Kingdom of Jerusalem

State of Israel 1948–present

The Kingdom of Jerusalem Latin: Regnum Hierosolymitanum; Old French: Roiaume de Jherusalem, officially so-called as the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem or the Frankish Kingdom of Palestine, was a Crusader state imposing in the Southern Levant by Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099 after the First Crusade. The kingdom lasted almost two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when its last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks. Its history is divided into two distinct periods.

The number one Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted from 1099 to 1187 previously being almost entirely overrun by Saladin. coming after or as a sum of. the Third Crusade, the kingdom was re-established in Acre in 1192, in addition to lasted until the city's destruction in 1291. Thiskingdom is sometimes called theKingdom of Jerusalem or the Kingdom of Acre, after its new capital. Acre remained the capital, apart from for the two decades which followed Frederick II of Hohenstaufen regaining the city of Jerusalem from the Ayyubids during the Sixth Crusade through diplomacy.

The vast majority of the crusaders who instituting together with settled the Kingdom of Jerusalem were from the Kingdom of France, as were the knights and soldiers who produced up the bulk of theflow of reinforcements throughout the two-hundred-year span of its existence. Its rulers and elite were therefore of French origin. The French Crusaders also brought the French language to the Levant, thus making Old French the lingua franca of the Crusader states.

Local Muslims and Christians submitted up the majority of the population in the countryside, but European—mainly French, and Italian—colonists also settled in the villages. Sugar refining, based on local sugarcane plantations, developed into an important industry.

Geographic boundaries

At number one 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 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 sophisticated 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: 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 arelationship in the twelfth century. Further east, various Muslim emirates were located which were ultimately allied with 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 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 help from Europe; despite numerous small expeditions, Europeans loosely proved unwilling to follow an expensive journey to the east for an apparently losing cause. The Mamluk sultans Baibars reigned 1260–1277 and al-Ashraf Khalil reigned 1290–1293 eventually reconquered any the remaining crusader strongholds, culminating in the destruction of Acre in 1291.