It extended around the northeastern edge of the Mediterranean, bordering the County of Tripoli to the south, Edessa to the east, and the Byzantine Empire or the Kingdom of Armenia to the northwest, depending on the date.

While Baldwin of Boulogne headed east from Asia Minor to set up the County of Edessa, the main army of the First Crusade continued south to besiege Antioch in late October 1097.

[citation needed] There were several attempts by neighbouring Turkish chiefs to relieve the town, but these were beaten back such as during the Battle of the Lake of Antioch under the military leadership of Bohemond of Taranto.

Bohemond convinced a guard in one of the towers, an Armenian and former Christian named Firouz, to let the Crusaders enter the city on 2 June 1098.

Peter claimed he had been visited by Andrew the Apostle, who told him that the Holy Lance that pierced Christ's side as he was on the cross was located in the city.

Although it is possible Peter planted it there himself (the papal legate Adhemar of Le Puy believed this to be the case), it raised the spirits of the Crusaders as well as of the local Armenians and Greeks.

[5] With the relic at the head of the army, Bohemond marched out to meet the besieging Muslim force, which was defeated in the battle of Antioch in 1098.

Bohemond and his Italian Norman followers eventually won, not least because of the death of Adhemar of Le Puy, who had been the spiritual leader of the crusade and had been determined to cooperate with the Byzantines.

In August 1098 he crossed the Amanus Mountains to Cilicia to take control of the towns his nephew Tancred had captured in the previous summer.

[9] After the main crusade army left for Jerusalem in 1099, he took full control of Antioch as well as of the surrounding places such as Artah and the harbour of St. Symeon.

Bohemond then attempted to take the harbour town of Latakia which was under Byzantine possession, but he had to leave after Raymond and the other crusading lords, who had in the meantime conquered Jerusalem, forced him to.

[12] On the return of the army to Antioch, a riot instigated by Joscelin II of Edessa forced the emperor to leave without the citadel being surrendered to him.

Although this arrangement meant that the Principality had to provide a contingent for the Byzantine Army (troops from Antioch participated in an attack on the Seljuk Turks in 1176), it also safeguarded the City against Nur ad-Din at a time when it was in serious danger of being overrun.

Bohemond was taken captive by Nur ad-Din the following year at the Battle of Harim, and the Orontes River became the permanent boundary between Antioch and Aleppo.

Bohemond returned to Antioch in 1165, and married one of Manuel's nieces; he was also convinced to install a Greek Orthodox patriarch in the city.

Antioch was deprived of the Empire's protection, which had been enough to frighten Nur ad-Din away from intervening in the area for the preceding twenty years.

The first factor was that the Princes of Antioch wanted to extend their power throughout the Latin east which led to conflict between the County of Edessa and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

[17] In 1111 when the Muslim army of Maudud of Mosul threatened the Principality, its Latin allies responded by bringing military aid.

At this time, Joscelin of Courtenay enjoyed a stable rule in Edessa, further weakening Antioch's dominance in Northern Syria.

In 1130, a succession crisis followed Bohemond II's death, signifying the end of Antioch's dominance of northern Syria.

Baibars finally took the city in 1268, and all of northern Syria was quickly lost; twenty-three years later, Acre was taken, and the Crusader states ceased to exist.

10675), Armenian manuscript illuminator Toros Roslin described the brutal sacking of Antioch by Baibars: "...at this time great Antioch was captured by the wicked king of Egypt, and many were killed and became his prisoners, and a cause of anguish to the holy and famous temples, houses of God, which are in it; the wonderful elegance of the beauty of those that were destroyed by fire is beyond the power of words.

"[23] The empty title of "Prince of Antioch" passed, with the extinction of the counts of Tripoli, to the kings of Cyprus, and was sometimes granted as a dignity to junior members of the royal house.

Also important were the so-called suriani, who actually comprised two Christian peoples: the Aramaic-speaking Syriacs (also called "Jacobites") and the Arabic-speaking Melkites.

When the county of Edessa fell in 1144 and the region around Melitene became increasingly unsafe, many Jacobites sought refuge in the cities and town of the principality.

Like Jerusalem, Antioch had its share of great offices, including constable, marshal, seneschal, duke, viscount, butler, chamberlain, and chancellor.