History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 21, the Crusade Estates, the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Hello again.

The last two episodes have examined the newly formed Crusader states, the Principality of Antioch and the counties of Idessa and Tripoli.

This week we will look at the remaining Crusader State, the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Now just before I start... the kingdom of Jerusalem.

Now just before I start, a word about the map to which I referred you last week. It shows the crusader states, their borders all neatly and definitively drawn, giving the impression

that all the land within the borders was solid Latin Christian territory. Well that's actually a bit misleading. In actuality the

borders were hazy and shifted and changed regularly and the land within the crusader states was often not fully under the control of the Latin Christians.

This was particularly the case with the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

When Baldwin the first took up the crown on Christmas Day in the year 1100,

the Kingdom of Jerusalem was in reality just a collection of isolated Latin Christian outposts,

surrounded and way outnumbered by the

established settlements of local Muslim Jewish and Eastern Christian people.

The coastal towns in the kingdom in particular were mainly Muslim

which caused all sorts of problems. To survive, the kingdom needed secure ports from which they could safely receive communication and supplies from Europe, and from which pilgrims

could disembark before traveling to Jerusalem, and perhaps even settling in the new territory.

At the start of his reign, Baldwin I only held two ports in his kingdom, Jaffa and Heefa,

neither of which had particularly good harbours. And the road between Jaffa and Jerusalem

was dangerous with pilgrims at the mercy of Islamic raiding parties. The corpses of fallen pilgrims lay scattered on the roadside

as it was too unsafe to collect and bury them. It was not an ideal first impression for Christian visitors to the Holy Lands.

From his brother Godfrey Baldwin inherited a kingdom that was dominated by the church and by religious considerations.

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