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The Kingdom of Jerusalem was a short-lived country established in the 12th century by the First Crusade.1 Foundation and Early History
The kingdom came into being with the Crusader capture of Jerusalem in 1099. Godfrey of Bouillon refused, however, to take the title of King, saying that no man should wear a crown where Christ had worn his crown of thorns; instead, he took the title Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. But Godfrey died the next year, and his brother and successor, Baldwin I, was not so scrupulous, having himself immediately crowned King of Jerusalem.
Baldwin successfully expanded the Kingdom, capturing the port cities of Acre, Sidon, and Beirut, and also exerted his suzerainty over the other Crusader States to the north - the County of Edessa (which he had founded), the Principality of Antioch, and the County of TripoliThe County of Tripoli was the last of the four major Crusader states in the Levant to be created. The beginnings of the County came in 1102, when Count Raymond IV of Toulouse, one of the leaders of the First Crusade, began a lengthy war with the Banu Amma. He also saw an increase in the numbers of Latin inhabitants, as the minor crusade of 1101Events A second wave of crusaders arrives in the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem, after being heavily defeated by Kilij Arslan I at Heraclia. See First Crusade. Raymond IV of Toulouse, count of Tripoli, takes Ankara from the Seljuk Turks. The Count brought reinforcements and a Latin PatriarchThe Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is one of the Roman Catholic "patriarchs of the east". The Patriarchate of Jerusalem is the oldest of Eastern Catholic Patriarchates, and the only one that still follows the Latin Rite. In 1054, the Great Schism separated to the kingdom. The ItalianThe Italian Republic or Italy ( Italian: Italia is a country in the south of Europe, consisting mainly of a boot-shaped peninsula together with two large islands in the Mediterranean Sea: Sicily and Sardinia. To the north, where it borders France, Switzer city-states of VeniceVenice ( Italian Venezia German Venedig , the city of canals, is the capital of the region of Veneto, population 271,073 (2001). The city stretches across numerous small islands in a marshy lagoon along the Adriatic Sea in northeast Italy. The saltwater l, PisaThis article is about Pisa in Italy. For other places of the same name, see Pisa (disambiguation). Pisa (population 90,000) is a city in Tuscany, Italy at the mouth of the river Arno on the Mediterranean. By far the best known sight in Pisa is the famous, and GenoaAlternate uses, see Genoa (disambiguation). Genoa ( Italian Genova (jen'o-vah), Genoese Zena (zay'nah), French Genes is a city and a seaport in northern Italy, the capital of Liguria. It has a population of ca. Genua was a city of the ancient Ligurians. also began to play a role in the kingdom. Their fleets assisted in the capture of the ports, where they were given their own autonomous trading quarters.
Baldwin died without heirs in 1118Events Knights Templar founded Baldwin of Le Bourg succeeds his cousin Baldwin I as king of Jerusalem John II Comnenus succeeds Alexius I as Byzantine emperor Gelasius II succeeds Paschal II as pope Births December 21 Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbu, and was succeeded by his cousin, Baldwin of Le Bourg, the Count of Edessa. Baldwin II was also an able ruler, and though he was imprisoned by the Turks several times throughout his reign, the boundaries of the Kingdom continued to expand, with the city of Tyre captured in 1124.
