Timeline of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
By 1153, Baldwin I and his successors captured all towns on the Palestinian coast with the support of Pisan, Genoese and Venetian fleets and also took control of the caravan routes between Egypt and Syria.
In the mid-twelfth century, Baldwin III and his successor Amalric maintained a close alliance with the Byzantine Empire, but they could not prevent the ruler of Aleppo, Nur ad-Din, from uniting the Muslim states in Syria in the 1150s.
Further lands were recovered during the reigns of Henry of Champagne and Aimery of Lusignan, and Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, also restored the Franks' rule in Jerusalem in 1229.
Due to conflicts between the kings' representatives and the powerful barons, and the War of Saint Sabas between Genoa and Venice, the kingdom disintegrated into autonomous towns and lordships by the 1260s.
In addition to the Lusignan kings of Cyprus, the Angevin rulers of Naples and their successors maintained a claim to the defunct Jerusalemite kingdom for centuries.
Disturbing news has emerged from Jerusalem and from the city of Constantinople ...: that the race of Persians, a foreign people and a people rejected by God ... has invaded the lands of those Christians, depopulated them by slaughter and plunder and arson, kidnapped some of the Christians and carried them off to their own lands and put others to a wretched death, and has overthrown the churches of God or turned them over to the rituals of their own religion.
So to whom should the task fall of taking vengeance and wresting their conquests from them if not to you – you to whom God has given above other nations outstanding glory in arms, greatness of spirit, fitness of body and the strength to humilitate the hairy scalp of those who resist you?
1096 1097 1098 1099 1099 [The Crusaders] put to the sword great numbers of gentiles who were running about through the quarters of the city, fleeing in all directions on account of their fear of death: they were piercing through with the sword's point women who had fled into the turreted palaces and dwellings; seizing by the soles of their feet from their mothers' laps or their cradles infants who were still suckling and dashing them against the walls or lintels of the doors and breaking their necks; they were slaughtering some with weapons, or striking them down with stones; they were sparing absolutely no gentile of any age or kind.
1188 1189 1190 1191 1192 1193 ...the death of our persecutor Saladin ... caused fear and anxiety among his people and gave rise to angry discord among his three sons, in Damascus, Aleppo and [Egypt].
c. 1194 1194 1195 1196 1197 1198 1200 1202 1203 1204 1205 c. 1206 1206 c. 1207 1208 1209 1210 1211 1212 1213 1214 1215 1217 1218 1219 1220 1221 ...[Al-Kamil] took advantage of the rising waters to launch galleys and galliots through an ancient fortificatiln onto the Nile to prevent us in our need from shipping food supplies from Damietta.
It lost the food it was transporting and several men in the river because [Al-Kamil] diverted the rising waters of the Nile into secret channels and waterways of ancient construction to hinder the retreat of the Christian people.
The army of Christ lost its packhorses, equipment, saddlebags, carts and virtually all its essential supplies in the swamps, so that, bereft of food, it could not advance, retreat or try to find refuge anywhere.
1222 1223 1224 1225 1227 1228 1229 1229 1230 1231 1232 1233 1234 1235 1236 1237 The patriarch of the Eastern Jacobites, whose knowledge, morals and age are to be venerated, came to worship this year in Jerusalem, accompanied by a large number of archbishops, bishops and monks too of his nation.
Divine grace so helped us to explain the word of the Catholic faith to him that we succeeded in getting him to abjure all heresy and promise obedience to the Holy Roman Church...
He discussed matters with the prelates and other nobles and decided, on their unanimous advice, to appoint Sir Geoffrey of Sergines to stay in the Holy Land.
