Crusader states: Encyclopedia - Crusader states

Crusader states

The Crusader states were the feudal territories created by Catholic Western Europeans during Holy Wars, called crusades because they carried cross-markings as symbols of their goal, to establish the Christian faith in territories under the sway of Islam or paganism.

It is mainly said of the states founded by crusaders in the Orthodox and Muslim Eastern Mediterranean during the Crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries. However it can also apply to the other territorial gains (often small and short-lived) elsewhere against Muslim and pagan adversaries.

Crusader states - Facing Islam

While the Reconquista, the centuries long fight to reconquer the Iberian peninsula on the Arabo-Barbaresque Moors (who called it al-Andalus), fills all the criteria for crusades, it is not customary to call the resulting Catholic principalities crusader states.

The term is usually reseved for the more aggressive crusades:

Crusader states - In the Levant

The first four Crusader states were created in the Levant immediately after the First Crusade:

• The first Crusader state, the County of Edessa, was founded in 1098.
• The Principality of Antioch, historically in Syria, but Turkish since 1939, seat of an old patriarchate
• The County of Tripoli (the Lebanese city, not the Libyan capital)
• The Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted until 1291, when the city of Acre fell. There were also many vassals of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the four major lordships (seigneuries) being:
  • The Principality of Galilee
  • The County of Jaffa and Ascalon
  • The Lordship of Oultrejordain
  • The Lordship of Sidon

The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia existed prior to the Crusades, but became semi-westernized by the (French) Lusignan dynasty.

Crusader states - Cyprus

During the Third Crusade, Crusaders founded the Kingdom of Cyprus. Richard I of England conquered Cyprus on the way to Holy Land, and the island came to be ruled by descendants of the displaced kings of Jerusalem until 1489.

Crusader states - In Greece

During the Fourth Crusade, the Byzantine Empire was conquered and divided into four states:

• The Latin Empire, in Constantinople (never plundered so badly), forcing the 'Greek' Byzantine emperor to reside in Nicaea
• The Kingdom of Thessalonica
• The Duchy of Athens (Catalans)
• The Principality of Achaea

• The Venetians also created the Duchy of the Archipelago (also known as the Duchy of Naxos) in the Aegean Sea in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. Thessalonica and the Latin Empire were reconquered by the Byzantines by 1261. Descendants of the Crusaders continued to rule in Athens and the Peloponnesus or Morea until the 15th century when the area was conquered by the Ottoman Empire.

• The military order of the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John established itself on Rhodes (and several other Aegean islands) in 1310, with regular influx of new blood, until the Ottomans finally drove them out (to Malta) in 1522.

Crusader states - Minor Mediterranean fiefs

Even though these are so small that they usually get forgotten there have been various other feudal entities (statehood is a rather blurred concept in Euripean Feudalism) resulting from minor crusading against Islam in the Mediterranean, such as:

• Djerba and Tabarca, islands off the coast of present Tunisia

Crusader states - Exterminating Paganism

Crusader states - Prussia

During the Northern Crusades, a Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights was founded in Prussia to combat pagan tribes.

There were various other military order polities.

Category: Crusades

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Crusader states", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki