[2] They arrived in the Kingdom of Jerusalem as early as 1099, with Guglielmo Embriaco and his brother Primo di Castello.

Guglielmo Embriaco's son, Ugo I, was the first administrator of "Gibelletto" in the name of the Genoese republic, he then obtained the city as a hereditary fief, undertaking to pay an annual fee to Genoa and to the church of San Lorenzo.

[1] The family always protected the Genoese traders in the Levant, exempting them from all duties.

[1] Their power in Byblos lasted, apart from occupation by Saladin 1187–1197, to the end to the thirteenth century, when they were defeated by Bohemond VII of Tripoli, and finally pushed out by Muslim advances.

The male line of the family died out in the middle of the 15th century.