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Baldwin of Bourcq Baldwin of Bourcq left his home in France in 1096 to join the great crusade summoned by Pope Urban II for the liberation of the holy sites and Christian peoples of Syria and Palestine from the domination of the Muslim Turks. In 1100 he became ruler of the Franco-Armenian county of Edessa. In 1118 he succeeded to the kingdom of Jerusalem. In just over two decades this younger son of a minor French count had become one of only a dozen kings in Western Christendom. To defend the principalities of Outremer against their Turkish and Egyptian enemies he travelled thousands of miles and led his troops in over two dozen campaigns. He spent two extended periods in Turkish captivity, yet he outlived almost all of his fellow crusaders, and died leaving the succession to his kingdom secure.
This is the first biography in any language of a remarkable man. Drawing on a wide range of narrative and documentary sources, it gives an account of Baldwin’s ancestry and life from his first recorded appearance up to his death in 1131. It explains the complex and shifting geopolitics of the principalities of Outremer and the Muslim territories around them, and explores Baldwin’s character as a ruler and leader in war, the significance of his wide-ranging kinship network, and the succession to the kingdom of Jerusalem. Baldwin of Bourcq will appeal to students, teachers and researchers in Medieval History, especially Crusade Studies and Military History.
Alan V. Murray is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Dynastic History, 1099–1125 (2000) and The Franks in Outremer: Studies in the Latin Principalities of Syria and Palestine, 1099–1187 (2015), as well as over 60 articles on the crusades and the Latin settlements in Outremer.
Preface
I would like to acknowledge the support of the School of History at the University of Leeds, which granted me six months research leave in 2019. This time free of most of my normal academic and administrative duties enabled me to fulfil several existing publication commitments and to finally make a start on this book. I would like to thank Professor Jonathan Phillips and Dr Nicholas Morton for accepting it for publication in the Rulers of the Latin East series and commenting on the first draft. Over the years my understanding of the period treated in the book has benefited from numerous conversations with Dr Guy Perry and Dr Susan Edgington, and I was gratified that both of them agreed to read a revised version and comment on it. In quite different ways all four of my readers provided a valuable sounding board and helped improve the final work.
I am grateful to the Museum of the Order of St John at Clerkenwell for permission to reproduce images of coins from its collection. I also thank the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds for permission to use an image from its Genealogical History Roll, and am grateful to Rhiannon Lawrence-Francis and Jodie Double of the Special Collections team for their assistance. Mr Michael Greenwood at Routledge has been understanding and helpful in the process leading up to publication. Some parts of Chapter 9 are derived from one of my essays which originally appeared in Nottingham Medieval Studies 38 (1994), and I am grateful to Dr Rob Lutton for permission to reproduce these here.
Professor Tara Andrews did a great deal in both conversations and correspondence to enhance my very rudimentary knowledge of the Armenian language and personal names, while Professor Rosalind Brown-Grant kindly advised on Middle French. I have also benefited from assistance from many people who shared their expertise or provided copies of publications (and in some cases, both): Professor Martin Aurell, Dr Andrew Buck, Dr Niall Christie, Professor Peter Edbury, Professor Taef El-Azhari, Professor Jean Flori, Professor John France, Mr Thierry Frippiat, Dr Philippe Goridis, Professor Stefan Heidemann, Professor Benjamin Kedar, Mr Richard Kelleher, Dr Robert Kool, Professor Graham Loud, Dr Francesca Petrizzo, Mr Marcus Phillips, Professor Jeff Rider, Professor Luigi Russo and Professor Iris Shagrir.
My greatest debt is to Professor Hans Eberhard Mayer. Over many years he has discussed numerous matters concerning the kingdom of Jerusalem with me and also provided me with copies of many of his publications. Although we have not always agreed on our interpretations of the historical evidence, he has been an unfailing model of academic co-operation and courtesy.
Alan V. Murray Calverley, Yorkshire August 2021
A note on names
This book contains a large number of placenames which will not necessarily be familiar to readers. For places in the Near and Middle East, historical names in their English forms have been used where these exist, but in most cases the modern form of the name is given in parentheses at the first occurrence, e.g. Tyre (mod. Sir, Lebanon). Where no modern country is given in the parenthetical reference, it is assumed that the place is located in modern Turkey. Lesser-known placenames in Europe have been located according to present-day administrative units: in France by département and arrondissement, and in Belgium by province and arrondissement.
Personal names of people of Western origin, that is Franks in Outremer and Europeans, are given in their modern English forms. Arabic names are transliterated according to the most generally accepted principles in modern Englishlanguage scholarship. Many of the Muslim leaders who fought against the Franks were of Turkish origin. In addition to their Turkish (or in some cases, Arabic) given names they were often granted or adopted an Arabic honorific title (Arab. laqab). Thus the ruler of Damascus from 1104 to 1128 had the /Jagab Zahir al-Din (‘supporter of the faith’), and like other rulers, is often referred to by this honorific in the Arabic sources, although modern works usually simply use his Turkish given name Tughtagin. For such individuals, full names with honorifics are cited at the first point where they are mentioned, but thereafter only given names are used, unless there is a possibility of confusion. The full names with honorifics are also given in the index.
Armenian names present particular problems. While most Armenologists now prefer the Hiibschmann-Meillet system of transliteration (1913), the resulting linguistic forms will be unfamiliar to the readers of this book. I have therefore used English equivalents for Armenian names where these exist (e.g. Constantine, Michael), and in other cases used forms that have been generally used in Englishlanguage works on the crusades, thus (for example) Thoros and Barsegh, rather than T‘oros and Barsel.
A final point of nomenclature relates to Baldwin’s own name and titles. It can be confusing, as generations of students have found, that much of the history of early twelfth-century Outremer was dominated by two men called Baldwin, each of whom was successively count of Edessa and king of Jerusalem, and whose reigns overlapped for two decades. To avoid confusing the reader it will be necessary to distinguish between the two, and to be clear about the position of each at any given time, without laboriously repeating titles on each occasion. To this end, and depending on context, Baldwin of Bourcq is also described as Count Baldwin (ID of Edessa from 1100 to 1118, or King Baldwin (II) of Jerusalem from 1118 to 1131. His predecessor in both county and kingdom is called Baldwin of Boulogne or Count Baldwin (I) of Edessa up to 1100, and King Baldwin (1) of Jerusalem from then until his death in 1118. Where the name Baldwin appears without any additional description, it should always be understood as referring to the subject of this book.
Introduction
Baldwin of Bourcq first entered the historical record in 1096, when he left his home in north-eastern France to join the First Crusade, the great expedition summoned in late November 1095 by Pope Urban II for the liberation of the holy sites and Christian peoples of Syria and Palestine from the domination of the Muslim Turks. After the crusaders took Jerusalem on 15 July 1099 most of them returned to their homes in the West, but a minority remained in the newly founded principalities in the Near East which came to be collectively known as Outremer, an Old French name meaning ‘[the land] beyond the sea’.
Baldwin was one of those crusaders who chose to seek their fortunes in the East. In 1100 he unexpectedly succeeded to the county of Edessa, a new Christian principality carved out of territories seized from Turkish control in north-eastern Syria and Upper Mesopotamia, in what is now south-eastern Turkey. There he ruled over a diverse population of Armenians, Syrian Christians and immigrant Europeans for almost two decades. In 1118 he was called to take up the succession in the kingdom of Jerusalem, where he ruled for over twelve years. By the time he had reached middle age, Baldwin had gone from being a minor nobleman in France to one of only a dozen kings in Western Christendom.
Until now, Baldwin’s biography has never been written. In the Middle Ages it was Godfrey of Bouillon, the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, who rapidly came to be regarded as the great chivalric hero of the crusade, and his medieval reputation was reflected in modern historiography. Because Godfrey’s life before the crusade is reasonably well documented, it also attracted the attention of historians of Lotharingia as well as of the crusades and Outremer.'! By comparison his brother and successor King Baldwin I was neglected in modern scholarship, but recent research has established him as the real founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem.”
Whether as count of Edessa or king of Jerusalem, Baldwin I] (as he is numbered in both cases) received less attention than either of his predecessors in historical research of the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries. However, three significant facets of his reign in Jerusalem have emerged in research of the last fifty years. Firstly, Hans Eberhard Mayer’s work on the royal chancery and the charters of the kings and queens of Jerusalem has not only provided a magnificent edition of Baldwin’s documents, but also shown how his tenure of the regency of the principality of Antioch caused significant problems for the government of his own kingdom.’ Secondly, prosopographical research has highlighted the importance of Baldwin’s family connections in France after he settled in the East.* And thirdly, my own earlier work has made clear the importance of the attempt to depose Baldwin while he was a captive of the Turks in 1123, and the effect this had on his subsequent policies.>
Documentary and narrative sources
A significant difficulty in writing Baldwin’s biography is that the source materials are not only less plentiful than for either of his two predecessors, but are also unevenly distributed across different periods of his life. There are no records of him at all before the mustering of the First Crusade in 1096, and he is mentioned (usually briefly) by only a minority of the chroniclers who wrote accounts of the expedition.® None of the documents he must have issued as count of Edessa have survived (although there are many surviving examples of his coinages). The documentary evidence for the kingdom of Jerusalem is better, but several of the charters issued by Baldwin as king cannot be dated with certainty, and many are known only from excerpts or confirmations issued by his successors. Above all, the vagaries of transmission make it difficult to judge how representative the survivals are. For example, only two royal documents with full texts are known from the year 1125. One is an international treaty concluded between Baldwin and the republic of Venice; the other is a commonplace donation of a village to one of the abbeys of Jerusalem. Yet numerous other acts must have been documented in the course of the reign, but subsequently lost.’
Because Baldwin was closely associated with Godfrey of Bouillon and his brothers during the crusade, the history of Albert of Aachen, written in the Rhineland some time before 1130, reveals the most about Baldwin’s status and acts during the expedition, as well as providing much original material for the period up to 1119, shortly after Baldwin succeeded to the throne of Jerusalem.* The single most important Latin source for the period, however, is the chronicle of the priest Fulcher of Chartres, who originally departed on crusade with Stephen-Henry, count of Blois, but later became the chaplain to Baldwin I of Jerusalem; up to the time that his account ends in late 1127 he provides a wealth of information on both the county of Edessa and the kingdom of Jerusalem. An especially valuable facet of Fulcher’s work is his habit of giving exact datings for key events (albeit in complicated formulas), so that his narrative can be used to work out the chronology of many undated documents.’ The Anglo-Norman monk Orderic Vitalis has some important detail on the history of Jerusalem and Antioch, but much of his narrative is confused or fanciful, above all his highly romanticised account of Baldwin’s captivity in 1123.'° One might expect better information from the anonymous work now known as the Historia Nicaena vel Antiochena, commissioned by the king’s grandson, Baldwin II of Jerusalem. However, it gives almost no original detail about Baldwin II, drawing on the narratives of Robert of Rheims for the First Crusade and Fulcher of Chartres for the subsequent period, but still giving descriptions of inferior quality."
The greatest historian of Outremer was William II, archbishop of Tyre, who completed his Chronicon in the early 1180s."* For the period up to and including Baldwin’s reign he depended to a large extent on the accounts of Albert and Fulcher, although for some events — such as the siege of Tyre in 1124 — he evidently had independent sources of information. However, his chronology of this time is often confused or inaccurate: as Hans Eberhard Mayer has observed, “he is perfectly hopeless at dating events’.'? William of Tyre (as he will be referred to henceforth) also composed a history of the Muslim realms, probably entitled Historia de gestis orientalium principum; although this has not survived, he incorporated parts of it into the Chronicon.'4 Like many medieval Christian chroniclers, both Fulcher of Chartres and William of Tyre tried to discern a divine purpose in history as they recorded it, especially in order to explain adverse events.
Two important Latin works were written in the principality of Antioch, although their timespans are much shorter than the three histories just mentioned. The prosimetric Gesta Tancredi by the Norman priest Ralph of Caen, who served Bohemund I of Antioch and Tancred, deals with the crusade and following events up to 1108.'° Walter, a cleric who held the position of chancellor of Antioch, left a shorter account telling of the campaigns fought by Prince Roger in 1115-1119; these events are important for the history of Baldwin II, since the defeat of the Antiochene army at the battle known as the Field of Blood in 1119 obliged him, only recently installed as king of Jerusalem, to spend much time and effort defending the principality over the following eight years.'®
Unfortunately for Baldwin’s biographer there is no corresponding Latin narrative written in Edessa. However, there was a long tradition of history writing among the indigenous Christians of northern Syria and Mesopotamia, and several authors who wrote more general histories dealt with the period of Frankish rule in Edessa, Antioch and Cilicia. The most contemporaneous was Matthew of Edessa (Arm. Matt‘eos Urhayets‘i), an Armenian monk who at some point before 1137 completed a chronicle dealing with the period from the mid-tenth century up to around 1129. He gives excellent information on the political upheavals in Syria and Mesopotamia before the crusade and on Frankish rule there. Matthew was a great admirer of Tancred of Antioch, and even more of Joscelin of Courtenay, lord of Turbessel and Baldwin’s successor as count of Edessa, so much so that his account gives a rather jaundiced portrayal of Baldwin while Joscelin appears as the most vigorous defender of the county. Nevertheless, Matthew’s account is essential for understanding Baldwin’s relations with the Armenian powers of the region.'”
There are three important narratives written in Syriac, the language of much of the rural (and to a lesser extent, urban) native Christian population of Mesopotamia and Syria. Michael Rabo (the Great), also known as ‘the Syrian’ (1126-1199) belonged to a clerical family and became patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church in 1166. He moved the seat of the patriarchate from Melitene (north of Edessa) to Mardin (far to the east), but travelled extensively through both Christian- and Muslim-controlled lands in the Near East. He was a prolific author, and he drew on many different sources when compiling his world chronicle. He gives much useful information on the county of Edessa and the principality of Antioch, both of which had substantial Syrian Orthodox populations.'* The Anonymous Syriac Chronicle is a universal history dealing with the entire period from the Creation up to the year 1234. The unknown author (who was probably a monk) used both Syriac and Arabic sources, although not the work of Michael the Great. He had a particular connection with the city of Edessa, and was especially interested in wider political and military events.'? Gregory Abu’l-Faraj Bar ‘Ebroyo (1226— 1286), known in Latin as Bar Hebraeus, was born in Melitene and, after serving in various ecclesiastical offices, was elected as head of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Mesopotamia. He wrote a universal chronicle which draws on Michael the Great as well as other authors, including Muslims.” Although all three Syriac accounts were written much later than the Latin sources, they provide essential information on the history of Edessa and the principalities around it.
There are several important Arabic sources. The closest in time to Baldwin’s life was Abt Ya‘la Hamza ibn Asad Ibn al-Qalanist (d. 1160), who belonged to an upper-class family in Damascus and twice held the office of ra’is (commander of the urban militia); he thus had a good grasp of the politics of his city and adjacent countries, such as the emirate of Aleppo. His Dhail ta’rikh Dimashq (Continuation of the History of the Damascus), was written as continuation of a lost universal history by an earlier Arab historian, Hilal ibn al-Muhassin al-Sabt, although it deals primarily with his own city from the mid-eleventh century up to his death.*! Another writer from Damascus was Sibt ibn al-Jawzi (1185/1186—1256), whose universal history, Mir ’at al-Zaman fi ta’rikh al-a‘yan (Mirror of Time Concerning the History of Notables), also deals with relations between the Franks and the main Muslim powers.”
‘Izz al-Din Abu’! Hasan ‘Ali Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233) lived much later in Mosul, but he was an assiduous researcher and writer of several historical works. The chronicle known as al-Kamil fi’l-ta’rikh (Universal History) is an excellent guide to the complex history and relationships of the various Turkish powers in the period, especially the Great Saljiiq sultans and their governors in Mosul.”* Kamal al-Din ‘Umar ibn Ahmad Ibn al-‘Adim (1192-1262) wrote an important history of the city of Aleppo and a biographical dictionary of its notable inhabitants. The former work gives important detail about the conflicts between Aleppo and the principality of Antioch during Baldwin’s time as regent of the principality.”
A much less conventional author was the long-lived Usama ibn Mungidh (1095-1188), a member of the Arab Banu Mungqidh dynasty that ruled the town of Shayzar in the upper Orontes valley. As a young man he gained considerable experience fighting the Franks of Antioch, but he was exiled by his uncle and went on to serve various rulers of Aleppo, Damascus and Egypt, travelling extensively both as an emissary and on his own account. His most notable work is the Kitab al-I ‘tibar (Book of Contemplation), an anthology of anecdotes grouped according to common themes. Usama was personally acquainted with William of Bures, lord of Tiberias, and other Franks, and although he claimed to be ignorant of their language, the number of French loan words in his work suggests that he did have a basic knowledge of the ‘Frankish’ language (/franjz), as he called it. The Kitab al-I ‘tibar provides some important detail on key events, such as the early reign of Bohemund II of Antioch and the Damascus Crusade of 1129.7
In terms of the source materials available, then, Baldwin’s life can be seen as comprising four distinct periods. From his birth up to 1095 nothing is known about him other than what can be conjectured from his family history. From 1096 up to 1119, we are very well served with three detailed Latin narratives and numerous Eastern ones, but have no documentary sources. The period 1119 to 1126 is the richest, with a considerable documentary record, and even without the history of Albert of Aachen (which concludes in 1119), the works of Fulcher of Chartres, William of Tyre and the Eastern writers together provide a wealth of information. Finally, the period 1127 to 1131 is a more barren historiographical field. Without the chronicle of Fulcher to guide him, William’s testimony is patchy and at times problematic, and must be fine-tuned with the help of the Arabic narratives.”
This book is intended as an easily readable work of interpretative history which is primarily aimed at students, both undergraduate and postgraduate. Given the many gaps in the historical record, it would be tempting to organise the work thematically. Yet because it is the first ever biography of Baldwin it seems more important to set out his life in more or less chronological order, and I have therefore adopted a compromise between narrative and thematic approaches.
The book is structured in three main parts. Within each, the first chapter provides context and thematic discussion, while what follows is a more or less chronologically structured narrative. Part I discusses Baldwin’s identity, ancestry and his participation in the First Crusade. Particular attention is given to the forms of his surname, since this has proved to be a source of confusion for many historians up to the present. Because there are now many detailed accounts of the crusade available, the chapter dealing with its course does not attempt to retell events in detail, but concentrates on Baldwin’s actions during it and his relationships with other crusaders. Part II examines Baldwin’s eighteen-year rule as count of Edessa, a period in which he first adjusted to life in an Eastern cultural and political environment and contracted the marriage which produced his heir, Melisende, and three other daughters. Part HI, devoted to Baldwin’s reign as king of Jerusalem, is the longest. The relatively better documentation for most of this period allows a clearer assessment of the nature of his rule, in particular his relations with the nobility and higher clergy of the kingdom, which were often problematic.
As well as attempting to give a biographical narrative, the book considers four major thematic aspects throughout. The first is the constantly changing geopolitical circumstances of the principalities of Outremer and the Muslim territories around them. The second is Baldwin’s character as a ruler, strategist and leader in war. The third relates to the wide-ranging kinship connections of Baldwin’s family in France, which had a significant impact on the character of his rulership in the East. The fourth is the succession to the kingdom of Jerusalem, which proved to be a controversial issue from the very establishment of the Latin states until it was resolved by the marriage of Baldwin’s daughter Melisende to Fulk, count of Anjou, and the birth of a male heir, Baldwin III.
Today the Place Royale in Brussels is dominated by a great equestrian statue of Godfrey of Bouillon, inaugurated in 1848. The newly established kingdom of Belgium had a need for historical antecedents and heroes, and claimed the village of Baisy in Brabant as Godfrey’s birthplace in order to establish him as a protoBelgian hero, despite the conflicting claims of French and German historians. The visitor to the Champagne-Ardenne region of France (incorporated within the new Grand-Est region in 2016) will find no corresponding statue of Baldwin II in the town of Rethel, the seat of his ancestors; in the village of Bourcq, from which he derived his surname, there is not so much as a commemorative plaque. It is hoped that this book can make good such deficiencies by establishing the importance of Baldwin of Bourcq in a crucial period for the history of Europe and the Near East.
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