Medieval and Manuscripts

Crusader states

The Crusader states, or Outremer, were four Catholic polities established in the Levant region and southeastern Anatolia from 1098 to 1291. Following the principles of feudalism, the foundation for these polities was laid by the First Crusade, which was proclaimed by the Latin Church in 1095 to reclaim the Holy Land after it was lost to the 7th-century Muslim conquest. From north to south, they were the County of Edessa (1098–1150), the Principality of Antioch (1098–1268), the County of Tripoli (1102–1289), and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291). The three northern states covered an area in what is now southeastern Turkey, northwestern Syria, and northern Lebanon; the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the southernmost and most prominent state, covered an area in what is now southern Lebanon (up to and including Beirut), Israel, Palestine, and western Jordan. The description Crusader states can be misleading, as from 1130 onwards, very few people among 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 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 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.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Christ Church, Rouse Hill
• ▸Christ Church Chapel
• ▸Britford

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.