Clergy
Peter The Hermit
Patriarch Simeon II
Simeon II or Symeon II was a Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem in the 11th century.
Simeon was appointed patriarch in the 1080s. He encouraged Peter The Hermit to call The First Crusade. Pope Urban II addressed a letter to him, urging him to acknowledge papal primacy to achieve the union of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches.[3] Patriarch Nicholas III of Constantinople warned Simeon against accepting the pope’s offer, reminding him about the Orthodox views about the Eucharist, papal primacy and the Filioque. He was later deposed as a result.
Pope Urban II
Urban II (born c. 1035—died July 29, 1099) was the Vicar Of Christ and the Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Catholic Church (1088–99) who developed ecclesiastical reforms begun by Pope Gregory VII, and clashed with Emperor Henry IV as a result, launched the Crusade movement, and strengthened the papacy as a political entity.
Peter Bartholomew
Peter Bartholomew ( c. 1075 – 20 April 1099) was a mystic who was part of the First Crusade as part of the army of Raymond of Saint-Gilles. Peter was initially a servant to William, Lord of Cunhlat. he claimed to find to Holy Lance but Many people, including the papal legate Adhemar of Le Puy, believed Peter was a charlatan and had simply brought a piece of iron with him to “find”.
Emperors
Henry IV Holy Roman Emperor
Born November 11, 1050, Goslar, Saxony
Died August 7, 1106, Liège, Lorraine
was the duke of Bavaria (as Henry VIII; 1055–61), German king (from 1054), and Holy Roman emperor (1084–1105/06), who engaged in a long struggle with Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII) on the question of lay investiture
Alexius I Comnenus Byzantine Emperor
Alexius I Comnenus (born 1057, Constantinople, Byzantine Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]—died August 15, 1118) was the Byzantine emperor (1081–1118) at the time of the First Crusade who founded the Comnenian dynasty and partially restored the strength of the empire after its defeats by the Normans and Turks in the 11th century.
Princes
Lord Godfrey Protector of Holy Sepulchre
Godfrey of Bouillon (born c. 1060—died July 18, 1100, kingdom of Jerusalem [now Jerusalem, Israel]) was the duke of Lower Lorraine (as Godfrey IV; 1089–1100) and a leader of the First Crusade, who became the first Latin ruler in Palestine after the capture of Jerusalem from the Muslims in July 1099.
Godfrey’s parents were Count Eustace II of Boulogne and Ida, daughter of Duke Godfrey II of Lower Lorraine. Although he was named heir to the duchy of Lower Lorraine by his uncle in 1076, the Holy Roman emperor Henry IV kept the duchy for his son and left Godfrey with the lordship of Bouillon, in the Ardennes region of France. Godfrey won back his duchy in 1089 as a reward for his loyal service in Henry’s war against the Saxons.
Godfrey, with his brothers Eustace and Baldwin, joined the First Crusade in 1096. When Raymond of Toulouse declined to become king of Jerusalem, Godfrey accepted the crown but refused the title of king and was called instead Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri (Defender of the Holy Sepulchre).
Godfrey arranged truces with the Muslim maritime cities of Ascalon, Caesarea, and Acre and successfully beat off an Egyptian attack. On his death he was succeeded by his brother Baldwin I.
King Baldwin 1 of Jerusalem
Baldwin I (born 1058?—died April 2, 1118, Al-ʿArīsh, Egypt) was the king of the Crusader state of Jerusalem (1100–18) who expanded the kingdom and secured its territory, formulating an administrative apparatus that was to serve for 200 years as the basis for Frankish rule in Syria and Palestine.
Son of Eustace II, count of Boulogne, and Ida d’Ardenne, Baldwin was the younger brother of Godfrey of Bouillon, whom he accompanied on the First Crusade (1096–99). While Baldwin was campaigning against the Seljuq Turks in Anatolia, Toros, the Christian prince of Edessa (now Urfa, Turkey), promised to make him his heir in return for military aid. Baldwin forced Toros to abdicate and took possession of Edessa in 1098. He consolidated his new principality and strengthened its ties with the native Armenians by marrying Arda, the daughter of an Armenian noble.
In July 1100 his brother Godfrey died in Jerusalem, and Baldwin was summoned by the nobles to succeed him as Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri (Defender of the Holy Sepulchre). In December, after leading a campaign in the south to impress the Egyptian Fāṭimids with his strength and after subduing the opposition of the Crusader nobles, he was crowned the first king of Jerusalem.
Once he had consolidated his strength at home, Baldwin seized the coastal cities of Arsuf (Tel Arshaf, Israel) and Caesarea (H̱orbat Qesari, Israel) in 1101; by 1112 he had captured all the coastal cities except Ascalon and Tyre. In 1115 he built the castle of Krak de Montréal to protect the kingdom in the south
In 1113 Baldwin forced his wife to enter a convent and married Adelaide of Saona, countess dowager of Sicily. He died without an heir and was succeeded by Baldwin of Bourcq, a cousin whom he had named count of Edessa in 1100.
Eustace III, Count of Boulogne
Eustace III (c. 1050 – c. 1125) was the count of Boulogne from 1087 succeeding his father, Eustace II. He joined the First Crusade, being present at Nicaea, Dorylaeum, Antioch, and Jerusalem. After fighting in the battle of Ascalon, he returned home. Initially offered the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Eustace was at Apulia when he received news of Baldwin of Bourcq’s election to the throne. On his return to Boulogne, he founded a Cluniac monastery in Rumilly, retired as a monk, and died in 1125.
Raymond IV Count of Toulouse
Raymond IV (born 1041 or 1042, Toulouse, county of Toulouse, France—died February 28, 1105, near Tripoli [now in Lebanon]) was the count of Toulouse (1093–1105) and marquis of Provence (1066–1105), the first—and one of the most effective—of the western European rulers who joined the First Crusade. He is reckoned as Raymond I of Tripoli, a county in the Latin East which he began to conquer from 1102 to 1105.
In the early years of his countship, Raymond was a pious lay leader of the papacy’s reform movement. Before preaching the First Crusade (1095), Pope Urban II probably secured assurance of Raymond’s participation. Although he initially disliked the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus, Raymond became the most faithful partisan of the emperor’s territorial interest in the Crusade, sometimes to his own disadvantage.
After helping to capture Antioch from the Turks (June 3, 1098), Raymond unsuccessfully tried to induce Bohemond I, Frankish Crusader prince of the city, to restore it to Alexius. He then organized a march on Jerusalem and took part in its capture (July 15, 1099). Apparently, he refused the Crusaders’ crown of Jerusalem, which was then given to Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine. Although he quarreled with Godfrey, together they repulsed an attack on Jerusalem by the Egyptian Fāṭimids. From 1100 Raymond, on behalf of Alexius, blocked the southward expansion of Bohemond’s principality of Antioch. He built near Tripoli the castle of Mons Peregrinus (Mont-Pèlerin), in which he died.
Robert II, Count of Flanders
Robert II, Count of Flanders (c. 1065 – 5 October 1111) was Count of Flanders from 1093 to 1111. He became known as Robert of Jerusalem (Robertus Hierosolimitanus) or Robert the Crusader after his exploits in the First Crusade.
Robert was the eldest son of Robert I of Flanders (also known as Robert the Frisian) and Gertrude of Saxony.[1][2] His father, hoping to place the cadet branch (or “Baldwinite” branch) of Flanders over the county, began to associate him with his rule around 1086.[3] From 1085 to 1091 he was regent of the county while his father was away on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.[4] Robert II became count in 1093 and supported the restoration of the diocese of Arras in order to limit the influence of the Holy Roman Empire in his dominion. With the approval of Pope Urban II, the diocese was split of from the diocese of Cambrai in 1093/94 and Lambert of Guines elected as its first bishop.[5]
First Crusade
In 1095, Robert of Flanders joined the First Crusade, which was initiated by Pope Urban II. He appointed his wife, Clementia of Burgundy, as regent in Flanders and joined his kinsman Godfrey of Bouillon. After swearing fealty to Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Komnenus in Constantinople, Robert participated in the Siege of Nicaea and later fought in the Battle of Dorylaeum, where he helped break the encirclement by the Seljuk Turks.
Upon reaching Antioch, Robert played a key role in its lengthy siege, participating in raids for supplies and fighting against relieving forces. Once Antioch fell, he occupied the citadel but supported Bohemund’s claim to the city, leading to disputes among the leaders. Robert remained in Antioch until February 1099, later joining the Siege of Jerusalem, where he supported Godfrey against Raymond in the power struggle that followed the city’s capture.
After the victory at the Battle of Ascalon, which established the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Robert returned home with spoils, including a relic of Saint George. He built a monastery in Flanders and earned the nickname “Robert of Jerusalem” due to his contributions and the riches he brought back.
During his absence, Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV had tried to seize imperial Flanders. Robert responded by supporting the revolt of the Commune of Cambrai against the emperor and his supporter, Bishop Gaulcher, and seized a number of castles. Peace was restored in 1102 and homage paid to the emperor for imperial Flanders, but after 1105, the new emperor, Henry V, marched on Flanders, with the aid of Count Baldwin III of Hainaut and an army from Holland. Robert stopped them outside of Douai and a new peace was signed, in which the emperor recognized Robert’s claim to Douai and Cambrai.
Like his wife Clementia, Robert was a promoter of the Cluniac reform movement, supporting the reformers of the Abbey of Saint Bertin and assisting progressive ecclesiastic actors in general.[10]
In 1103 he made an alliance with Henry I of England, offering 1000 cavalry in exchange for an annual tribute.[3] When Henry refused to pay, Robert allied with his nominal overlord, Louis VI of France, and attacked Normandy. With the king diverted, Theobald IV of Blois led a revolt of the French barons. Robert led an army against Meaux. During the battle he fell off his horse and was trampled to death[11] on 5 October 1111.
Bohemond I Prince of Antioch
Bohemond I (born 1050–58—died March 5 or 7, 1109, probably Bari [Italy]) was the prince of Otranto (1089–1111) and prince of Antioch (1098–1101, 1103–04), one of the leaders of the First Crusade, who conquered Antioch (June 3, 1098).
The son of Robert Guiscard (the Astute) and his first wife, Alberada, Bohemond was christened Marc but nicknamed after a legendary giant named Bohemond. The nickname proved well taken because physically Bohemond was the ideally tall and strong knight—in the words of a contemporary, “a wonderful spectacle.” His boyhood home was in southern Italy, where his Norman father, Robert, had gone as a mercenary and had risen to the rank of duke of Apulia and Calabria. Here Bohemond became involved in his father’s wars and learned his trade as a fighter and leader. This early training must be inferred, however, as Bohemond’s childhood is poorly recorded, and even his date of birth is unknown. In 1079 he was in command of a unit of his father’s army. Meanwhile his stepmother, Sigelgaita, bore his father’s heir-to-be, Roger Borsa; thus, Bohemond no doubt felt early in life that he would have no patrimony because of his half brother and so would have to seek lands and fortune in the weakened condition of the Byzantine Empire.
In 1081 Bohemond, in command of his father’s army, captured Avlona, a town south of Durazzo; but in this same year Alexius I Comnenus became ruler of the Byzantine Empire and challenged the Normans. For more than three decades Alexius and Bohemond were rivals. In the opening struggle, 1081–85, Bohemond and his father came close to dismembering the Greek empire in the West. The Norman army won a few brilliant victories, but Alexius drove Bohemond from Larissa in Thessaly in 1083, and the death of Robert in 1085 left Bohemond without a patrimony and with little hope of success against Byzantium. In the next four years Roger Borsa allowed Bohemond to gain a foothold in Bari, where he awaited another chance to move against Alexius.
The chance came when Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in November 1095 by offering rewards in both this world and the next for those who wrested the Holy Sepulchre from the Saracens. When the word reached Bohemond, he set off for the East. He and his small band of Normans crossed the Greek lands in the winter of 1096–97 with few incidents; on passing through Constantinople (now Istanbul), he made friendly, though cautious, terms with the emperor Alexius. The latter managed to extract oaths from most of the leaders, including Bohemond, and helped them cross the Bosporus, speeding them with promises of aid if they would return to the sovereignty of the emperor the Byzantine lands recaptured from the Muslims. In the ensuing campaigns against the Turks, Bohemond distinguished himself at Nicaea, Dorylaeum, and Antioch, which was besieged from October 1097 until June 3, 1098. The city of Antioch fell to the Crusaders through his cunning and his negotiations with a traitor. After a brief, unsuccessful countersiege by the Turks, during which Bohemond more or less assumed command, the Crusaders dawdled away the summer and fall.
When the Crusading army marched southward to Jerusalem in January 1099, Bohemond was left the de facto possessor of Antioch, although his claim was not openly supported for fear of violating the oath of Alexius. The Norman leader did not participate in the capture of Jerusalem but did, for the sake of appearances, journey later to the Holy Sepulchre. With the departure of many Crusaders for their homelands, Bohemond was left with his city. It might seem that Bohemond in 1100 was destined to found a great principality in Antioch; he had a fine territory, a good strategical position, and a strong army. But he had to face two great forces—the Byzantine Empire, which claimed the whole of its territories, and the strong Muslim principalities in the northeast of Syria. Between these two forces he failed. Following sorties against Aleppo, Bohemond made the mistake of moving against the emir of Sebastea (Sivas), north of Antioch. He fell into an ambush and was captured and held for months.
Released in 1103, he returned to Antioch and its problems. In 1105 Bohemond was in Bari to enlist reinforcements for his struggle with the Byzantines. In September 1105 he went to Rome to interview the pope and then journeyed, early in 1106, through France. There babies were named for him, crowds heard him denounce the perfidious Alexius, and shrines received sacred relics from his hands. In the spring of 1106 Bohemond married Constance, the daughter of Philip I of France.
Bohemond, who 30 years before had been a landless young man, now stood at the pinnacle of his career. By September 1107 he was ready to launch his Crusade against the Byzantines and within a month had landed a large army at Avlona. In the months that followed, Durazzo held firm against the Normans, and Bohemond met with misfortune in Albania. In this impasse Alexius, anxious to end the war, offered Bohemond Antioch and other Greek cities in return for vassalage. In accepting these terms, Bohemond suffered humiliation even though he retained control of Antioch.
The years following this peace of discord are poorly recorded. Constance bore Bohemond two sons, one of whom later became prince of Antioch. Bohemond probably sought to raise another army, but these efforts ended with his death in 1111. His combat with the Byzantines was ended, and his rival Alexius followed him in death in 1118. Nicknamed for a giant, Bohemond had fought against gigantic odds and at death bequeathed to his heirs one of the important Crusader states, the principality of Antioch. History records him as a handsome man, a warrior of genius, and a gifted diplomat. He was all these things, as well as treacherous, duplicitous, and ambitious.
Hugh, Count of Vermandois
Hugh (1057 – October 18, 1101),[1] called the Great (French: Hugues le Grand, Latin: Hugo Magnus) was the first count of Vermandois from the House of Capet. He is known primarily for being one of the leaders of the First Crusade. His nickname Magnus (greater or elder) is probably a bad translation into medieval Latin of an Old French nickname, le Maisné, meaning “the younger”, referring to Hugh as younger brother of King Philip I of France.
after the Crusaders had successfully made their way across Seljuk territory and, in 1098, captured the city after siege of Antioch, Hugh was sent back to Constantinople to appeal for reinforcements from Alexius. The emperor was uninterested, however, and Hugh, instead of returning to Antioch to help plan the siege of Jerusalem, went back to France. There he was scorned for not having fulfilled his vow as a Crusader to complete a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and Pope Paschal II threatened to excommunicate him. He joined the subsequent Crusade of 1101, but was wounded in battle with the Turks led by Kilij Arslan at the second battle of Heraclea in September, and died of his wounds in October in Tarsus.
Enemies Of Christ
Qilij Arslon (Seljuk Sultinate)
Kilij Arslan ibn Suleiman (Old Anatolian Turkish: قِلِیچ اَرسلان; Persian: قلیچ ارسلان, romanized: Qilij Arslān; Turkish: I. Kılıç Arslan or Kılıcarslan, lit. “Sword Lion”) (1079–1107) was the Seljuq Sultan of Rum from 1092 until his death in 1107. He ruled the Sultanate during the time of the First Crusade and thus faced the earliest attacks from Christian forces. He also re-established the Sultanate of Rum after the death of Malik Shah I of the Seljuk Empire and defeated the Crusaders in three battles during the Crusade of 1101.[2] Kilij Arslan was the first Muslim and Turkish commander to fight against the Crusaders, commanding his horse archers as a teenager.
After the death of his father, Suleiman ibn Qutalmish, in 1086, he became a hostage of Sultan Malik Shah I of Great Seljuq in Isfahan, but was released when Malik Shah died in 1092 in the wake of a quarrel among his jailers.[4] Kilij Arslan then marched at the head of the Turkish Oghuz Yiva tribe army and set up his capital at Nicaea, replacing Amin ‘l Ghazni, the governor appointed by Malik Shah I.
Following the death of Malik Shah I the individual tribes, the Danishmends, Mangujekids, Saltuqids, Tengribirmish begs, Artuqids (Ortoqids) and Akhlat-Shahs, had started vying with each other to establish their own independent states. Alexius Comnenus‘s Byzantine intrigues further complicated the situation. He married Ayşe Hatun, the daughter of the Emir Tzachas to attempt to ally himself against the Byzantines, who commanded a strong naval fleet. They had four sons: Malik Shah, Mesud I, Arab and Toghrul. In 1094, Kilij Arslan received a letter from Alexius suggesting that the Tzachas sought to target him to move onto the Byzantines, thereupon Kilij Arslan marched with an army to Smyrna, Tzachas’s capital, and invited his father-in-law to a banquet in his tent where he slew him while he was intoxicated.
The People’s Crusade (also called the Peasants’ Crusade) army of Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless arrived at Nicaea in 1096. A German contingent of the crusade overran the castle Xerigordon and held it until Kilij sent a force to starve them out. Those that renounced Christianity were spared and sent into captivity to the east, the rest were put to death.[6] Kilij Arslan also cunningly sent spies to trick the Crusaders into thinking Xerigordon was ripe for the taking, and the ill-disciplined Crusaders rushed to Xerigordon despite orders against this. They were consequently ambushed, forcing Peter the Hermit eventually to give up the crusade.
The remainder of Peter’s crusade composed almost entirely of unarmed civilians was surprised near the village of Civetot by Kilij Arslan’s army.[6] They were easily overwhelmed and around 17,000 out of the 20,000 remaining Christians died.[7] He then invaded the Danishmend Emirate of Malik Ghazi in eastern Anatolia.
The First Crusade would start a few months later.
Because of this easy first victory he did not consider the main crusader army, led by various nobles of western Europe, to be a serious threat. He resumed his war with the Danishmends, and was away from Nicaea when these new Crusaders besieged Nicaea in May 1097. He hurried back to his capital to find it surrounded by the Crusaders, and was defeated in battle with them on 21 May. The city then surrendered to the Byzantines and his wife and children were captured. When the crusaders sent the Sultan’s wife to Constantinople, to their dismay she was later returned without ransom in 1097 because of the relationship between Kilij Arslan and Alexios I Komnenos.
As result of the stronger invasion, Rum and the Danishmends allied in their attempt to turn back the crusaders. The Crusaders continued to split their forces as they marched across Anatolia. The combined Danishmend and Rum forces planned to ambush the Crusaders near Dorylaeum on 29 June. However, Kilij Arslan’s horse archers could not penetrate the line of defense set up by the Crusader knights, and the main body under Bohemond arrived to capture the Turkish camp on 1 July. In this battle, the Kilij Arslan and his troops won the respect of his enemy, as the Gesta Francorum states: “had the Turks been Christian, they would be the finest of all races.”[8]
Kilij Arslan was defeated and settled for harassing the Crusader army with guerilla warfare and hit-and-run tactics. He also destroyed crops and water sources along their route in order to hinder the Crusader Army from collecting supplies, ultimately with little success.
Kerbogha (Seljunk Sultinate)
Kerbogha was a Seljuk Turk who owed his success to his military talent.[3] He supported Malik-Shah I‘s wife Terken Khatun and her four-year-old son Mahmud I who was installed on the throne at Baghdad.[4] Kerbogha was sent with an army to secure Isfahan and to arrest Berkyaruq.[5] However, Mahmud’s supporters were defeated by Berkyaruq’ forces at Isfahan in January 1093.[6] A month later, he joined the Seljuk prince Ismail ibn Yaquti against Berkyaruq army which was victorious once more. Later on, Kerbogha joined Berkyaruq, then he was sent in 1094 to fight against Tutush I who declared himself Sultan in Syria, but he was imprisoned along with his brother Altuntaş in Aleppo then Homs. Upon the death of Tutush, he was released by Fakhr al-Mulk Radwan.
In 1095, he served under the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mustazhir in his attempted reconquest of Aleppo. In 1096, he managed to capture Harran, Nisbis and Mosul, in which he ended the Uqaylid Dynasty rule.
In 1098, when he heard that the Crusaders had besieged Antioch, he gathered his troops and marched to relieve the city. He departed from Mosul on 31 March.[7] On his way, he attempted to regain Edessa following its recent conquest by Baldwin I, so as not to leave any Frankish garrisons behind him on his way to Antioch.[8][9] For three weeks he pointlessly besieged the city before deciding to continue on to Antioch. His reinforcements could have perhaps ended the Crusade before the walls of Antioch, and, indeed, the whole Crusade was perhaps saved by his time wasted at Edessa. By the time he arrived, around June 7, the Crusaders had already won the siege, and had held the city since 3 June. They were not able to restock the city before Kerbogha, in turn, began besieging the city.
During the siege, on 27 June, Peter the Hermit was sent as emissary to Kerbogha by the Crusaders to suggest that the parties settle all differences by a duel. Presumably feeling his position secure, Kerbogha did not see this course of action as being in his interest, and he declined.[10]
Meanwhile, inside the city, Peter Bartholomew claimed to have discovered the Holy Lance through a vision. This discovery re-energized the Christian army. At the same time, disagreements and infighting broke out within the Atabeg’s army. Kerbogha’s mighty army was actually made up of semi-nomadic Turkmen, adding to regular armies and levies from Mosul, Jazira, Palestine, and Damascus,[11] and the internal quarrels amongst the Emirs took precedence over any unity against the Franks.[12] The only thing that united his allies was a common fear of Kerbogha’s real goal, which was the conquest of all their lands. If Antioch fell to him, he would have been invincible.[13]
On 28 June, when Bohemond, the leader of the Christian army, decided to attack, the Emirs decided to humble Kerbogha by abandoning him at the critical moment.[12] Kerbogha was taken by surprise by the organization and discipline of the Christian army. This motivated, unified Christian army was in fact so large that Kerbogha’s strategy of dividing his own forces was ineffective.[14] He was quickly routed by the Crusaders. He was forced to retreat, and returned to Mosul a broken man.
Iftikhar al-Dawla Fatmid Governor of Jerusalem
(Fatmid Caliphate)
Iftikhar al-Dawla (Arabic: إفتخار الدولة, lit. ‘pride of the dynasty‘) was the Fatimid governor of Jerusalem during the siege of 1099. On 15 July, he surrendered Jerusalem to Raymond of Saint-Gilles[1] in the Tower of David and was escorted out of the city with his bodyguard.
The Fatimid governor Iftikhar al-Dawla prepared the city for the siege after he heard about the arrival of the Crusaders. He prepared an elite troop of 400 Egyptian cavalrymen and expelled all Eastern Christians from the city for fear of being betrayed by them (in the siege of Antioch, an Armenian man, Firouz, had helped Crusaders enter the city by opening the gates). To make the situation worse for the Crusaders, ad-Daula poisoned all the water wells in the surrounding area, and cut down all trees outside Jerusalem. In addition he allied with the local Jews Bolstering the Defenses Numbers. On June 7, 1099, the Crusaders reached the outer fortifications of Jerusalem, which had been recaptured from the Seljuk Turks by the Egyptian Fatimids only the year before. The city was guarded by a defensive wall stretching four kilometers long, which was three meters thick and fifteen meters high. There were five major gates each guarded by a pair of towers.[12] The Crusaders divided themselves into two large groups: Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of Flanders and Tancred planned to besiege from north, while Raymond of Toulouse positioned his forces to the south.
Little is known about Iftikhar al-Dawla, although he is mentioned as governor of Ascalon following the fall of Jerusalem, which suggests he was Fatimid governor of the whole of Palestine.[3] The Syrian chronicler Bar-Hebraeus refers to him as an Egyptian man. Usama ibn Munqidh‘s autobiography mentions an emir of the local castles of Abu Qubays, Qadmus and al-Kaf called Iftikhar al-Dawla whose sister was married to Ibn Munqidh’s uncle, the ruler of Shayzar.[3]
Europe
1095
After The Crusade
Muhammadist Empires
Seljuk Sultinate
The Seljuk Empire, or the Great Seljuk Empire,[13][a] was a high medieval, culturally Turco-Persian, Sunni Muslim empire, established and ruled by the Qïnïq branch of Oghuz Turks.[16][17] The empire spanned a total area of 3.9 million square kilometres (1.5 million square miles) from Anatolia and the Levant in the west to the Hindu Kush in the east, and from Central Asia in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south
During the First Crusade, the fractured states of the Seljuks were generally more concerned with consolidating their own territories and gaining control of their neighbours than with cooperating against the crusaders. The Seljuks easily defeated the People’s Crusade arriving in 1096, but they could not stop the progress of the army of the subsequent Princes’ Crusade (First Crusade), which took important cities such as Nicaea (İznik), Iconium (Konya), Caesarea Mazaca (Kayseri), and Antioch (Antakya) on its march to Jerusalem (Al-Quds). In 1099 the crusaders finally captured the Holy Land and set up the first Crusader states. The Seljuks had already lost Jerusalem to the Fatimids, who had recaptured it in 1098 just before its capture by the crusaders.
The Sultanate of Rum, the last remnants of the Seljuks in Anatolia, ended too with the Mongol invasions of Anatolia through the 1260s, and was divided into small emirates called ‘beyliks‘. One of these, the Ottomans, would eventually rise to power and conquer the rest
Fatmid Calaphate
The Fatimid Caliphate or Fatimid Empire (/ˈfætɪmɪd/; Arabic: ٱلْخِلَافَة ٱلْفَاطِمِيَّة, romanized: al-Khilāfa al-Fāṭimiyya) was a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries CE under the rule of the Fatimids, an Isma’ili Shia dynasty. Spanning a large area of North Africa and West Asia, it ranged from the western Mediterranean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Fatimids trace their ancestry to the Islamic prophet Muhammad‘s daughter Fatima and her husband Ali, the first Shia imam. The Fatimids were acknowledged as the rightful imams by different Isma’ili communities as well as by denominations in many other Muslim lands and adjacent regions.[3][4] Originating during the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimids initially conquered Ifriqiya (roughly present-day Tunisia). They extended their rule across the Mediterranean coast and ultimately made Egypt the center of the caliphate. At its height, the caliphate included—in addition to Egypt—varying areas of the Maghreb, Sicily, the Levant, and the Hejaz.
During al-Afdal’s tenure (1094–1121) the Fatimids faced a new external threat: the First Crusade. Although initially both sides intended to reach an agreement and an alliance against the Seljuk Turks, these negotiations would eventually break down. First contact seems to have been established by the crusaders who sent in May or June 1097, on suggestion of Byzantine Emperor Alexios Komnenos, an embassy to al-Afdal.[160][161] In return the Fatimids dispatched an embassy to the crusading forces which arrived in February 1098 during their siege of Antioch, witnessing and congratulating the crusaders on their victory against the Seljuk emirs Ridwan of Aleppo and Sökmen of Jerusalem as well as stressing their friendly attitude towards Christians.[160] The Fatimid embassy stayed for a month with the crusading forces before returning via the harbour of Latakia with gifts as well as Frankish ambassadors. It is uncertain whether an agreement was reached but it seems that the parties expected to reach a conclusion in Cairo.[162] Al-Afdal took then advantage of the crusader victory at Antioch to reconquer Jerusalem in August 1098, possibly to be in a better position in the negotiations with the crusaders.[163] The next time both parties met was at Arqah in April 1099 where an impasse was reached in regard to the question of ownership over Jerusalem. Following this, the crusaders crossed into Fatimid territory and captured Jerusalem in July 1099 while al-Afdal was leading a relief army trying to reach the city. The two forces finally clashed in the Battle of Ascalon in which al-Afdal was defeated.[164] Nevertheless, the initial negotiations were held against the Fatimids and Ibn al-Athir wrote that it was said that the Fatimids had invited the crusaders to invade Syria.[165]
This defeat established the Kingdom of Jerusalem as a new regional rival and although many crusaders returned to Europe, having fulfilled their vows, the remaining forces, often aided by the Italian maritime republics, overran much of the coastal Levant, with Tripoli, Beirut, and Sidon falling to them between 1109 and 1110. The Fatimids retained Tyre, Ascalon, and Gaza with the help of their fleet.