Kingdom of Jerusalem

The Kingdom of Jerusalem was the Crusader state that held the holy city itself, set up in the Levant after the First Crusade took Jerusalem in July 1099. Ruled by a mostly French-speaking Catholic elite over a largely Eastern Christian and Muslim population, it lost Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187, survived as a coastal state centred on Acre, and came to an end when the Mamluks took Acre in 1291.

The First Crusade, preached by Pope Urban II in 1095, reached a Levant divided among rival Seljuk emirs and the Fatimids of Egypt, who had retaken Jerusalem only in 1098. The crusaders besieged the city from 7 June 1099 and stormed it on 15 July. Large numbers of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants were then killed. Some Arab sources of the period spoke of 70,000 or even 100,000 dead, figures modern historians regard as unrealistic for a city of perhaps 30,000; modern estimates range from about 3,000 to 10,000. A week later Godfrey of Bouillon was chosen as ruler, though he avoided the title of king, and in August he defeated a Fatimid army at Ascalon.

Godfrey died in 1100, and his brother Baldwin took the crown. With help from Italian fleets he captured the coastal cities of Acre in 1104, Beirut in 1110 and Sidon in 1111, while asserting overlordship over the crusader states further north. Under Baldwin II the first military orders, the Hospitallers and Templars, appeared, the Council of Nablus issued the earliest surviving laws in 1120, and Venetian naval help won Tyre in 1124. The fall of Edessa to Zengi in 1144 provoked the Second Crusade, whose siege of Damascus collapsed within days. Baldwin III took Ascalon in 1153, and his brother Amalric repeatedly invaded Egypt in alliance with Byzantium, without lasting success.

Land was granted to vassals as feudal lordships, and the great nobles and bishops sat in the High Court, which confirmed kings, approved taxes and judged nobles. A separate court served non-noble Latins, and others dealt with markets, the sea and native Christians, while the Italian merchant communities ran their own affairs. The laws were later gathered as the Assizes of Jerusalem. Around 1180 the population has been estimated at 480,000 to 650,000, of whom perhaps 120,000 to 140,000 were Franks; most inhabitants were Greek and Syriac Christians or Muslims, with small Jewish and Samaritan communities.

Saladin, who united Egypt and much of Syria, became the kingdom's great opponent. The leper king Baldwin IV defeated him at Montgisard in 1177, but quarrels over the succession divided the nobility. On 4 July 1187 the kingdom's army was destroyed at the Battle of Hattin, King Guy was captured, and Jerusalem surrendered on 2 October. Of the old kingdom only Tyre held out.

The Third Crusade of 1189–1192 recovered Acre and much of the coast but not Jerusalem, and a treaty in 1192 left the restored kingdom as a narrow coastal strip ruled from Acre. The emperor Frederick II regained Jerusalem by treaty in 1229 without a battle, but the city was never fully reintegrated, and it was sacked by Khwarazmian troops in 1244. Disputes between the nobility, imperial agents, the military orders and the Italian cities weakened the state further.

The Mamluk sultan Baibars took Caesarea and Arsuf in 1265, Jaffa and Antioch in 1268 and other strongholds soon after, and Tripoli fell in 1289. Al-Ashraf Khalil besieged Acre in April 1291, and the city fell on 18 May; Tyre, Sidon and Beirut were lost by July. With the loss of the island of Arwad in 1302–1303, the kingdom ceased to exist on the mainland, and the crusaders' base moved to Cyprus. The final events are described under the Siege of Acre.

Our 1100 map shows the newly founded Kingdom of Jerusalem, still a modest territory beside the Fatimid Caliphate to the south-west and the lands of the Seljuk Empire to the north and east.