The Arab Muslims invaded Cyprus in force in the 650s, but in 688, the Byzantine emperor Justinian II and the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān reached an unprecedented agreement.

Upon hearing of the imprisonment of his shipwrecked comrades and the insults offered to his bride and sister, King Richard met Komnenos in battle.

[4] Control of the island of Cyprus would give King Richard an extremely valuable strategic base to launch further Crusade operations.

Komnenos and the remainder of the army escaped to the hills during nightfall, but King Richard and his troops tracked the Cypriot ruler down and raided his camp before dawn.

Some weeks after King Richard's marriage to his bride in Limassol on 12 May 1191, Komnenos attempted an escape by boat to the mainland but he was apprehended at Cape St. Andrea and later imprisoned in the castle of Markappos in Syria, where he died shortly afterwards, still in captivity.

[4] One of the greatest military orders of medieval times, the Knights Templar were renowned for their remarkable financial power and vast holdings of land and property throughout Europe and the East.

On Easter Day in 1192, the Cypriots attempted a massacre of their Templar rulers; however, due to prior knowledge of the attack and limited numbers of troops, the Knights had taken refuge in their stronghold at Nicosia.

A siege ensued and the Templars, realizing their dire circumstances and their besiegers' reluctance to bargain, sallied out into the streets at dawn one morning, taking the Cypriots completely by surprise.

[8] A small minority Roman Catholic population of the island was mainly confined to some coastal cities, such as Famagusta, as well as inland Nicosia, the traditional capital.

In 1229, one of the Ibelin regents was forced out of power by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, who brought the struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines to the island.

Frederick's supporters were defeated in this struggle by 1232 from the Cypriots Forces at Battle of Agridi, although it lasted longer in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and in the Holy Roman Empire.

The Mameluks then made the kingdom a tributary state in 1426; the remaining monarchs gradually lost almost all independence, until 1489 when the last queen, Catherine Cornaro, was forced to sell the island to Venice.

Simultaneously, though, the island grew in importance in the trade network connecting Western Europe and the Middle East, serving as an "entrepôt".

This led to an increase in demand on Cypriot products (most importantly sugar, but also wine, wheat, oil, carobs) abroad, and the agrarian economy became more export-oriented.

This allowed Cyprus to become more prosperous relative to the Byzantine period, fuelling the development of the harbour of Famagusta and the capital Nicosia, enabling the construction of architectural works that survive to this day.

The Latin immigrants participated in the economic life as merchants, artisans, shipwrights, ship captains and tavern keepers, and as such had an outsize share in the economy.

[12] Cyprus during this period had a vibrant court culture, in which popular pastimes of the day were practised in a similar fashion to other European Christian societies.

The losses suffered by the Crusader States in the 1270s and 1280s and the final Fall of Acre in 1291 triggered an influx of Latin immigrants from the Levant, as Italian, Aragonese and Provençal trading cities relocated their merchants to Cyprus.