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  In 1229, the rapaciousness of the Emperor’s baillies provoked a response they apparently had not anticipated. In less than three months, they were facing not resistance or insurgency but a full-scale challenge to their authority in the shape of an invasion. Whereas, with their mercenaries, they had held a monopoly on force of arms up to this point, in early July 1229 they were confronted by an army led by two barons with hundreds of knights.   In the most comprehensive modern history of the Kingdom of Cyprus, Prof. Peter Edbury writes that “spurred on by the news of the sequestration of their fiefs and plight of their womenfolk,” [i] a force of men raised by the Lord of Beirut set sail from Acre and landed at the Templar fort of Gastria to the north of Famagusta. The size of that force is unrecorded, but it must have included several hundred knights. The Five Ballies Frederich II had left in control of Cyprus (See: The Emperor’s Men) controlled not only the feudal re...

One of the most popular misconceptions about the crusader kingdoms is that the crusaders were a tiny Christian elite ruling over an oppressed Muslim population. This picture is incorrect in two regards: Muslims did not form the majority of the population and they were far from oppressed. Indeed, they lived significantly better than Christians did under Muslim rule. Looking first at the population structure, when the first crusaders arrived in the Levant at the end of the 11th century, the Holy Land was still at least half Christian. There were also still significant Jewish and Samaritan communities, making the Muslims the minority even before the large influx of Christian and Jewish immigrants from the West during the period of Frankish rule. Research has further demonstrated that the Muslim residents were concentrated in specific areas (e.g. around Tyre, in Samaria), while other parts of the crusader states such as Antioch, Tripoli, Beirut, and the area around Jerusalem itself were pr...

In the midst of the struggle between the Holy Roman Emperor and the barons of Outremer, Philip de Novare wrote a political satire about the conflict.   He adapted an already popular fable featuring a deceitful and misanthropic fox, Reynard, who torments an upright wolf, Ysengrim, and is eventually brought to justice by the (lion) king. In Novare’s version of the Roman de Reynard, Novare transforms the opponents of the Ibelins into the fox and his cronies, and the Lord of Beirut is cast in the role of the noble Ysengrim. Novare added, however, the characters of “the wolflings” to do justice to the Lord of Beirut’s five sons.  Today I want to briefly introduce the sons of Beirut. John d’Ibelin, Lord of Beirut, was married first to a lady by the name of Helvis of Nephin, by whom he had five sons, all of whom died as infants, the last taking his mother with him to the grave. Sometime around 1205, Beirut remarried (although the date is not known), this time the widow and heiress ...