John of Ibelin (jurist)

John of Ibelin (French: Jean d'Ibelin, 1215 – December 1266), count of Jaffa and Ascalon, was a noted jurist and the author of the longest legal treatise from the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

[1] In 1229 John fled Cyprus with his family when Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor seized the Ibelin territories on the island.

He was present at the Battle of Casal Imbert in 1232, when his uncle John the "Old Lord of Beirut" was defeated by Riccardo Filangieri, Frederick's lieutenant in the east.

This proposal was never implemented, and Simon never came to the Holy Land; the Ibelins continued to quarrel with the representatives of the Hohenstaufens, and in 1242 they captured Tyre from their rivals.

This probably occurred when king Henry, John's first cousin, became regent of Jerusalem, and distributed continental lands to his Cypriot barons to create a loyal base there.

John made peace with Damascus and used the forces of Jerusalem to attack Ascalon; the Egyptians besieged Jaffa in 1256 in response.

[10] From 1264 to 1266, John of Ibelin wrote an extensive legal treatise, now known as the Livre des Assises, the longest such treatise known from the Levant, dealing with the so-called Assizes of Jerusalem and the procedure of the Haute Cour It also included details about the ecclesiastical and baronial structure of the Kingdom, as well as the number of knights owed to the crown by each of the kingdom's vassals.