Council of Tripoli
The History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, a chronicle written by the German monk Albert of Aachen contains most available information about the 1109 assembly held at the eastern Mediterranean city of Tripoli.
[1] Albert, who never visited the region, used accounts by those who had returned from the Levant, thus (as the historian Susan B. Edgington summarises) his chronicle has the "weaknesses of oral history", such as chronological and topographical inaccuracy.
[5] A scion of an influential Damascene family, Al-Qalanisi narrates the history of his hometown, and generally fails to give a detailed account of events occurring outside his immediate region.
[7] Tripoli, a prosperous city on the coast of Syria, was ruled by a native Muslim family of qadis (judges), the Banu Ammar, in the late 11th century.
[8][9] Once a battleground between the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Muslim Fatimid Caliphate, Syria had disintegrated into autonomous lordships, each under the rule of an Arab or Turkoman warlord, tribal leader, or prince.
[13][14] Pope Urban answered at a church council in the town of Clermont in central France where he called for a military campaign to rescue of fellow Christians on 28 November 1095.
[14][17] Another crusader leader Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine (r. 1089–1101), had to sell or mortgage large chunks of his patrimony to raise funds.
[19] The first among these crusader states, the County of Edessa was established in early in 1098 by Baldwin of Boulogne on lands both to the east and west of the Euphrates River.
[21][22] Raymond planned to conquer the Banu Ammar's lordship early in 1099, but he was unable to take their fortress of Arqa, and the commoner crusaders rejected his demand to attack Tripoli.
[25] Although some crusaders, especially the clergy, demanded the establishment of a lordship under clerical rule in the Holy City, the majority elected Godfrey as Jerusalem's first Frankish ruler.
The next year, he built a fortified camp at Mount Pilgrim near Tripoli with Byzantine assistance, beginning the city's prolonged siege.
Count Baldwin II invested his cousin, Joscelin of Courtenay, with the Lordship of Turbessel, charging him with the defence of Edessa's western lands in 1102.
[37] Baldwin II's attempts to seize the fertile lands southeast of his capital prompted two nearby Turkoman rulers, Jikirmish of Mosul and the Artuqid leader Sokman to attack Edessa.
Baldwin II and Joscelin were captured, and Tancred assumed power in Edessa, but he returned to rule Antioch in autumn when Bohemond left his principality to muster new crusaders in Western Europe.
[41] As Edessa provided the Antiochene rulers with a significant income, both Bohemond and Tancred were reluctant to achieve Baldwin II's release.
[48] Kevin J. Lewis, the author of a monograph about the 12th-century history of the County of Tripoli, argues that Baldwin also feared that a prolonged conflict would leave the Franks unprotected against their Muslim neighbors.
[49] In response to Bertrand's appeal, Baldwin appointed two Jerusalemite lords, Pagan of Haifa and Eustace Grenier, to summon the arguing Frankish leaders to "an assembly and council" (as Albert of Aachen mentions).
[51] The medievalist Malcolm Barber argues that Eustace "may well have played a key role in preparing the ground, for he appears to have been one of Baldwin's long-term companions".
[55] Lewis explains these words as a reference to the acknowledgement of William Jordan's claim to retain his conquests and to establish a lordship with Arqa as its center with a plan of expanding it at the expense of the nearby Muslim emirates of Homs, Shayzar, and Damascus.
[4] In return for the confirmation of his claims, William Jordan promised that he would not prevent Bertrand from taking possession of the lands that his father had conquered, such as Jubayl.
[56] In Asbridge's view, the council was "something of disaster for Tancred in terms of his relationship with" the emerging County of Tripoli, especially after his vassal William Jordan died.
[55] In contrast, Lewis says that the settlement gave Tancred "control over what had once been ... the southernmost district of the Byzantine doukate" (province) "of Antioch" by sanctioning his suzerainty over William Jordan's lordship.
[58] Lewis also notes that, until the mid-12th century several documents mention only two crusader states, Jerusalem and Antioch, indicating that observers did not regard Tripoli and Edessa as independent polities.
The first document is a decision attributed to Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, the papal legate to the First Crusade, about the future borders between Antioch and Jerusalem.
Lewis identifies the Arqa as the river separating Bertrand's and William Jordan's lordships in accordance with the settlement at Tripoli.
[55][61] The crusader states' united armies and their Genoese allies captured Tripoli on 12 July 1109, not long after William Jordan's death.
Lewis supposes that the Antiochene and Tripolitan elites' shared aversion to the Jerusalemite king's attempts to intervene in their affairs brought about a reconciliation between the two crusader states.
