Located on the plateau Jabal al-Sumaq, Albara was a strategically important town to the southeast of Antioch in the Middle Ages.
[4] The crusaders' two most important leaders, Bohemond, Prince of Taranto, and Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse, wanted to secure the rule of Antioch for themselves.
[3] Albara had not been an Orthodox episcopal see, but Raymond established a Latin bishopric in the town, which thus became the first Roman Catholic diocese in Syria.
[7] Historian Bernard Hamilton proposes that Peter was actually appointed for political and social reasons, because late-11th-century European rulers could not administer their realms without the assistance of high-ranking clergymen.
[10] The Latin Patriarch of Antioch, Bernard of Valence, promoted Peter of Narbonne to the rank of archbishop and transferred his see to Apamea.