The Crusades and the Near East
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Bohemond VI struggled on until 1275, while his young son Bohemond VII was brought up in relative safety by his Armenian family in Cilicia. Sybil had a brief stint as regent during the next two years. She installed Bartholomew, the Bishop of Tortosa, as governor of Tripoli. He was an unpopular choice and the decision provoked civil unrest until Bohemond VII was old enough to inherit in 1277. On her son’s death in 1287 Sibyl was not deemed suitable to hold the reins of power.
The people of Tripoli argued that she was too grief-stricken to manage the city effectively, and when she recalled the Bishop of Tortosa they rebelled and formed an independent commune.139 In 1288, her daughter Lucienne of Apulia made a bid for the title supported by her husband Narjot III of Toucy and the Hospitallers of Acre, in the face of opposition from the commune and the Genoese. A peace was negotiated but one year later her claim became a moot point when the city fell to Sultan al-Malik al-Mansur. She escaped with her mother, Sybil of Armenia, and Margaret of Antioch-Lusignan.140
Intermarriage between Armenian Christians and Latin newcomers was not just a feature of an initial ‘phase’ enabling crusader settlement, but a continuing practice that had increasingly significant effects as the power balance shifted in the Near East. Dynastic matches between Latins and Armenians were concentrated in northern Syria and had the most immediate impact there, but the political ramifications of those links spread to the rest of the Levant, and even to Europe as the Armenians of Cilicia became players on the European diplomatic stage during the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In subsequent years their role in the Mediterranean became even more pronounced as intermarriage with the Lusignan dynasty cemented their position in Cyprus. Marriage alliances helped to secure good relations to a point, but relied on the successful fulfilment of terms, the proper behaviour of marriage spouses, and provision for the succession. In the case of the latter, the willingness of the nobility to support candidates was essential, but so was the elimination of potential competition, as Rüdt-Collenberg suggests.141
Marriage was a dangerous game, in which the players were not above sacrificing the occasional dynastic ‘pawn’ when it suited them. There is little doubt that initial dynastic alliances benefited crusaders in their early attempts to settle northern Syria and allowed Armenian lords to secure their position in the face of threats from Byzantium and from Seljuk Turks, but only with varying degrees of success. The settlers lost Edessa not long after Cilicia was briefly consumed by the Byzantine Empire under John Comnenus. As tensions between settler groups became more pronounced in the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, marital alliances with the increasingly powerful Armenians were insufficient to the 98
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task of providing stable political regimes for society in northern Syria. During this period the rulers of Armenian Cilicia fostered a degree of political unity and successfully maintained their protected mountain fortresses, but they were unable to extend that power. Cilicia remained an enticing strategic goal for ambitious Antiochenes, Mongols and Mamluks alike. In the worst circumstances, an unsuccessful or overly ambitious dynastic policy such as that of Leon I only narrowly avoided severe consequences. The succession he envisaged was compromised because neither Latin nor Armenian society was willing to accept the suzerainty of the other. The resulting civil war drained resources on both sides, which damaged the chances of Latin and Armenian survival in the Levant and stimulated further discord among the divergent Christian groups struggling to coexist in the Holy Land during the thirteenth century.
Notes
1 Communities of Nestorians, Maronites and Melkites also existed and developed throughout the Latin East. See Christopher MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, pp. 7–12 and 29–39.
2 See especially Claude Mutafian, ‘Prélats ou souverains arméniens à Jérusalem à l’époque des croisades: légendes et certitudes (XIIe–XVe siècle)’, Studia Orientalia Christiana – Collecteana 37, 2004, 114–21. My thanks to Professor Mutafian for allowing me to view his forthcoming publication ‘Les princesses arméniennes et le Liban latin (XIIe–XIIIe siècle)’ from conference proceedings to be published by the Haigazian University of Beirut. See also Bernard Hamilton, ‘Women in the Crusader States: The Queens of Jerusalem (1100–1190)’, in Derek Baker (ed.), Medieval Women, London: Blackwell, 1978, pp. 143–74. Among others, Melisende has drawn particular attention because of her patronage of local Christian institutions, including Melkite and Jacobite communities. See Mutafian, ‘Les princesses arméniennes’ and MacEvitt, Crusades and the Christian World, pp. 122, 214 n. 90. Interrelations between Armenians and Cypriots have also been given significant consideration in Peter Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades 1191–1374, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Perhaps the most comprehensive work on the complex dynastic relationships entered into by the leading Armenian families of Cicilia is W.H. Rüdt-Collenberg, The Rupenides, Hethumides and Lusignans: The Structure of the Armeno Cilician Dynasties, Paris: Libraire C. Klincksieck, 1963.
3 Claude Mutafian, ‘The Brilliant Diplomacy of Cilician Armenia’, in R.G. Hovannisian and Simon Payaslian (eds), Armenian Cilicia, Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2008, pp. 93–110.
4 Mutafian, ‘Brilliant Diplomacy’, p. 94. Sempad was recorded as having a second bigamous marriage to a Mongol princess, Bkhatakhavor, whom Rüdt-Collenberg suggests was ‘assigned’ to him. Rüdt-Collenberg, The Rupenides, Hethumides and Lusignans, pp. 13, 64.
5 Most comprehensive studies on Armenian history devote a chapter or considerable attention to Cilicia during the crusader period. For example, see Ani Atamian Bournoutian, ‘Cilician Armenia’, in R.G. Hovannisian (ed.), Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiquity to the Fourteenth Century, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2004, pp. 273–91; David Marshall Lang, Armenia: Cradle of Civilisation, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1970, pp. 200–11; Sirarpie der Nersessian, The Armenians, London: Thames and Hudson, 99
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1969, pp. 44–53. See also Jospeh Laurent, ‘Les Croisés et l’Armenie’, Handes Amsorya 41, 1927, 885–906.
6 T.S. Boase, ‘The History of the Kingdom’, in T.S. Boase (ed.), The Cilician Kingdom of Armenia, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1978, p. 1.
7 For example, see R.G. Hosvannien ‘Introduction’, in R.G. Hovannisian (ed.), Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, I.x.
8 For examples see Peter Lock, The Routledge Companion to the Crusades, Oxford: Routledge, 2006, pp. 375–82, and MacEvitt, Crusades and the Christian World.
9 J.H. Forse, ‘Armenians and the First Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History 17, 1991, 13–22.
10 R.W. Thomson, ‘The Crusaders through Armenian Eyes’, in A.E. Laiou and R.P. Mottahedeh (eds), The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001, pp. 71–82, here 72–4.
11 Translations of sources into French and English, however, have done much to further scholarship in this area, e.g. those arising from RHC Arm.
12 See R.H. Hewsen, ‘Armenia Maritima: The Historical Geography of Cilicia’, in Hovannisian and Payaslian (eds), Armenian Cilicia, pp. 27–65, and Claude Mutafian, La Cilicie au Carrefour des empires, 2, Paris: Les Belles Lettes, 1988, I.22, who suggests that it was these precise geographical attributes which allowed Cilicia to establish and maintain a lasting independence.
13 For example, see Boase (ed.), Cilician Kingdom of Armenia, passim. For new perspectives on the role of fortifications, see R.W. Edwards, Fortifications of Armenian Cilicia, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1987, and R.W. Edwards, ‘The Role of Military Architecture in Medieval Cilicia: The Triumph of a Non-Urban Strategy’, in Hovannisian and Payaslian (eds), Cilician Armenia, pp. 153–220. The Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights gained particular significance in Cilician Armenia following the conflict wi
th the Templars over Baghras after the Third Crusade. For a further early overview of the development of the kingdom, see Sirarpie der Nersessian, ‘The Cilician Kingdom of Armenia’, in K.M. Setton (ed.), A History of the Crusades, 6, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969–89, II.630–95.
14 For examples from this period, see Mutafian, La Cilicie, and a more popularised account in Claude Mustafian, Le royaume arménien de Cilicie: XIIe–XIVe siècle, Paris: CNRS Editions, c.1993.
15 J.G. Ghazarian, The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia during the Crusades, Richmond: Curzon Press, 2000.
16 Gérard Dédéyans, Les Arméniens entre Grecs, Musulmans et Croisés: études sur les pouvoirs arméniens dans la Proche-Orient méditerranéen (1068–1150), Vol. I: Aux origins de l’état cilicien: Philarète et les premiers roubeniens, Vol. II: De l’Euphrate au Nil: le réseau diasporique, Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2003. See also Gérard Dédéyan, Histoire du peuple armenien, Toulouse: Éditions Privat, 2007, pp. 327–75 for a series of essays on Cilicia at the time of the crusades.
17 Hovannisian and Payaslian (eds), Armenian Cilicia.
18 Claude Cahen, La Syrie du Nord à l’époque des croisades et la principauté d’Antioche, Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1940.
19 For a detailed discussion, see Peter Halfter, ‘Papacy, Catholicosate and the Kingdom of Cilician Armenia’, in Hovannisian and Payaslian (eds), Armenian Cilicia, pp. 111–33.
20 The changing role of the Armenian kingdom in the later part of the Hethoumid period has been discussed in detail by Angus Stewart, The Armenian Kingdom and the Mamluks: War and Diplomacy during the Reigns of Het’ um II (1289–1307), Leiden: Brill, 2001. See also Mutafian, La Cilicie, I.421–75.
21 MacEvitt, Crusades and the Christian World, pp. 77–8.
22 Rüdt-Collenberg, Rupenids, Hethumides and Lusignans, pp. 12–21.
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23 MacEvitt, Crusades and the Christian World, pp. 77–8. Fulcher of Chartres famously commented on such intermarriage, but only mentioned marriage to Muslims as requiring the grace of baptism. FC 748.
24 Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem 1174–1277, London: Archon Books, 1973, p. 133.
25 B.Z. Kedar, ‘On the Origins of the Earliest Laws of Frankish Jerusalem: The Canons of the Council of Nablus, 1120’, Speculum 74, 2, April 1999, 310–35.
26 A.V. Murray, ‘Daimbert of Pisa, the Domus Godefridi and the Accession of Baldwin I of Jerusalem’, in A.V. Murray (ed.), From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies, 1095–1500: Selected Proceedings of the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 10–13 July 1995, Turnhout: Brepols, 1998, pp. 81–102, at p. 87.
27 Hagenmeyer notes that she is referred to as Arda, but there is no contemporary authority for her name: FC 422, n. 7. See also Hamilton, ‘Women’, p. 144.
28 AA 188–9.
29 He only mentions Arda’s reinstatement: FC 601. For a discussion, see H.E. Mayer,
‘Études sur l’histoire de Baudouin Ier Roi de Jérusalem’, in H.E. Mayer (ed.), Melanges sur L’Histoire du Royaume Latin de Jérusalem, Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1984, pp. 10–91, 53–4; Hamilton, ‘Women’, p. 145. The marriage is also absent from the chronicle of Armenian Matthew of Edessa. He may have been unaware of the connection, or too much shame may have been attached to the divorce, or he may simply have seen little political significance in the marriage. He was critical of both Baldwin I and II for their activities in Edessa, thus it seems unlikely he would have missed an opportunity to highlight the mistreatment of an Armenian wife.
30 GN 349.
31 AA 188–9.
32 AA 360–1. See also WT 350. Albert agreed that the marriage to Adelaide was unlawful and unjust: AA 860–1. See also Mayer, ‘Baudouin Ier’, pp. 56–7.
33 AA 646–7; FC 421.
34 WT 495–6. See also Natasha Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative, Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007, pp. 122, 141–3, 148.
35 He records that she may have dishonoured her marriage vows, but asserted that after she was given permission to leave the convent for Constantinople she gave herself over to prostitution: WT 496. At least five years elapsed between Baldwin’s divorce from Arda and his marriage to Adelaide.
36 Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land, pp. 209–10.
37 For a discussion of the name and location of Baldwin II’s family, see A.V. Murray,
‘Kingship, Identity and Name-Giving in the Family of Baldwin of Bourcq’, in Norman Housley (ed.), Knighthoods of Christ: Essays on the History of the Crusades and the Knights Templar Presented to Malcolm Barber, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, pp. 27–38.
38 WT 482. Both Bar Hebraeus and Michael the Syrian criticise him for his religious persuasion; Dostourian discusses their opinions in ME 329–30.
39 Jean-Baptiste Chabot (ed.), Anonymi Auctoris Chronicon Ad Annum Christi 1234
Pertinens, II, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 82 (37), Paris:
Typographeo Reipublicae, 1916; Albert Abouna and J.M. Fiey (trs), Anonymi Auctoris Chronicon Ad Annum Christi 1234 Pertinens, II, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 354 (154),
Louvain: Imprimerie Orientaliste, 1974, pp. 45–6.
(Henceforth Anon. Syriac Chronicle.) The author was probably a Jacobite priest or monk from Edessa who had access to monastic records. He also appears to have used a lost account written by Basil bar Shumana, who was Jacobite Archbishop of Edessa, experiencing and surviving the Turkish conquest of the city in 1144 to die in 1171.
See MacEvitt, Crusades and the Christian World, p. 52.
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40 ME 134, 176. FC 344–46. Michael the Syrian, Chronique, Jean-Baptiste Chabot (ed.
and tr.), 4, Paris: Leroux, 1905, III.188.
41 Thomas Asbridge, The Creation of the Principality of Antioch 1098–1130, Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000, p. 51.
42 For further details about the political roles of Baldwin’s daughters, see Hodgson, Women Crusading and the Holy Land, passim.
43 WT 482.
44 WT 511: ‘Mos enim est Orientalibus, tam Grecis quam aliis nationibus, barbas tota cura et omni sollicitudine nutrire, pro summoque probo et maiori que unquam irrogari possit ignominia reputare, si vel unus pilus quocumque casu sibi barba cum inuria detrahatur.’
45 WT 512.
46 Gabriel died some time after Melitene was captured by the Danishmends in 1102.
Cahen, La Syrie du Nord, p. 232; Anon. Syriac Chronicle 47. The latter places his death in 1103.
47 Anon. Syriac Chronicle 67–8. The story was also told by Fulcher of Chartres, William of Tyre and Matthew of Edessa. For a more detailed account, see Y.N. Harari, Special Operations in the Ages of Chivalry 1100–1550, Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007, pp. 74–90.
48 Andrew Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States: Recovering the Past, London: Longman, 2004, p. 125.
49 MacEvitt, Crusades and the Christian World, pp. 77–8.
50 See ME 220–1 for the war on the Lord of Bira. For the marriage, see Anon. Syriac Chronicle 59. Saruj was a centre for trade and strategically important for protecting Edessa, populated by Arabs and Syriac Christians. Dédéyans, Les Arméniens entre Grecs, Musulmans et Croisés, II.1207.
51 WT 635. Chahin asserts that the marriage took place in celebration of the successful siege of Antioch at the same time as Baldwin of Boulogne married ‘Arda’ but neither Baldwin or Joscelin was present at the siege, the latter only arriving in the Holy Land in 1101. He also asserts that Joscelin married Maria of Salerno some time before 1119, but most others place this marriage after his captivity (see n. 54 below). M. Chahin, The Kingdom of Armenia: A History, Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001, p. 244. For the birth of Joscelin II as 1113, see Anon. Syriac Chronicle 58.
52 See MacEvitt, Crusades and the Christian World, pp. 92–4. The Anon. Syriac Chronicle was particularly fulsome i
n the praise of his exploits, and reported that Joscelin was asked to put on a display of his skills for the Muslim governor of Mosul, Jawali. Anon. Syriac Chronicle 53.
53 FC 683–6. According to Orderic Vitalis, the peasant was a Saracen, who later received baptism and whose daughter was betrothed to a Christian knight. OV VI.114–7.
54 Anon. Syriac Chronicle 64–5, places the marriage just before Joscelin’s capture in 1123. See also Dédéyans, Les Arméniens entre Grecs, Musulmans et Croisés, p. 495.
Asbridge, Creation of the Principality of Antioch, p. 149 records that this was Roger of Salerno’s sister, following Cahen, La Syrie du Nord, pp. 539–40, who gives no source but cites the name Marie. He identified her with the wife of Guy Carpenal, Lord of Mamistra and Tarsus in a charter issued before 1114 by her husband: ‘Chartes de l’abbaye de Notre-Dame de la vallée de Josaphat en terre-sainte 1108–1291’, Revue d’Orient Latin 7, 1900, 108–222, no. 4, pp. 115–16. If she was old enough to be married and to witness a charter in 1114, it stands to reason that she was in fact the daughter of Richard of Salerno, who died during the First Crusade, rather than his son Roger. Orderic Vitalis, however, suggests that a Greek envoy had requested the hand of a daughter of Roger for John Comnenus, and there is some corroborative evidence of a Greek embassy in 1119. OV VI.129–31, Kemal ad-Din, RHC Or. III.622; Cahen, La Syrie du Nord, pp. 281–2. When the regency of Antioch passed to Baldwin II, apparently a Greek match was also discussed with one of his daughters. Cahen is 102
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suspicious of Orderic’s evidence here, especially as John Comnenus may have already been married to Piroshka/Irene of Hungary. JK I.4; Anon. Syriac Chronicle 63.
Ultimately, if there had been a female heir to Antioch, even with the controversy over Roger’s princely status, she might have been a significant pawn in the wake of the Field of Blood in 1119 and is therefore unlikely to have escaped the notice of historians. See also Asbridge, Creation of the Principality of Antioch, pp. 139–43.