom, but neither side made any real gains, and Guy was criticized by his opponents for not striking against Saladin when he had the chance. In October 1183, Isabella married Humphrey of Toron at Kerak during a siege by Saladin, who perhaps hoped to take some valuable prisoners. As King Baldwin, although now blind and crippled, had recovered enough to resume his reign and his command of

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14198-483: The Frankish lands east of the river in late 1144. Before the end of the year, he captured the region, including the city of Edessa. Losing Edessa strategically threatened Antioch and limited opportunities for a Jerusalemite expansion in the south. In September 1146, Zengi was assassinated, possibly on orders from Damascus. His empire was divided between his two sons, with the younger Nur ad-Din succeeding him in Aleppo. A power vacuum in Edessa allowed Joscelin to return to

14427-714: The Franks offered the regency and the Egyptian invasion's command to Baldwin's crusader cousin Philip I, Count of Flanders . He wanted to be free to return to Flanders and rejected both offers. The plan for the invasion was abandoned, and the Byzantine fleet sailed for Constantinople. Baldwin negotiated a marriage between Hugh III, Duke of Burgundy , and Sibylla, but the succession crisis in France prevented him from sailing. Tension between Baldwin's maternal and paternal relatives grew. When Raymond and Bohemond, both related to him on his father's side, came to Jerusalem unexpectedly before Easter in 1180, Baldwin panicked, fearing they had arrived to depose him and elevate Sibylla to

14656-423: The French nobleman Raynald of Châtillon as her second husband. From 1149, all Fatimid caliphs were children, and military commanders were competing for power. Ascalon, the Fatimids' last Palestinian bridgehead, hindered Frankish raids against Egypt, but Baldwin captured the town in 1153. The Damascenes feared further Frankish expansion, and Nur ad-Din seized the city with ease a year later. He continued to remit

14885-480: The Holy Land, although in the decades following the destruction of the large Crusade of 1101 in Anatolia, only smaller groups of armed pilgrims departed for Outremer. The Fatimids' feud with the Seljuks hindered Muslim actions for more than a decade. Outnumbered by their enemies, the Franks remained in a vulnerable position, but they could forge temporary alliances with their Armenian, Arab, and Turkic neighbours. Each crusader state had its own strategic purpose during

15114-412: The Holy Land. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built to commemorate Christ's crucifixion and resurrection in Jerusalem. The Church of the Nativity was thought to enclose his birthplace in Bethlehem . The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque commemorated Muhammad's night journey. Although the most sacred places of devotion were in Palestine, there were also shrines in neighbouring Syria. As

15343-498: The Holy Sepulchre to establish a king for the newly created Kingdom of Jerusalem. Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse and Godfrey of Bouillon were recognized as the leaders of the crusade and the siege of Jerusalem. Raymond was the wealthier and more powerful of the two, but at first he refused to become king, perhaps attempting to show his piety and probably hoping that the other nobles would insist upon his election anyway. The more popular Godfrey did not hesitate like Raymond, and accepted

15572-448: The Ibelins (now closely allied to Conrad) argued that Isabella and Humphrey's marriage was illegal, as she had been underage at the time; underlying this was the fact that Humphrey had betrayed his wife's cause in 1186. The marriage was annulled amid some controversy. Conrad, who was now the nearest kinsman to Baldwin V in the male line, and had already proved himself a capable military leader, then married Isabella, but Guy refused to concede

15801-431: The Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been severely weakened by the Ayyubid Sultanate after the siege of Jerusalem in 1244 . The Crusader presence in the Levant collapsed shortly thereafter, when the Mamluks captured Acre in 1291 , ending the Kingdom of Jerusalem nearly 200 years after it was founded. With all four of the states defeated and annexed, the survivors fled to the Kingdom of Cyprus , which had been established by

16030-492: The Latin patriarch, there were four suffragan archdioceses and numerous dioceses. During Baldwin I 's reign, the kingdom expanded even further. The number of European inhabitants increased, as the minor crusade of 1101 brought reinforcements to the kingdom. Baldwin repopulated Jerusalem with Franks and native Christians, after his expedition across the Jordan in 1115. With help from the Italian city-states and other adventurers, notably King Sigurd I of Norway , Baldwin captured

16259-402: The Latins in Jerusalem'. Historian Hans Eberhard Mayer believes this reflected that only Latins held complete political and legal rights in the kingdom, and that the major division in the society was not between the nobility and the common people but between the Franks and the indigenous peoples. Despite sometimes receiving homage from, and acting as regent for, the rulers of the other states;

16488-572: The Latins of Jerusalem ". Daimbert compromised by crowning Baldwin I in Bethlehem rather than Jerusalem, but the path for a monarchy had been laid. Within this framework, a Catholic church hierarchy was established, overtop of the local Eastern Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox authorities, who retained their own hierarchies (the Catholics considered them schismatics and thus illegitimate, and vice versa). Under

16717-564: The Levant profoundly. Frankish rulers replaced local warlords in the cities, but large-scale colonisation did not follow, and the new conquerors did not change the traditional organisation of settlements and property in the countryside. The Muslim leaders were massacred or forced into exile, and the natives, accustomed to the rule of well-organised warbands, offered little resistance to their new lords. Western Christianity's canon law recognised that peace treaties and armistices between Christians and Muslims were valid. The Frankish knights regarded

16946-463: The Mediterranean coast to Jerusalem. On 15 July 1099, crusaders took the city after a siege lasting barely longer than a month. Thousands of Muslims and Jews were killed, and the survivors sold into slavery. Proposals to govern the city as an ecclesiastical state were rejected. Raymond refused the royal title, claiming only Christ could wear a crown in Jerusalem. This may have been to dissuade

17175-574: The Muslims were on the offensive , and commercial contacts primarily enriched the Islamic world . Europe was rural and underdeveloped, offering little more than raw materials and slaves in return for spices, cloth, and other luxuries from the Middle East . Climate change during the Medieval Warm Period affected the Middle East and western Europe differently. In the east, it caused droughts, while in

17404-639: The Romans in 70AD. The New Testament presented Palestine as the venue of the acts of Jesus and his Apostles . Islamic tradition described the region's principal city, Jerusalem, as the site of the Isra' and Mi'raj , Muhammad's miraculous night travel and ascension to Heaven. Places associated with holy people developed into shrines visited by pilgrims coming from faraway lands, often as an act of penance . The surge in Christian pilgrimage also inspired many Jews to return to

17633-555: The Seljuk state worked when family ties and personal loyalty overlapped the leaders' personal ambitions, the lavish iqta' grants combined with rivalries between maliks , atabegs , and military commanders could lead to disintegration in critical moments. The region's ethnic and religious diversity led to alienation among the ruled populations. In Syria, the Seljuk Sunnis ruled indigenous Shias . In Cilicia and northern Syria,

17862-595: The Seljuk threat. What the Emperor probably had in mind was a relatively modest force, and Urban far exceeded his expectations by calling for the First Crusade at the later Council of Clermont . He developed a doctrine of bellum sacrum (Christian holy war) and, based mainly on Old Testament passages in which God leads the Hebrews to victory in war, reconciled this with Church teachings. Urban's call for an armed pilgrimage for

18091-553: The Seljuks in 1073; they recaptured it in 1098 from the Artuqids , a smaller Turkish tribe associated with the Seljuks, just before the arrival of the crusaders. The Crusaders arrived at Jerusalem in June 1099; a few of the neighbouring towns ( Ramla , Lydda , Bethlehem , and others) were taken first, and Jerusalem itself was captured on July 15. On 22 July, a council was held in the Church of

18320-525: The Seljuks of Rum, Saladin concluded a two-year truce with Baldwin and, after launching a short but devastating campaign along the coast of Tripoli, with Raymond. For the first time in the history of Frankish–Muslim relations, the Franks could not set conditions for the peace. Between 1180 and 1183, Saladin asserted his suzerainty over the Artuqids, concluded a peace treaty with the Rum Seljuks, seized Aleppo from

18549-458: The Sultanate of Rum to reopen the Anatolian pilgrimage route towards the Holy Land. His defeat at Myriokephalon weakened the Byzantines' hold on Cilicia. Upholding the balance of power in Syria was apparently Raymond's main concern during his regency. When Saladin besieged Aleppo in 1174, Raymond led a relief army to the city; next year, when a united Zengid army invaded Saladin's realm, he signed

18778-534: The Teutonic Knights , arrived in the east late in 1227, and while waiting for the emperor they set about refortifying Sidon , where they built the sea castle , and Montfort , which later became the headquarters of the Teutonic Knights . The Ayyubids of Damascus did not dare attack, as al-Mu'azzam had suddenly died not long before. Frederick finally arrived on the Sixth Crusade in September 1228, and claimed

19007-455: The Tower of David and the banner of the Kingdom of Jerusalem", but not the crown itself, to both Philip II of France and Henry II of England ; the latter, as a grandson of Fulk, was a first cousin of the royal family of Jerusalem, and had promised to go on crusade after the murder of Thomas Becket . Both kings preferred to remain at home to defend their own territories, rather than act as regent for

19236-547: The Turkic mounted warlords as their peers with familiar moral values, and this familiarity facilitated their negotiations with the Muslim leaders. The conquest of a city was often accompanied by a treaty with the neighbouring Muslim rulers who were customarily forced to pay a tribute for the peace. The crusader states had a special position in Western Christianity's consciousness: many Catholic aristocrats were ready to fight for

19465-510: The West for campaigning. Thierry, Baldwin, Raynald and Raymond III of Tripoli attacked Shaizar. Baldwin offered the city to Thierry, who refused Raynald's demands he become his vassal, and the siege was abandoned. After Nur ad-Din seized Shaizar in 1157, the Nizari remained the last independent Muslim power in Syria. As prospects for a new crusade from the West were poor, the Franks of Jerusalem sought

19694-405: The West throughout the kingdom's existence. The kingdom also inherited "oriental" qualities, influenced by pre-existing customs and populations. The majority of the kingdom's inhabitants were native Christians, especially Greek and Syriac Orthodox , as well as Sunni and Shi'a Muslims. The native Christians and Muslims, who were a marginalized lower class, tended to speak Greek and Arabic, while

19923-593: The Zengids and re-established the Egyptian navy. Meanwhile, after the truce expired in 1182, Saladin demonstrated the strategic advantage he had by holding both Cairo and Damascus. While he faced Baldwin in Oultrejordain, his troops from Syria pillaged Galilee. The Franks adopted a defensive tactic and strengthened their fortresses. In February 1183, a Jerusalemite assembly levied an extraordinary tax for defence funding. Raynald

20152-497: The ailing Baldwin   V's guardianship. As there was no consensus on what should happen if the boy king died, it would be for the pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, the kings of France and England to decide whether his mother Sibylla or her half-sister Isabella had stronger claim to the throne. Bohemond was staying at Acre around this time, allegedly because Baldwin   IV wanted to secure Bohemond's support for his decisions on

20381-480: The alliance was maintained, and plans for another campaign in Egypt were made, which ultimately were to come to nought. In the end, Nur ad-Din was victorious and Saladin established himself as Sultan of Egypt . Saladin soon began to assert his independence from Nur ad-Din, and with the death of both Amalric and Nur ad-Din in 1174, he was well-placed to begin exerting control over Nur ad-Din's Syrian possessions as well. Upon

20610-595: The army after Fulk's death, but Edessa could not be recaptured, despite Zengi's own assassination in 1146. The fall of Edessa shocked Europe, and a Second Crusade arrived in 1148. After meeting in Acre in June, the crusading kings Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany agreed with Melisende, Baldwin III and the major nobles of the kingdom to attack Damascus . Zengi's territory had been divided amongst his sons after his death, and Damascus no longer felt threatened, so an alliance had been made with Zengi's son Nur ad-Din ,

20839-638: The army, Guy was removed from the regency and his five-year-old stepson, King Baldwin's nephew and namesake Baldwin , was crowned as co-king in November. King Baldwin himself then went to relieve the castle, carried on a litter, and attended by his mother. He was reconciled with Raymond of Tripoli and appointed him military commander. The siege was lifted in December and Saladin retreated to Damascus. Saladin attempted another siege in 1184, but Baldwin repelled that attack as well, and Saladin raided Nablus and other towns on

21068-483: The army. In November 1183, Baldwin made Guy's five-year-old stepson, also called Baldwin , co-ruler, and had him crowned king while attempting to annul the marriage of Guy and Sibylla. Guy and Sibylla fled to Ascalon, and his supporters vainly intervened on their behalf at a general council. An embassy to Europe was met with offers of money but not of military support. Already dying, Baldwin   IV appointed Raymond bailli for 10   years, but charged Joscelin with

21297-439: The atabeg Zengi of Mosul, who had taken control of Aleppo and had set his sights on Damascus as well; the union of these three states would have been a serious blow to the growing power of Jerusalem. A brief intervention in 1137–1138 by the Byzantine emperor John II Comnenus , who wished to assert imperial suzerainty over all the crusader states, did nothing to stop the threat of Zengi; in 1139 Damascus and Jerusalem recognized

21526-472: The barons but Baldwin of Ibelin and Raymond swore fealty to the royal couple. Baldwin went into exile, and Raymond forged an alliance with Saladin. Raynald seized another caravan, which violated the truce and prompted Saladin to assemble his forces for the jihād. Raymond allowed Muslim troops to pass through Galilee to raid around Acre. His shock at the Frankish defeat in the resulting Battle of Cresson brought him to reconciliation with Guy. Guy now gathered

21755-421: The barons to Nablus to a general council. In his absence, Sybilla's supporters, led by Joscelin and Raynald, took full control of Jerusalem, Acre and Beirut. Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem crowned her queen and appointed Guy her co-ruler. The barons assembling at Nablus offered the crown to Isabella's husband Humphrey IV of Toron , but he submitted to Sybilla to avoid a civil war. After his desertion, all

21984-466: The border castle of Montferrand . Fulk surrendered the castle and paid Zengi 50,000   dinars for his and Raymond's freedom. Emperor Alexios' son and successor, John II Komnenos , reasserted Byzantine claims to Cilicia and Antioch. His military campaign compelled Raymond of Poitiers to give homage and agree that he would surrender Antioch by way of compensation if the Byzantines ever captured Aleppo, Homs , and Shaizar for him. The following year

22213-453: The boundaries of the kingdom, by capturing Jaffa , Haifa , Tiberias , and other cities, and reducing many others to tributary status. He set the foundations for the system of vassalage in the kingdom, establishing the Principality of Galilee and the County of Jaffa , but his reign was short, and he died of an illness in 1100. His brother Baldwin of Boulogne successfully outmanoeuvred Daimbert and claimed Jerusalem for himself as " King of

22442-453: The capture of Tyre that year. The influence of Jerusalem was further extended over Edessa and Antioch, where Baldwin II acted as regent when their own leaders were killed in battle, although there were regency governments in Jerusalem as well during Baldwin's captivity. Baldwin was married to the Armenian noblewoman Morphia of Melitene , and had four daughters: Hodierna and Alice , who married into

22671-604: The ceremony, the Patriarch abandoned his claim to rule the Holy Land. Tancred remained defiant to Baldwin until an Antiochene delegation offered him the regency in March 1101. He ceded his Principality of Galilee to the king, but reserved the right to reclaim it as a fief if he returned from Antioch within fifteen months. For the next two years, Tancred ruled Antioch. He conquered Byzantine Cilicia and parts of Syria. The Fatimid Caliphate attacked Jerusalem in 1101 , 1102 and 1105 , on

22900-468: The chronicles used Latini , or Latins . These medieval ethnonyms reflect that the settlers could be differentiated from the indigenous population by language and faith. The Franks were mainly French-speaking Roman Catholics, while the natives were mostly Arabic- or Greek-speaking Muslims, Christians of other denominations, and Jews. The Kingdom of Jerusalem extended over historical Palestine and at its greatest extent included some territory east of

23129-500: The city leaders sought external protection. They allied with the adventurous Artuqid princes, Ilghazi and Balak , who inflicted crucial defeats on the Franks between 1119 and 1124, but could rarely prevent Frankish counter-invasions. In 1118 Baldwin of Bourcq succeeded Baldwin   I as King of Jerusalem, naming Joscelin his successor in Edessa. After Roger was killed at Ager Sanguinis ('Field of Blood'), Baldwin   II assumed

23358-463: The city, but he was unable to take the citadel. When Nur ad-Din arrived, the Franks were trapped, Joscelin fled and the subsequent sack left the city deserted. The fall of Edessa shocked Western opinion, prompting the largest military response since the First Crusade. The new crusade consisted of two great armies led overland by Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany , arriving in Acre in 1148. The arduous march had greatly reduced

23587-434: The coast, but could not recover Jerusalem or any of the inland territory of the kingdom. It has been suggested that this may have actually been a strategic decision by Richard rather than a failure as such, as he may have recognized that Jerusalem, in particular, was in fact a strategic liability as long as the Crusaders were obligated to defend it, as it was isolated from the sea where Western reinforcements could arrive. Conrad

23816-514: The concept of jihad came to be interpreted as a kind of counter-crusade against the kingdom, which was an impediment to Muslim unity, both political and spiritual. In Jerusalem, the Crusaders were distracted by a conflict between Melisende and Baldwin III. Melisende continued to rule as regent long after Baldwin came of age. She was supported by, among others, Manasses of Hierges, who essentially governed for her as constable; her son Amalric , whom she set up as Count of Jaffa ; Philip of Milly ; and

24045-457: The connection between the two processes is unclear. As feudal lordships could be established by the acquiring land, western aristocrats willingly launched offensive military campaigns, even against faraway territories. Catholic Europe's expansion in the Mediterranean began in the second half of the 11th century. Norman warlords conquered southern Italy from the Byzantines and ousted the Muslim rulers from Sicily; French aristocrats hastened to

24274-537: The conquest, but tens of thousands of Franks were enslaved. Those who could negotiate a free passage or were ransomed swarmed to Tyre, Tripoli, or Antioch. Conrad of Montferrat commanded the defences of Tyre . He was William's brother and arrived only days after Hattin. The childless Raymond died, and Bohemond's younger son, also called Bohemond , assumed power in Tripoli. After news of the Franks' devastating defeat at Hattin reached Italy, Pope Gregory VIII called for

24503-542: The coronation, and in Nablus he suggested that Isabella and Humphrey should be crowned instead, but Humphrey refused to agree to this plan which would have certainly started a civil war. Humphrey went to Jerusalem and swore allegiance to Guy and Sibylla, as did most of Raymond's other supporters. Raymond himself refused to do so and left for Tripoli; Baldwin of Ibelin also refused, gave up his fiefs, and left for Antioch. Raymond of Tripoli allied with Saladin against Guy and allowed

24732-401: The crown passed to Baldwin's relative, probably a cousin, Baldwin of Le Bourg , who had previously succeeded him in Edessa. Baldwin II was an able ruler, and he too successfully defended against Fatimid and Seljuk invasions. Although Antioch was severely weakened after the Battle of Ager Sanguinis in 1119, and Baldwin himself was held captive by the emir of Aleppo from 1123 to 1124, Baldwin led

24961-428: The crown. When Richard arrived in 1191, he and Philip took different sides in the succession dispute. Richard backed Guy, his vassal from Poitou, while Philip supported Conrad, a cousin of his late father Louis VII. After much ill feeling and ill health, Philip returned home in 1191, soon after the fall of Acre. Richard defeated Saladin at the Battle of Arsuf in 1191 and the Battle of Jaffa in 1192, recovering most of

25190-651: The crusader states to victory at the Battle of Azaz in 1125. His reign saw the establishment of the first military orders , the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar ; the earliest surviving written laws of the kingdom, compiled at the Council of Nablus in 1120; and the first commercial treaty with the Republic of Venice , the Pactum Warmundi , in 1124. The increase of naval and military support from Venice led to

25419-694: The crusaders involved never arrived in the kingdom. Aimery, however, not knowing of the diversion to Constantinople, raided Egypt in advance of the expected invasion. Both Isabella and Aimery died in 1205 and again an underage girl, Isabella and Conrad's daughter Maria of Montferrat , became queen of Jerusalem. Isabella's half-brother John of Ibelin, the Old Lord of Beirut governed as regent until 1210 when Maria married an experienced French knight, John of Brienne . Maria died in childbirth in 1212, and John of Brienne continued to rule as regent for their daughter Isabella II . The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 called for

25648-729: The crusaders, who came mainly from France , spoke French . There were also a small number of Jews and Samaritans . According to Benjamin of Tudela , who travelled through the kingdom around 1170, there were 1,000 Samaritans in Nablus , 200 in Caesarea and 300 in Ascalon . This sets a lower bound for the Samaritan population at 1,500, since the contemporary Tolidah , a Samaritan chronicle, also mentions communities in Gaza and Acre . Benjamin of Tudela estimated

25877-468: The death of Saladin in 1193. His sons claimed various parts of his empire: az-Zahir took control of Aleppo, al-Aziz Uthman held Cairo, while his eldest son, al-Afdal , retained Damascus. Saladin's brother Al-Adil Sayf ad-Din (often called "Saphadin" by the Crusaders) acquired al-Jazira (northern Mesopotamia), and al-Adil's son al-Mu'azzam took possession of Karak and Transjordan . In 1196, al-Afdal

26106-451: The death of the pro-western Emperor Manuel in 1180, the Kingdom of Jerusalem lost its most powerful ally. The subsequent events have often been interpreted as a struggle between two opposing factions, the "court party", made up of Baldwin's mother, Amalric's first wife Agnes of Courtenay , her immediate family , and recent arrivals from Europe who were inexperienced in the affairs of the kingdom and who were in favour of war with Saladin; and

26335-516: The defence of the northern crusader states took much of Baldwin   II's time. His absence, its impact on government, and his placement of relatives and their vassals in positions of power created opposition in Jerusalem. Baldwin's sixteen-month captivity led to a failed deposition attempt by some of the nobility, with the Flemish count , Charles the Good , considered as a possible replacement. Charles declined

26564-448: The developing Principality of Antioch. Under pressure from the poorer Franks, Godfrey and Robert II, Count of Flanders reluctantly joined the eventually unsuccessful siege of Arqa. Alexios asked the crusade to delay the march to Jerusalem, so the Byzantines could assist. Raymond's support for this strategy increased division among the crusade leaders and damaged his reputation among ordinary crusaders. The crusaders marched along

26793-455: The direction of Medina , although he did not make it that far. It was probably around this time that Raynald also attacked a Muslim caravan. The kingdom had a truce with Saladin at the time, and Raynald's actions have been seen as an independent act of brigandage; it is possible that he was trying to prevent Saladin from moving his forces north to take control of Aleppo, which would have strengthened Saladin's position. In response, Saladin attacked

27022-538: The disintegration of the Seljuk Empire revived the old Levantine system of city-states. The region had always been highly urbanised, and the local societies were organised into networks of interdependent settlements, each centred around a city or a major town. These networks developed into autonomous lordships under the rule of a Turkic, Arab or Armenian warlord or town magistrate in the late 11th   century. The local quadis took control of Tyre and Tripoli ,

27251-407: The dispute, but an assassination attempt was then made on Hugh, for which Fulk was blamed. This scandal allowed Melisende and her supporters to gain control of the government, just as her father had intended. Accordingly, Fulk "became so uxorious that...not even in unimportant cases did he take any measures without her knowledge and assistance." Fulk was then faced with a new and more dangerous enemy:

27480-601: The east for an apparently losing cause. The Mamluk sultans Baibars (reigned 1260–1277) and al-Ashraf Khalil (reigned 1290–1293) eventually reconquered all the remaining crusader strongholds, culminating in the destruction of Acre in 1291. The kingdom was ethnically, religiously, and linguistically diverse, although the Crusaders established themselves and their descendants as an elite Catholic minority. They imported many customs and institutions from their homelands in Europe, and there were close familial and political connections with

27709-433: The emir of Aleppo. Perhaps remembering attacks launched on Jerusalem from Damascus in previous decades, Damascus seemed to be the best target for the crusade, rather than Aleppo or another city to the north which would have allowed for the recapture of Edessa. The subsequent Siege of Damascus was a complete failure; when the city seemed to be on the verge of collapse, the crusader army suddenly moved against another section of

27938-491: The failure of the crusade, John travelled throughout Europe seeking assistance, but found support only from Frederick, who then married John and Maria's daughter Isabella II in 1225. The next year, Isabella died giving birth to their son Conrad IV , who succeeded his mother to the throne although he never appeared in the East. Frederick had reneged on his promise to lead the Fifth Crusade, but was now eager to cement his claim to

28167-458: The families of the Count of Tripoli and Prince of Antioch; Ioveta , who became an influential abbess; and the eldest, Melisende , who was his heir and succeeded him upon his death in 1131, with her husband Fulk V of Anjou as king-consort. Their son, the future Baldwin III , was named co-heir by his grandfather. Fulk was an experienced crusader and had brought military support to the kingdom during

28396-489: The feudal armies commanded by western nobles. By dazzling them with wealth and charming them with flattery, Alexios extracted oaths of fealty from most of the Crusader commanders. As his vassals, Godfrey of Bouillon , nominally duke of Lower Lorraine ; the Italo-Norman Bohemond of Taranto ; Bohemond's nephew Tancred of Hauteville ; and Godfrey's brother Baldwin of Bologne all swore that any territory gained which

28625-661: The first years of its existence. Jerusalem needed undisturbed access to the Mediterranean; Antioch wanted to seize Cilicia and the territory along the upper course of the Orontes River ; and Edessa aspired to control the Upper Euphrates valley. The most powerful Syrian Muslim ruler, Toghtekin of Damascus , took a practical approach to dealing with the Franks. His treaties establishing Damascene–Jerusalemite condominiums (shared rule) in debated territories created precedents for other Muslim leaders. In August 1099, Godfrey defeated

28854-457: The focus of his succession passed to his sister Sibylla and his younger half-sister Isabella . Baldwin and his advisors recognised that it was essential for Sibylla to be married to a Western nobleman in order to access support from European states in a military crisis; while Raymond was still regent, a marriage was arranged for Sibylla and William of Montferrat , a cousin of Louis VII of France and of Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor . It

29083-449: The fortress in the south from which Fatimid Egyptian armies had continually raided Jerusalem since the foundation of the kingdom. The fortress was captured and was added to the County of Jaffa, still in the possession of his brother Amalric. With the capture of Ascalon the southern border of the kingdom was now secure, and Egypt, formerly a major threat to the kingdom but now destabilized under

29312-486: The future Baldwin V . Raynald was then named regent. Soon afterwards, Philip of Flanders arrived in Jerusalem on pilgrimage ; he was Baldwin IV's cousin, and the king offered him the regency and command of the army, both of which Philip refused, although he objected to the appointment of Raynald as regent. Philip then attempted to intervene in the negotiations for Sibylla's second husband, and suggested one of his own retinue, but

29541-401: The grantor, or lord. A vassal owed fealty to the lord and was expected to provide military aid and advice to him. Violence was endemic, and a new class of mounted warriors, the knights , emerged. Many built castles, and their feuds brought much suffering to the unarmed population. The development of the knightly class coincided with the subjection of the formerly free peasantry into serfdom, but

29770-457: The imperialists. The Venetian baili Marsilio Zorzi , who arrived in Acre shortly before Alice's election as regent, wrote a report of conditions and recent events in the Levant for his masters in Venice. It is preserved in a manuscript of 1246 and in the fourteenth-century Liber Albus , but is a less precise, though more contemporaneous, account than Philip's. Richard of San Germano presents

29999-618: The king held no formalised overlord status, and those states remained legally outside the kingdom. Jews, Christians, and Muslims respected Palestine, known as the Holy Land , as an exceptionally sacred place. They all associated the region with the lives of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible . All of the holy sites in Judaism were found there, including the remains of the Second Temple, destroyed by

30228-452: The kingdom in 1182, but was defeated at Belvoir Castle . King Baldwin, although quite ill, was still able to command the army in person. Saladin attempted to besiege Beirut from land and sea, and Baldwin raided Damascene territory, but neither side did significant damage. In December 1182, Raynald launched a naval expedition on the Red Sea , which made it as far south as Rabigh . The expedition

30457-417: The kingdom was confirmed. The Fatimid Caliphate had rival viziers, Shawar and Dirgham , both eager to seek external support. This gave Amalric and Nur ad-Din the opportunity to intervene. Amalric launched five invasions of Egypt between 1163 and 1169, on the last occasion cooperating with a Byzantine fleet, but he could not establish a bridgehead. Nur ad-Din appointed his Kurdish general Shirkuh to direct

30686-400: The kingdom's Muslim neighbours." Baldwin brought with him an Armenian wife, traditionally named Arda (although never named such by contemporaries), whom he had married to gain political support from the Armenian population in Edessa, and whom he quickly set aside when he no longer needed Armenian support in Jerusalem. He bigamously married Adelaide del Vasto , regent of Sicily, in 1113, but

30915-475: The kingdom, and from Damascus and Mosul at the Battle of al-Sannabra in the northeast in 1113. As Thomas Madden says, Baldwin was "the true founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem", who "had transformed a tenuous arrangement into a solid feudal state. With brilliance and diligence, he established a strong monarchy, conquered the Palestinian coast, reconciled the crusader barons, and built strong frontiers against

31144-422: The kingdom. In 1134, he repressed a revolt by Hugh II of Jaffa , a relative of Melisende, but was still compelled to accept the shared inheritance. He also thwarted frequent attempts by his sister-in-law Alice to assume the regency in Antioch, including alliances with Pons of Tripoli and Joscelin   II of Edessa . Taking advantage of Antioch's weakened position, Leo , a Cilician Armenian ruler, seized

31373-478: The kingdom. The West was hesitant to send large-scale expeditions; for the next few decades, only small armies came, headed by minor European nobles who desired to make a pilgrimage . The Muslim states of Syria were meanwhile gradually united by Nur ad-Din, who defeated the Principality of Antioch at the Battle of Inab in 1149 and gained control of Damascus in 1154. Nur ad-Din was extremely pious and during his rule

31602-465: The lands of our friends." However, the main objective quickly became the control of the Holy Land . The Byzantines were frequently at war with the Seljuks and other Turkish dynasties for control of Anatolia and Syria . The Sunni Seljuks had formerly ruled the Seljuk Empire , but this empire had collapsed into several smaller states after the death of Malik-Shah I in 1092. Malik-Shah was succeeded in

31831-430: The last drowned en route. Guy of Lusignan, who had been refused entry to Tyre by Conrad, began to besiege Acre in 1189. During the lengthy siege , which lasted until 1191, Patriarch Heraclius, Queen Sibylla and her daughters, and many others died of disease. With the death of Sibylla in 1190, Guy now had no legal claim to the kingship, and the succession passed to Sibylla's half-sister Isabella. Isabella's mother Maria and

32060-454: The last occasion in alliance with Toghtekin. Baldwin   I repulsed these attacks and with Genoese, Venetian, and Norwegian fleets conquered all the towns on the Palestinian coast except Tyre and Ascalon . Raymond laid the foundations of the fourth crusader state, the County of Tripoli. He captured Tartus and Gibelet and besieged Tripoli. His cousin William ;II Jordan continued

32289-554: The leadership of the opposition. Though the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the Knights Templar supported the nobility, the Teutonic Knights and Knights Hospitaller supported Filangieri. In general his rights as regent were recognised but his practical power was denied on the basis of the Assizes and the High Court . His headquarters were in Tyre and he had the allegiance of Bohemond V , who

32518-534: The liberation of the Eastern Christians and the recovery of the Holy Land aroused unprecedented enthusiasm in Catholic Europe. Within a year, tens of thousands of people, both commoners and aristocrats, departed for the military campaign. Individual crusaders' motivations to join the crusade varied, but some of them probably left Europe to make a new permanent home in the Levant. Alexios cautiously welcomed

32747-508: The link of their prospects to a single master generated extreme loyalty. In the context of Middle Eastern politics this made them more trustworthy than relatives. Eventually, some mamluk descendants climbed the Muslim hierarchy to become king makers or even dynastic founders. In the mid-11th   century, a minor clan of Oghuz Turks named Seljuks , after the warlord Saljūq from Transoxiana , had expanded through Khurasan , Iran , and on to Baghdad. There, Saljūq's grandson Tughril

32976-455: The main army and headed to the Euphrates river, engaging in local politics and seizing the fortifications of Turbessel and Rawandan , where the Armenian populace welcomed him. Thoros, then ruler of this territory, could barely control or defend Edessa, so he tried to hire the Franks as mercenaries. Later, he went further and adopted Baldwin as his son in a power-share arrangement. In March 1098,

33205-471: The mainland, but Frederick was not well-received there; one of his few supporters was Balian, Lord of Sidon , who had welcomed the crusaders the year before and now acted as an ambassador to the Ayyubids. The death of al-Mu'azzam negated the proposed alliance with al-Kamil, who along with his brother al-Ashraf had taken possession of Damascus (as well as Jerusalem) from their nephew, al-Mu'azzam's son an-Nasir Dawud . However, al-Kamil presumably did not know of

33434-417: The majority of the population in the countryside comprised Christians and Muslims from local Levantine ethnicities, many Europeans (primarily French and Italian ) also arrived to settle in villages across the region. At first the kingdom was little more than a loose collection of towns and cities captured during the First Crusade , but at its height in the mid-12th century, the kingdom encompassed roughly

33663-464: The male line with a strong claim to the throne, there was concern about the extent of his ambitions, although he had no direct heirs of his own. To balance this, the king turned from time to time to his uncle, Joscelin III of Edessa , who was appointed seneschal in 1176; Joscelin was more closely related to Baldwin than Raymond was, but had no claim to the throne himself. As a leper, Baldwin had no children and could not be expected to rule much longer, so

33892-642: The military operations in Egypt. Weeks before Shirkuh died in 1169, the Fatimid caliph Al-Adid made him vizier. His nephew Saladin , who ended the Shi'ite caliphate when Al-Adid died in September 1171, succeeded Shirkuh. In March 1171, Amalric undertook a visit to Manuel in Constantinople to get Byzantine military support for yet another attack on Egypt. To this end, he swore fealty to the Emperor before his return to Jerusalem, but conflicts with Venice and Sicily prevented

34121-477: The more popular Godfrey from assuming the throne, but Godfrey adopted the title Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri ('Defender of the Holy Sepulchre') when he was proclaimed the first Frankish ruler of Jerusalem. In Western Europe an advocatus was a layman responsible for the protection and administration of church estates. The foundation of these three crusader states did not change the political situation in

34350-424: The native barons refused his suggestion. In addition, Philip seemed to think he could carve out a territory of his own in Egypt, but he refused to participate in the planned Byzantine-Jerusalem expedition. The expedition was delayed and finally cancelled, and Philip took his army away to the north. Most of the army of Jerusalem marched north with Philip, Raymond III, and Bohemond III to attack Hama , and Saladin took

34579-444: The new kingdom. The papal legate Daimbert of Pisa convinced Godfrey to hand over Jerusalem to him as Latin patriarch , with the intention to set up a theocratic state directly under papal control. According to William of Tyre, Godfrey may have supported Daimbert's efforts, and he agreed to take possession of "one or two other cities and thus enlarge the kingdom" if Daimbert were permitted to rule Jerusalem. Godfrey did indeed increase

34808-542: The next decades. Raymond of Poitiers joined forces with the Nizari and Joscelin with the Rum Seljuks against Aleppo. Nur ad-Din invaded Antioch and Raymond was defeated and killed at Inab in 1149. The next year Joscelin was captured and tortured and later died. Beatrice of Saone , his wife, sold the remains of the County of Edessa to the Byzantines with Baldwin's consent. Already 21 and eager to rule alone, Baldwin forced Melisende's retirement in 1152. In Antioch, Constance resisted pressure to remarry until 1153 when she chose

35037-418: The next few years. More troops were certainly needed, since Saladin was finally able to gain control of Aleppo, and with peace in his northern territories, he could focus on Jerusalem in the south. King Baldwin was so incapacitated by his leprosy that it was necessary to appoint a regent, and Guy of Lusignan was chosen, as he was Baldwin's legal heir and the king was not expected to live. The inexperienced Guy led

35266-461: The nobles, and then in Jerusalem, where he stayed until 1229, leaving in humiliating circumstances after having produced an anti-imperial reaction in the people. In 1231 he sent Riccardo Filangieri as his marshal . His attempt to assert his authority was opposed by John of Ibelin, the Old Lord of Beirut , who had been regent until Frederick's arrival. On John's death in 1236 the war was taken up by his son Balian . In 1239 Philip of Montfort assumed

35495-619: The north and Melisende remaining in control of Jerusalem and the cities of the south. Baldwin was able to replace Manasses with one of his own supporters, Humphrey II of Toron . Baldwin and Melisende knew that this situation was untenable. Baldwin soon invaded his mother's possessions, defeated Manasses, and besieged his mother in the Tower of David in Jerusalem. Melisende surrendered and retired to Nablus, but Baldwin appointed her his regent and chief advisor, and she retained some of her influence, especially in appointing ecclesiastical officials. In 1153, Baldwin launched an offensive against Ascalon ,

35724-539: The offensive on each occasion. As Edessa was Mosul's chief rival, Mawdud directed two campaigns against the city. They caused havoc, and the county's eastern region could never recover. The Syrian Muslim rulers saw the Sultan's intervention as a threat to their autonomy and collaborated with the Franks. After an assassin, likely a Nizari, murdered Mawdud, Muhammad Tapar dispatched two armies to Syria, but both campaigns failed. As Aleppo remained vulnerable to Frankish attacks,

35953-774: The offensive, recapturing Antioch in 969, after three centuries of Arab rule, and invading Syria. Turkic brigands and their Byzantine, also often ethnically Turkic, counterparts called akritai indulged in cross-border raiding. In 1071, while securing his northern borders during a break in his campaigns against the Fatimid Caliphate, Sultan Alp Arslan defeated Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes at Manzikert . Romanos' capture and Byzantine factionalism that followed broke Byzantine border control. This enabled large numbers of Turkic warbands and nomadic herders to enter Anatolia . Alp Arslan's cousin Suleiman ibn Qutulmish seized Cilicia and entered Antioch in 1084. Two years later, he

36182-563: The offer. Baldwin had four daughters. In 1126, Bohemond reached the age of majority and married the second-oldest, Alice , in Antioch. Aleppo had plunged into anarchy, but Bohemond II could not exploit this because of a conflict with Joscelin. The new atabeg of Mosul Imad al-Din Zengi seized Aleppo in 1128. The two major Muslim centres' union was especially dangerous for the neighbouring Edessa, but it also worried Damascus's new ruler, Taj al-Muluk Buri . Baldwin's eldest daughter Melisende

36411-472: The old Islamic conflict between Sunni and Shia made the Muslim peoples more likely to wage war on each other than on Christians. The Byzantines augmented their armies with mercenaries from the Turks and Europe. This compensated for a shortfall caused by lost territory, especially in Anatolia. In 1095 at the Council of Piacenza , Emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested support from Pope Urban II against

36640-504: The old capital of Acre . In 1231 the citizens of Acre formed a commune with their headquarters at the church of Saint Andrew's in order to unify their opposition to Filangieri. In 1232 John of Ibelin was elected its mayor . The first major battle of the war took place at Casal Imbert in May 1232. Filangieri defeated the Ibelins. In June, however, he was so soundly defeated by an inferior force at

36869-426: The opportunity to invade the kingdom. Baldwin proved to be an effective and energetic king as well as a brilliant military commander: he defeated Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard in September 1177 despite being greatly outnumbered and having to rely on a levee-en-masse . Although Baldwin's presence despite his illness was inspirational, direct military decisions were actually made by Raynald. Hugh III of Burgundy

37098-413: The other hand, argues that William, as well as the thirteenth-century authors who continued William's chronicle in French and were allied to Raymond's supporters in the Ibelin family, cannot be considered impartial. Although the events were clearly a dynastic struggle, "the division was not between native barons and newcomers from the West, but between the king's maternal and paternal kin." Miles of Plancy

37327-430: The papal armies were led by Frederick's former father-in-law John of Brienne. Frederick was forced to return home in 1229, leaving the Holy Land "not in triumph, but showered with offal" by the citizens of Acre. Crusader state The Crusader states , or Outremer , were four Catholic polities that existed in the Levant from 1098 to 1291. Following the principles of feudalism , the foundation for these polities

37556-629: The paternal line, and could have claimed the throne if the king died without an heir or a suitable replacement. Before Raymond and Bohemond arrived, Agnes and King Baldwin arranged for Sibylla to be married to a Poitevin newcomer, Guy of Lusignan , whose older brother Amalric of Lusignan was already an established figure at court. Internationally, the Lusignans were useful as vassals of Baldwin and Sibylla's cousin Henry II of England . Baldwin betrothed eight-year-old Isabella to Humphrey IV of Toron , stepson of

37785-479: The popes as no more than one of the five highest ranking church leaders, titled patriarchs , and rejected the idea of papal supremacy . This opposition, together with differences in theology and liturgy, caused acrimonious disputes which escalated when a papal legate excommunicated the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 1054. The patriarchs of Alexandria , Antioch , and Jerusalem sided with

38014-450: The port cities of Acre (1104), Beirut (1110), and Sidon (1111), while exerting his suzerainty over the other crusader states to the north – Edessa (which he had founded in 1097 during the crusade), Antioch, and Tripoli, which he helped capture in 1109. He successfully defended against Muslim invasions, from the Fatimids at the numerous battles at Ramla and elsewhere in the southwest of

38243-562: The position as leader. Most modern historians chronicle that he took the title Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri ("advocate" or "defender" of the Holy Sepulchre). Others report that Godfrey himself seems to have used the more ambiguous term princeps , or simply retained his title of dux from Lower Lorraine. According to William of Tyre, writing in the later 12th century when Godfrey had become a legendary hero, he refused to wear "a crown of gold" where Christ had worn "a crown of thorns ". Raymond

38472-499: The powerful Raynald of Châtillon , thereby removing her from the influence of the Ibelin family and that of her mother. The dispute between the two factions in the kingdom affected the election of a new Patriarch in 1180. When Patriarch Amalric died on 6 October 1180, the two most obvious choices for his successor were William of Tyre and Heraclius of Caesarea. They were fairly evenly matched in background and education, but politically they were allied with opposite parties, as Heraclius

38701-435: The regency in Antioch by arranging a marriage between the countess, Melisende's niece Constance , and his own relative Raymond of Poitiers . Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, the native crusader nobles opposed Fulk's preference for his Angevin retinue. In 1134 Hugh II of Jaffa revolted against Fulk, allying with the Muslim garrison at Ascalon, for which he was convicted of treason in absentia . The Latin patriarch intervened to settle

38930-558: The regency of Antioch for the absent Bohemond   II. Public opinion attributed a series of disasters affecting the Outremer—defeats by enemy forces and plagues of locusts—as punishments for the Franks' sins. To improve moral standards, the Jerusalemite ecclesiastic and secular leaders assembled a council at Nablus and issued decrees against adultery, sodomy, bigamy, and sexual relations between Catholics and Muslims. A proposal by

39159-698: The regency of Edessa. The Byzantines took the opportunity to reconquer Cilicia. They took the port but not the citadel of Laodikeia . Bohemond returned to Italy to recruit allies and gather supplies. Tancred assumed leadership in Antioch, and his cousin Richard of Salerno did the same in Edessa. In 1107, Bohemond crossed the Adriatic Sea and failed in besieging Dyrrachion in the Balkan Peninsula . The resulting Treaty of Devol forced Bohemond to restore Laodikeia and Cilicia to Alexios, become his vassal and reinstate

39388-551: The regency of the kingdom in the name of his infant son. Frederick immediately came into conflict with the native nobles of Outremer, some of whom resented his attempts to impose Imperial authority over both Cyprus and Jerusalem. The Cypriot nobles were already quarrelling amongst themselves about the regency for Henry I of Cyprus , who was still a child. The High Court of Cyprus had elected John of Ibelin as regent, but Henry's mother Alice of Champagne wished to appoint one of her supporters; Alice and her party, members or supporters of

39617-427: The region. On the eve of the Crusades, after a thousand years of reputedly uninterrupted succession of popes, the Papacy was Catholic Europe's oldest institution. The popes were seen as the Apostle Saint Peter 's successors, and their prestige was high. In the west, the Gregorian Reform reduced lay influence on church life and strengthened papal authority over the clergy. Eastern Christians continued to consider

39846-404: The reign of several underaged caliphs, was reduced to a tributary state. Nur ad-Din remained a threat in the east, and Baldwin had to contend with the advances of the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus , who claimed suzerainty over the Principality of Antioch. In order to bolster the defences of the kingdom against the growing strength of the Muslims, Baldwin III made the first direct alliance with

40075-414: The restoration of Jerusalem and most of the rest of the former kingdom. The Crusaders finally managed to starve out the city and captured it in November. Al-Kamil retreated to the nearby fortress of al-Mansurah , but the crusaders remained in Damietta throughout 1219 and 1220, awaiting the arrival of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II , while King John returned to Acre briefly to defend against al-Mu'azzam, who

40304-434: The richest heiress of the kingdom, and gaining Galilee. Nur ad-Din's empire quickly disintegrated. His eunuch confidant Gümüshtekin took As-Salih from Damascus to Aleppo. Gümüshtekin's rival, Ibn al-Muqaddam , seized Damascus but soon surrendered it to Saladin. By 1176, Saladin reunited much of Muslim Syria through warring against Gümüshtekin and As-Salih's relatives, the Zengids . That same year, Emperor Manuel invaded

40533-432: The roads impassable. In 1130 Bohemond II was killed raiding in Cilicia, leaving Alice with their infant daughter, Constance . Baldwin II denied Alice control, instead resuming the regency until his death in 1131. On his deathbed Baldwin named Fulk, Melisende, and their infant son Baldwin   III joint heirs. Fulk intended to revoke the arrangement, but his favouritism toward his compatriots roused strong discontent in

40762-493: The ruling prince in the captured city of Antioch . The siege of Jerusalem in 1099 resulted in a decisive Crusader victory over the Fatimid Caliphate , after which territorial consolidation followed, including the taking of Tripoli . In 1144, Edessa fell to the Zengid Turks , but the other three realms endured until the final years of the 13th   century, when they fell to the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt . The Mamluks captured Antioch in 1268 and Tripoli in 1289 , leaving only

40991-433: The severity of the threat to both states, and an alliance was concluded which halted Zengi's advance. Fulk used this time to construct numerous castles, including Ibelin and Kerak . After the death of both Fulk and Emperor John in separate hunting accidents in 1143, Zengi invaded and conquered Edessa in 1144. Queen Melisende, now regent for her elder son Baldwin III, appointed a new constable, Manasses of Hierges , to head

41220-565: The siege after Raymond's death in 1105. It was completed in 1109 when Raymond's son Bertrand arrived. Baldwin brokered a deal, sharing the territory between them, until William Jordan's death united the county. Bertrand acknowledged Baldwin's suzerainty, although William Jordan had been Tancred's vassal. When Bohemond was released for a ransom in 1103, he compensated Tancred with lands and gifts. Baldwin of Bourcq and his cousin and vassal, Joscelin of Courtenay , were captured while attacking Ridwan of Aleppo at Harran with Bohemond. Tancred assumed

41449-462: The small size of Frederick's army, nor the divisions within it caused by his excommunication, and wished to avoid defending his territories against another crusade. Frederick's presence alone was sufficient to regain Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and a number of surrounding castles without a fight: these were recovered in February 1229, in return for a ten-year truce with the Ayyubids and freedom of worship for Jerusalem's Muslim inhabitants. The terms of

41678-408: The succession. Back in Antioch, Bohemond kidnapped Ruben of Cilicia and forced him into becoming his vassal. Saladin signed a four-year truce with Jerusalem and attacked Mosul. He could not capture the city but extracted an oath of fealty from Mosul's Zengid ruler, Izz al-Din Mas'ud , in March 1186. A few months later, Baldwin   V died, and a power struggle began in Jerusalem. Raymond summoned

41907-464: The summer of 1186. Raymond and his supporters went to Nablus, presumably in an attempt to prevent Sibylla from claiming the throne, but Sibylla and her supporters went to Jerusalem, where it was decided that the kingdom should pass to her, on the condition that her marriage to Guy be annulled. She agreed but only if she could choose her own husband and king, and after being crowned, she immediately crowned Guy with her own hands. Raymond had refused to attend

42136-436: The surrounding territory, was allowed to flee to Tyre, Tripoli, or Egypt (whence they were sent back to Europe), but those who could not pay for their freedom were sold into slavery, and those who could were often robbed by Christians and Muslims alike on their way into exile. The capture of the city led to the Third Crusade , launched in 1189 and led by Richard the Lionheart , Philip Augustus and Frederick Barbarossa , though

42365-401: The term Franks for the European incomers. However, relatively few of the incoming Europeans took a crusader oath. The Latin chronicles of the First Crusade, written in the early 11th century, called the Western Christians who came from Europe Franci irrespective of their ethnicity. Byzantine Greek sources use Φράγκοι Frangi and Arabic الإفرنجي al-Ifranji . Alternatively,

42594-414: The territory of modern-day Israel , Palestine and the southern parts of Lebanon . From the Mediterranean Sea , the kingdom extended in a thin strip of land from Beirut in the north to the Sinai Desert in the south; into modern Jordan and Syria in the east, and towards Fatimid Egypt in the west. Three other Crusader states founded during and after the First Crusade were located further north:

42823-504: The throne through Conrad. There were also plans to join with al-Kamil in attacking al-Mu'azzam in Damascus, an alliance which had been discussed with Egyptian envoys in Italy. But after continually delaying his departure for the Holy Land, including suffering an outbreak of disease in his fleet, he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX in 1227. The crusaders, led not by Frederick but by his representatives Richard Filangieri , Henry IV, Duke of Limburg , and Hermann of Salza , Grand Master of

43052-415: The throne under their control. To thwart their coup, he sanctioned her marriage to Guy of Lusignan , a young aristocrat from Poitou . Guy's brother Aimery held the office of constable of Jerusalem , and their family had close links to the House of Plantagenet . Baldwin's mother and her clique marginalised Raymond, Bohemond and the influential Ibelin family . To prepare for a military campaign against

43281-399: The total Jewish population of 14 cities in the kingdom to be 1,200, making the Samaritan population of the time larger than the Jewish, perhaps for the only time in history. The First Crusade was preached at the Council of Clermont in 1095 by Pope Urban II , with the goal of assisting the Byzantine Empire against the invasions of the " Turks and Arabs" and "to destroy this vile race from

43510-456: The treaty were unacceptable to the Patriarch of Jerusalem Gerald of Lausanne , who placed the city under interdict . In March, Frederick crowned himself in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but because of his excommunication and the interdict Jerusalem was never truly reincorporated into the kingdom, which continued to be ruled from Acre. Meanwhile, in Italy, the Pope used Frederick's excommunication as an excuse to invade his Italian territories;

43739-491: The tribute that Damascus' former rulers had offered to the Jerusalemite kings. Baldwin extracted tribute from the Egyptians as well. Raynald lacked financial resources. He tortured the Latin Patriarch of Antioch , Aimery of Limoges , to appropriate his wealth and attacked the Byzantine's Cilician Armenians. When Emperor Manuel I Komnenos delayed the payment he had been promised, Raynald pillaged Byzantine Cyprus . Thierry, Count of Flanders , brought military strength from

43968-412: The two rulers' forces. At a leadership conference, including the widowed Melisende and her son Baldwin   III, they agreed to attack Damascus rather than attempt to recover distant Edessa. The attack on Damascus ended in a humiliating defeat and retreat. Scapegoating followed the unexpected failure, with many westerners blaming the Franks. Fewer crusaders came from Europe to fight for the Holy Land in

44197-401: The walls, and was driven back. The Crusaders retreated within three days. There were rumours of treachery and bribery, and Conrad III felt betrayed by the nobility of Jerusalem. Whatever the reason for the failure, the French and German armies returned home, and a few years later Damascus was firmly under Nur ad-Din's control. The failure of the Second Crusade had dire long-term consequences for

44426-417: The way home. In October 1184, Guy of Lusignan led an attack on the Bedouin nomads from his base in Ascalon. Unlike Raynald's attacks on caravans, which may have had some military purpose, Guy attacked a group that was usually loyal to Jerusalem and provided intelligence about the movements of Saladin's troops. At the same time, King Baldwin contracted his final illness and Raymond of Tripoli, rather than Guy,

44655-445: The way to Jerusalem. Egypt and much of Palestine were controlled by the Arab Shi'ite Fatimid Caliphate , which had extended further into Syria before the arrival of the Seljuks. Warfare between the Fatimids and Seljuks caused great disruption for the local Christians and for Western pilgrims. The Fatimids, under the nominal rule of caliph al-Musta'li but actually controlled by vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah , had lost Jerusalem to

44884-414: The west, it improved conditions for agriculture. Higher agricultural yields led to population growth and the expansion of commerce, and to the development of prosperous new military and mercantile elites. In Catholic Europe, state and society were organised along feudal lines. Landed estates were customarily granted in fief —that is, in return for services that the grantee, or vassal , was to perform for

45113-402: The winners of the war. The chief primary source for the War is Philip of Novara 's The Wars of Frederick II Against the Ibelins , which is a highly partisan account favouring the Ibelins. Philip was an active participant in and eyewitness of many of the events he describes. In the 1240s he was handsomely rewarded in money and fiefs by Alice. His Wars is generally trusted but is contained in

45342-458: The winter of 1217 and spring of 1218. In the spring of 1218 the Fifth Crusade began in earnest when German crusader fleets landed at Acre. Along with King John, who was elected leader of the crusade, the fleets sailed to Egypt and besieged Damietta at the mouth of the Nile in May. The siege progressed slowly, and the Egyptian sultan al-Adil died in August 1218, supposedly of shock after the Crusaders managed to capture one of Damietta's towers. He

45571-437: Was 13 and a leper . The accession of underage rulers led to disunity both in Jerusalem and in Muslim Syria. In Jerusalem, the seneschal Miles of Plancy took control, but unknown assailants murdered him on the streets of Acre. With the baronage's consent, Amalric's cousin, Raymond   III of Tripoli, assumed the regency for Baldwin   IV as bailli . He became the most powerful baron by marrying Eschiva of Bures ,

45800-451: Was a massive defeat for the Franks. Nearly all the major Frankish leaders were taken prisoner, but only Raynald and the armed monks of the military orders were executed. Raymond was among the few Frankish leaders who escaped captivity. He fell seriously ill after reaching Tripoli. Within months after Hattin, Saladin conquered almost the entire kingdom. The city of Jerusalem surrendered on 2   October 1187. There were no massacres following

46029-410: Was appointed as his regent. His nephew Baldwin was paraded in public, wearing his crown as Baldwin V. Baldwin IV finally succumbed to his leprosy in May 1185. Meanwhile, the succession crisis had prompted a mission to the West to seek assistance. In 1184, Patriarch Heraclius travelled throughout the courts of Europe, but no help was forthcoming. Heraclius offered the "keys of the Holy Sepulchre, those of

46258-412: Was briefly bailli or regent during Baldwin IV 's minority. Miles was assassinated in October 1174, and Count Raymond III of Tripoli , Amalric's first cousin, became regent. It is highly probable that Raymond or his supporters engineered the assassination. Baldwin reached his majority in 1176, and despite his illness he no longer had any legal need for a regent. Since Raymond was his nearest relative in

46487-428: Was convinced to divorce her as well in 1117; Adelaide's son from her first marriage, Roger II of Sicily , never forgave Jerusalem, and for decades withheld much-needed Sicilian naval support. Baldwin died without heirs in 1118, during a campaign against Egypt, and the kingdom was offered to his brother Eustace III of Boulogne , who had accompanied Baldwin and Godfrey on the crusade. Eustace was uninterested, and instead

46716-406: Was decentralised, polyglot, and multi-national. A junior Seljuk ruling a province as an appanage was titled malik , Arabic for king. Mamluk military commanders acting as tutors and guardians for young Seljuk princes held the position of atabeg ('father-commander'). If his ward held a province in appanage, the atabeg ruled it as regent for the underage malik . On occasion,

46945-509: Was defeated and two of Raynald's men were actually taken to Mecca to be executed in public. Like his earlier raids, Raynald's expedition is usually seen as selfish and ultimately fatal for Jerusalem, but according to Bernard Hamilton, it was actually a shrewd strategy, meant to damage Saladin's prestige and reputation. In 1183 a general tax was levied throughout the kingdom, which was unprecedented in Jerusalem and almost all of medieval Europe to that point. The tax helped pay for larger armies for

47174-474: Was deserting) told him defeat was imminent. In June 1098, Bohemond persuaded a renegade Armenian tower commander to let the crusaders into the city. They slaughtered the Muslim inhabitants and, by mistake, some local Christians. The crusade leaders decided to return Antioch to Alexios as they had sworn to at Constantinople, but when they learnt of Alexios' withdrawal, Bohemond claimed the city for himself. The other leaders agreed, apart from Raymond, who supported

47403-464: Was driven out of Damascus by al Adil in alliance with Uthman. When Uthman died in 1198, al Afdal returned to power as regent in Egypt for Uthman's infant son. Allied with az-Zahir, he then attacked his uncle in Damascus. The alliance fell apart, and al-Adil then defeated al Afdal in Egypt and annexed the country. In 1200 Al-Adil proclaimed himself Sultan of Egypt and Syria, entrusting Damascus to al-Mu'azzam and al-Jazira to another son, al-Kamil . Following

47632-433: Was executed by Saladin and Guy was imprisoned in Damascus. Over the next few months, Saladin easily overran the entire kingdom. Only the port of Tyre remained in Frankish hands, defended by Conrad of Montferrat , who had coincidentally arrived just in time from Constantinople . The fall of Jerusalem essentially ended the first Kingdom of Jerusalem. Much of the population, swollen with refugees fleeing Saladin's conquest of

47861-494: Was expected to come to Jerusalem and marry Sibylla, but Hugh was unable to leave France due to the political unrest there in 1179–1180 following the death of Louis VII. Meanwhile, Baldwin IV's stepmother Maria, mother of Isabella and stepmother of Sibylla, married Balian of Ibelin . At Easter in 1180, Raymond and his cousin Bohemond III of Antioch attempted to force Sibylla to marry Balian's brother Baldwin of Ibelin . Raymond and Bohemond were King Baldwin's nearest male relatives in

48090-405: Was granted by the High Court to Alice , widow of Hugh I of Cyprus and daughter of Isabella I of Jerusalem . Alice promptly began ruling as if queen, ignoring Conrad, who was in Italy, and ordering Filangieri arrested. After a long siege, Tyre fell on 12 June. The Ibelins seized its citadel on 7 or 10 July, with the help of Alice, whose forces arrived on 15 June. Only the Ibelins could claim to be

48319-422: Was granted the title sultan —'power' in Arabic —by the Abbasid Caliph . The caliphs kept their legitimacy and prestige, but the sultans held political power. Seljuk success was achieved by extreme violence. It brought disruptive nomadism to the sedentary society of the Levant, and set a pattern followed by other nomadic Turkic clans such as the Danishmendids and the Artuqids . The Great Seljuk Empire

48548-405: Was his heir. He married her to Fulk of Anjou , who had widespread western connections useful to the kingdom. After Fulk's arrival, Baldwin raised a large force for an attack on Damascus. This force included the leaders of the other crusader states, and a significant Angevin contingent provided by Fulk. The campaign was abandoned when the Franks' foraging parties were destroyed, and bad weather made

48777-480: Was hoped that by allying with a relative of the Western emperor, Frederick would come to the kingdom's aid. Jerusalem looked again towards the Byzantine Empire for help, and Emperor Manuel was looking for a way to restore his empire's prestige after his defeat at the Battle of Myriokephalon in 1176; this mission was undertaken by Raynald of Châtillon . After William of Montferrat arrived in 1176, he fell ill and died in June 1177, leaving Sibylla widowed and pregnant with

49006-432: Was incensed and took his army to forage away from the city. The new kingdom, and Godfrey's reputation, was secured with the defeat of the Fatimid Egyptian army under al-Afdal Shahanshah at the Battle of Ascalon one month after the conquest, on August 12, but Raymond and Godfrey's continued antagonism prevented the crusaders from taking control of Ascalon itself. There was still some uncertainty about what to do with

49235-450: Was killed in a conflict with the Great Seljuk Empire. Between 1092 and 1094, Nizam al-Mulk, the Sultan Malik-Shah , the Fatimid Caliph, Al-Mustansir Billah and the vizier Badr al-Jamali all died. Malik-Shah's brother Tutush and the atabegs of Aleppo and Edessa were killed in the succession conflict, and Suleiman's son Kilij Arslan I revived his father's Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia. The Egyptian succession resulted in

49464-420: Was laid by the First Crusade by the European Christians, which was proclaimed by the Latin Church in 1095 in order to reclaim the Holy Land after it was lost to the 7th-century Arab Muslim conquest . Situated on the Eastern Mediterranean , the four states were, in order from north to south: the County of Edessa (1098–1144), the Principality of Antioch (1098–1268), the County of Tripoli (1102–1289), and

49693-405: Was largely urban and isolated from the indigenous Levantine peoples , having separate legal and religious systems. The ancient Jewish communities that had survived and remained in the holy cities of Jerusalem, Tiberias , Hebron , and Safed since the Jewish–Roman wars and the destruction of the Second Temple were heavily persecuted in a pattern of rampant Christian antisemitism accompanying

49922-473: Was massing his troops, and attacked Muslim caravans in an attempt to disrupt this. Guy was on the verge of attacking Raymond, but realized that the kingdom would need to be united in the face of the threat from Saladin, and Balian of Ibelin effected a reconciliation between the two during Easter in 1187. Saladin attacked Kerak again in April, and in May, a Muslim raiding party ran into the much smaller embassy on its way to negotiate with Raymond, and defeated it at

50151-438: Was moved to Acre and controlled most of the coastline of present-day Israel and southern and central Lebanon, including the strongholds and towns of Jaffa, Arsuf, Caesarea, Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut. At best, it included only a few other significant cities, such as Ascalon and some interior fortresses, as well as suzerainty over Tripoli and Antioch. The new king, Henry of Champagne, died accidentally in 1197, and Isabella married for

50380-426: Was not united either; the French kings only controlled a small central region directly. Counts and dukes ruled other regions, and some of them were remarkably wealthy and powerful—in particular, the dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy , and the counts of Anjou , Champagne , Flanders , and Toulouse . Western Christians and Muslims interacted mainly through warring or commerce. During the 8th and 9th centuries,

50609-446: Was one of Agnes of Courtenay's supporters. The canons of the Holy Sepulchre asked the king for advice, and Heraclius was chosen through Agnes' influence. There were rumours that Agnes and Heraclius were lovers, but this information comes from the partisan 13th-century continuations of William of Tyre's history, and there is no other evidence to substantiate such a claim. At the end of 1181, Raynald of Châtillon raided south into Arabia, in

50838-412: Was raiding the kingdom from Damascus in John's absence. Still expecting the emperor's imminent arrival, in July 1221, the Crusaders set off towards Cairo, but they were stopped by the rising Nile , which al-Kamil allowed to flood by breaking the dams along its course. The sultan easily defeated the trapped Crusader army and regained Damietta. Emperor Frederick had, in fact, never left Europe at all. After

51067-427: Was sent to Constantinople to negotiate a military expedition, but in 1168 Amalric pillaged Bilbeis without waiting for the naval support promised by Manuel. Amalric accomplished nothing else, but his actions prompted Shawar to switch sides again and seek help from Shirkuh. Shawar was promptly assassinated, and when Shirkuh died in 1169, he was succeeded by his nephew Yusuf, better known as Saladin . That year, Manuel sent

51296-404: Was succeeded by his son al-Kamil . In the autumn of 1218 reinforcements arrived from Europe, including the papal legate Pelagius of Albano . In the winter the crusaders were affected by floods and disease, and the siege dragged on throughout 1219, when Francis of Assisi arrived to attempt to negotiate a truce. Neither side could agree to terms, despite the Ayyubid offer of a thirty-year truce and

51525-462: Was the prince of Antioch and count of Tripoli . He also held the Holy City of Jerusalem itself, which had been negotiated away from the Saracens by Frederick. So long as the Ibelins controlled the opposition, Filangieri could count on the support of their enemies as well. The Italian cities were also divided between the two factions: Pisa supported Filangieri and Genoa the Ibelins. The Ibelins controlled Beirut , Arsuf , and Caesarea as well as

51754-429: Was the chief Shi'ite power in Islam. The root of this was beyond cultural and racial conflict but originated in the splits within Islam following Muhammad's death. Sunnis supported a caliphal succession that began with one of his associates, Abu Bakr , while Shi'ites supported an alternative succession from his cousin and son-in-law, Ali . Islamic law granted the status of dhimmi , or protected peoples, to

51983-405: Was the cousin of both Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Louis   VII of France. In 1176, Baldwin reached the age of 15 and majority, ending Raymond's regency. He revisited plans for an invasion of Egypt and renewed his father's pact with the Byzantines. Manuel dispatched a fleet of 70 galleys plus support ships to Outremer. As William had died, and Baldwin's health was deteriorating,

52212-414: Was the sole Frankish ruler to pursue an offensive policy. He attacked an Egyptian caravan and built a fleet for a naval raid into the Red Sea . Byzantine influence declined after Manuel died in 1180. Bohemond repulsed his Byzantine wife Theodora and married Sybil, an Antiochene noblewoman with a bad reputation. Patriarch Aimery excommunicated him and the Antiochene nobles who opposed the marriage fled to

52441-486: Was unanimously elected king in April 1192, but was murdered by the Hashshashin only days later. Eight days after that, the pregnant Isabella was married to Count Henry II of Champagne , nephew of Richard and Philip, but politically allied to Richard. As compensation, Richard sold Guy the island of Cyprus , which Richard had captured on the way to Acre, although Guy continued to claim the throne of Jerusalem until his death in 1194. The crusade came to an end peacefully, with

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