Edessa itself had a developed administrative and financial structure, with a council of twelve, variously called governors, senators or curopalates. Ecclesiastical life was led by an archbishop who, indeed, had been among the representatives sent by Thoros to encourage Baldwin to become co-ruler.65 Baldwin himself quickly adapted his appearance and style to this new milieu. Guibert of Nogent, who seems to have gained his information from Baldwin of Bourcq, says that ‘whenever he went out he had a gold shield carried before him, which bore the image of an eagle, in the Greek manner. Like the pagans, he went about in a toga, let his beard grow, accepted bows from worshippers, and ate on rugs laid on the ground.’66 The population was mainly Armenian Christian, potentially supportive because resentful of both Greek and Turkish control, and Baldwin's marriage to a daughter of another Thoros, the brother of Constantine of Cilicia, in the course of 1098 was evidently an attempt to identify with the local Christians.67 According to William of Tyre, unlike that of the surrounding region, the population of the city was entirely Christian and had been so since apostolic times.68 However, relations between Latins and Armenians began to sour quite quickly, as the latter found themselves displaced from positions of authority.69 Later in the summer of 1098, Baldwin had to suppress an internal rebellion, apparently generated by resentment of the increasing influence of the Franks now arriving in the city. ‘From that day,’ says Albert of Aachen, ‘Duke Baldwin became a man to be feared in the city of Edessa, and his name was spread among the people to the limits of the land.’70
For such a man, the offer of the rulership of Antioch made in early October 1100 would, in most circumstances, have been impossible to turn down, but the coincidence of Godfrey's death less than a month before Bohemond's capture meant that Baldwin had his sights set on Jerusalem. It was therefore Tancred who accepted the regency of Antioch in March 1101. Bohemond, together with Richard of the Principate, had been taken prisoner in mid-August 1100 while responding to an appeal from Gabriel, Armenian ruler of Melitene, under siege by the forces of Malik-Ghazi, the Danishmend Turk who dominated the eastern Anatolian plateau. While it was politic to maintain good relations with at least some of the Armenian princes, this was a very long-range expedition indeed. Ralph of Caen says it was at least ten days’ journey to Melitene, which is about 190 miles north-east of Antioch over mountainous terrain. Malik-Ghazi took advantage of what Ralph calls Bohemond's ‘stupid audacity’ in refusing to rest in the city itself after the journey, and he fell upon a force that Matthew of Edessa describes as quite unprepared.71
In contrast, Tancred concentrated upon more immediate problems, for Byzantine pressure in Cilicia and along the north Syrian coast had prevented Bohemond from expanding much beyond the immediate territory of Antioch itself. His attempt to take Latakia was blocked in September 1099 by the returning crusade leaders, still concerned to preserve Byzantine co-operation. Yet, within eighteen months, Tancred had regained Mamistra, Adana and Tarsus, and, most importantly, after a long siege, had succeeded in driving the Byzantines out of Latakia.72 He took care to ensure that he had the necessary sea power, reinforcing Bohemond's alliance with the Genoese, consolidated a little more than two weeks after the defeat of Kerbogha in June 1098. In November 1097, a fleet of twelve galleys and a supply ship had arrived at Saint Simeon, providing military and technical support for the siege of Antioch over the winter and into the spring of 1098. After the fall of the city they were established in Antioch by Bohemond, even though he was still contesting its control with Raymond of Toulouse. In a charter of 14 July 1098, he granted them the church of Saint John, with a warehouse (fondico), well and thirty houses around the square on which the church stood. It was a pact of mutual convenience: on the same day seven named boni homines (leading citizens) of Genoa agreed to defend the city ‘against all men’ except for the count of Toulouse.73 Tancred built on this. In 1101, he conceded the Genoese a third of the port revenues of Saint Simeon and a half of those of Latakia, as well as a quarter (ruga) with a church and a well in Latakia. He also promised them an anchorage (fundus) in the port of Gibelet when it was captured.74
The only attempt to rescue Bohemond had been made by Baldwin of Edessa, who set off in pursuit of Malik-Ghazi a few days after the capture but, understandably reluctant to penetrate too deeply into Anatolia, he was obliged to fall back on Melitene, where he left a garrison of fifty soldiers.75 Within weeks he had departed from the north to claim the rulership of Jerusalem. Thereafter, Ralph of Caen says that both Bernard of Valence, patriarch of Antioch, and Baldwin of Bourcq kept pressing to obtain Bohemond's release, but he was not freed until May 1103, after a ransom payment of 100,000 gold coins, probably negotiated by the Armenian Kogh Vasil.76 Tancred had done nothing, and even Ralph of Caen strained to present his conduct in a good light: ‘Nor did Tancred stand in the way of these efforts, although it seemed that Bohemond's return would be a hindrance to his continued prosperity.’ Bohemond, says Ralph, then obliged Tancred to hand over everything he held, including the places ‘he had gained by his own effort’. In the end, ‘he had to beg for two small towns’. Ralph is perhaps trying too hard; Fulcher of Chartres says Bohemond made Tancred ‘proper compensation from his lands and joyfully pacified him’.77
Bohemond, however, had barely a year to enjoy his freedom before he was drawn into a battle that Fulcher of Chartres describes as ‘far more dreadful than all previous battles’.78 Even from the much longer perspective of the 1180s, William of Tyre does nothing to moderate this judgement; indeed, he presents it in apocalyptic terms. ‘Never during the rule of the Latins in the East, whether before or after this event, do we read of a battle so disastrous as this one, which resulted in so terrible a massacre of brave men and so disgraceful a flight of the people of our race.’79 This was the battle of Harran, which took place on 7–8 May 1104. No Latin chronicler was present, but both Ralph of Caen and Albert of Aachen were well placed to collect information from those who had been. This was especially true of Ralph, who accompanied Bohemond on his Balkan campaigns in 1106–7 and lived in Antioch during the last year of Tancred's life in 1111–12.
Bohemond and Tancred were responding to a call for aid from Baldwin of Bourcq, besieged in Edessa by a formidable combined Turkish force led by the emirs Soqman ibn Ortuq and Jikirmish, lord of Mosul. The Antiochene leaders were accompanied by Joscelin, lord of Turbessel and Ravendel, Baldwin's cousin, who had come to the East in 1102 with the remains of the army of Stephen of Blois. Having no patrimony and probably poorly resourced after the losses of 1101, he had been endowed by Baldwin with the Edessan lands west of the Euphrates, creating an important link between the two main parts of the county.80 According to Ibn al-Qalanisi, the Turkish leaders had ‘made a solemn agreement with one another to prosecute the Holy Way against the Franks, the enemies of God’, although William of Tyre suggests that Baldwin's attempts to subjugate Harran, which lay about 22 miles to the south-east of Edessa in an area made productive by irrigation from the Balikh River, were the immediate cause of the attack.81 This seems likely, as possession of Harran would not only have increased Baldwin's resources, but also have made Edessa itself safer from attack from Mesopotamia.
The Christian forces seem to have lacked cohesion from the outset. Fulcher of Chartres thinks that quarrelling brought the army close to disintegration, while William of Tyre says that Bohemond and Baldwin were wrangling over who was entitled to hold Harran itself. The Muslim leaders drew the Christians across the river in a feigned retreat, and then fell upon them, capturing Baldwin, Joscelin and Benedict, archbishop of Edessa, although the archbishop was quickly rescued. Despite the disappearance of Baldwin, Bohemond and Tancred were prepared to fight again the next day, only to find that most of the troops had fled back across the river to Edessa.82 Matthew of Edessa says that the Franks went two days’ march beyond Harran, to a place called Oshut, in order to engage the Turks. Here, ‘in this strange and alien Muslim land’, they fought a ‘frightful and violent battle’. He claims tha
t there were 30,000 Christian dead, ‘so the region was depopulated’, enabling the Muslims of Harran to bring ‘more destruction upon the Christian faithful than the Turks had ever done’.83 Ibn al-Qalanisi was triumphant, although his judgement that it was ‘the turning of fortune against them’ proved to be premature. ‘This was,’ he says, ‘a great and unexampled victory for the Muslims; it discouraged the Franks, diminished their numbers and broke their power of offence, while the hearts of the Muslims were strengthened, and their zeal for the victory of the Faith and the war against the heretics was whetted and sharpened.’84
Tancred was now chosen as regent of Edessa, although for a period the survival of the city hung in the balance, as the Turks tried to follow up their victory.85 Bohemond once more lost ground to his immediate enemies, for the Byzantines retook the Cilician cities and refortified Latakia, while Ridwan of Aleppo, although largely estranged from Sunnite Islam, nevertheless took the chance to seize Artah, only 20 miles to the north-east of Antioch itself. Ibn al-Qalanisi says that it was surrendered to him by the Armenians ‘because of the injustice and grievous tyranny they had suffered from the Franks’.86 At the same time the Turks devastated the entire region as far as the Orontes River. As Ralph of Caen saw it, the defeat had the direct consequence of persuading Bohemond that he should raise new forces in the West. In the autumn of 1104, with Daibert of Pisa in train, he set sail, leaving Tancred once more as regent. Even allowing for Ralph's prejudice in favour of Tancred, his claim that Antioch was left ‘without protection, wages and mercenaries’ rings true.87 In the West, however, Bohemond retained his status as a heroic figure, an image upon which he capitalised over the next two years, finally convincing Paschal II to support a crusade against Byzantium. It was not successful: Bohemond's expedition to Dalmatia, which began in October 1107, was finally ground down by Alexius's forces in September the following year, and, by the treaty of Devol, Bohemond was obliged to agree to govern Antioch as a vassal of the emperor, as well as to give up his lands in Cilicia.88
This failure must have diverted potential soldiers from Antioch itself, as well as deterring new crusaders, but, on the other hand, it did leave Tancred free to develop the principality in his own way, for he had no intention of submitting to the Byzantines. In one sense, Tancred was paying back both Alexius and Bohemond since, according to Ralph of Caen, he considered the oath he had sworn to the emperor in 1097 as having been made under pressure from Bohemond; he therefore saw it as ‘a small matter’ to violate it.89 Tancred put Richard of the Principate in charge of Edessa, but in the circumstances it is not surprising that it took nearly four years to regain what had been lost in the aftermath of the battle. Richard's acquisitive and sometimes violent rule was deeply resented by the local population, while his absence in the West between late 1105 and 1108 meant that he was often unable to supervise the government of the county in person.90 Ridwan's aggression was the most easily reversed; by the spring of 1105, Tancred once more controlled Artah, Sarmin and Tell Aghdi, and in April he defeated Ridwan in battle, effectively neutralising the threat from Aleppo for the next five years. The Byzantines were tougher, but over the winter of 1107–8 he retook Mamistra and, in the spring, Latakia.91 In the latter case he needed sea power and the Pisans were given quarters in both Latakia and Antioch in return for their help.92 A measure of Tancred's confidence can be seen in the striking of his own copper coinage at around this time, one type of which shows, on the obverse, a full-face bust of a bearded Tancred holding a large sword on his shoulder. Such coinage cannot have been confined to the years 1111–12 – that is, after Bohemond's death – and must be seen as a clear indication that Tancred regarded himself as sovereign ruler of the principality rather than as some kind of regent for Bohemond.93
Tancred, of course, had no more interest in obtaining the release of Baldwin and Joscelin than he had had in obtaining that of Bohemond. An early attempt by King Baldwin to persuade Bohemond and Tancred to use a high-status female captive as a bargaining counter was met by ‘smooth and flattering replies’, according to Albert of Aachen, but they had no real intention of giving up Edessa, which Albert claims provided an income of 40,000 besants per annum, plus additional revenues from dependencies.94 In fact, Joscelin managed to negotiate his own release in 1107 and that of Baldwin the following year, but when Baldwin tried to gain access to Edessa ‘he could not go in’, says Fulcher of Chartres, ‘because Tancred and his men forbade entrance’.95 Not the least of the effects of the Harran defeat was the disintegration of any attempt at a unified front among the powers of the north, just at a time when the Turks were beginning to pose a serious threat and the Armenians were becoming increasingly disaffected. This enmity culminated in a battle between Tancred and Joscelin near Turbessel in September 1108, in which both sides deployed Turkish allies. Initially nearly overcome, Tancred recovered and defeated Joscelin, a victory approved by Fulcher of Chartres, who ascribes it to the help of God, although, in an apparent non sequitur, he goes on to say that ‘when the chief men of the land saw the damage being done, they took mutual counsel and brought the contestants to agreement’.96
Tancred's ambitions, however, were not confined to the county of Edessa. An idea of the perception he had of the territories of Antioch can be gained from the oath he extracted from Raymond of Toulouse when he fell into his hands in the winter of 1101–2. At a time when King Baldwin's reach extended no farther than Haifa, Raymond was obliged to promise that he ‘would not seize any land whatsoever on this side of the town of Acre’, a demand in keeping with Tancred's concession of an anchorage in Gibelet, around 25 miles to the south of Tripoli, to the Genoese in 1101, if they should help in its capture.97 In September 1106, Tancred took advantage of internal dissensions to gain Apamea, which lay to the south-east beyond the Orontes.98 This was potentially very important, for further expansion along the Upper Orontes would have brought Tancred within reach of Shaizar and Hama, control of which would have laid the foundations of one of the most powerful states in northern Syria. Raymond of Toulouse had understood the possibilities when, in September 1098, he had set up a priest from his army, Peter of Narbonne, as bishop of Albara, about 20 miles to the north of Apamea. Although Peter had continued on to Jerusalem, when he later returned, in 1102, he was made archbishop by Bernard of Valence, patriarch of Antioch, and then, in keeping with the previous Orthodox structure, archbishop of Apamea, after its capture.99 Peter's defection to the Normans greatly strengthened Tancred's hold on the region, since Albara lies within the plateau known as the Jabal as-Summaq, which was very important to the south-eastern defences of Antioch, and which Bohemond and Raymond had contested between September 1098 and January 1099.100
In fact, Raymond took no notice of his promise to Tancred for, if he wished to stay in the East, it was evidently impractical for him to try to carve out a domain south of Acre, where King Baldwin was already dominant. In contrast, the coast and hinterland between Baldwin and Tancred offered tempting opportunities, while at the same time the Byzantines were apparently willing to send supplies to the Provençals from Cyprus in return for an oath of allegiance, a matter Raymond probably discussed with Alexius while he was in Constantinople in 1101.101 Moreover, Raymond was already familiar with the area from his military operations there in 1098 and 1099, notably spending three frustrating months trying to take Arqa, as well as leaving small garrisons in a number of towns and castles.102 Although there was by this time little left of the acquisitions he had made during the crusade, he was aware that he could exploit divisions among local Muslim powers to his profit.103 When he had left Kafartab in January 1099, nearby rulers had scrambled to send envoys and gifts, together with what Raymond of Aguilers describes as ‘promises of future submission’, while Fakhr al-Mulk Ibn Ammar, emir of Tripoli, had given the crusaders large sums of money, horses, mules, clothing and food to divert them from Tripoli, Arqa and Gibelet.104
Once Tancred had released Raymond, the leaders and their followers who had survived the
traumas of the Anatolian campaigns of August and September 1101 set out for Jerusalem. Apart from Raymond himself, these included Stephen of Blois, Welf of Bavaria and William of Aquitaine. These forces consisted of only a small proportion of the original strength of the crusade of 1101 but, in concert with the Genoese, they were sufficient to bring about the fall of Tortosa in mid-February 1102. The city was, says Albert of Aachen, handed over to Raymond by ‘common agreement’, although Fulcher of Chartres emphasises there was considerable resentment when Raymond then refused to continue to Jerusalem.105 To have left, however, would have been to lose yet another opportunity to establish himself in the East, a course to which he now seems to have been committed. Both Tortosa and the hill fortress of Hisn al-Akrad (later Crac des Chevaliers) had been captured by the Provençals in January and February 1099, only for them to be retaken by Fakhr al-Mulk of Tripoli once the crusaders had turned their backs, while it is unlikely that Tancred would have held back if Raymond had contented himself with leaving a garrison there.106
With Tortosa under his control, Raymond now assembled his meagre forces for an attack on Tripoli itself, a city described by Ibn al-Athir as one of the greatest of Islam and ‘one of the most handsome and rich’.107 Fakhr al-Mulk was not willing to give it up easily, especially as Raymond appears to have had only about 300 knights available to him. The emir therefore called in help from Duqaq of Damascus and Janah al-Daula of Homs, creating an army that may have been as much as twenty times the size of Raymond's force. As was so often the case in the early days of the Latin settlement, there was no alternative but to fight despite the unfavourable odds, and a battle took place near Tortosa on 14 April 1102. However, the contingent from Homs panicked and fled, enabling the Provençals to concentrate their attack on the Tripolitans.108 There was no Latin chronicler to report these events and the Muslim sources inevitably do not provide much detail about an engagement that Ibn al-Qalanisi saw as a shattering defeat.109 Nevertheless, this victory was the equivalent of Baldwin's successes against the Egyptians, for Homs and Damascus were the main threat to any power attempting to establish itself on this section of the Syrian coast.
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