The Crusader States and the Military Orders

Four principal crusader states were established in the East: the County of Edessa (1098), the Principality of Antioch (1098), the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099), and the County of Tripoli, completed by the successors of its founder Raymond IV of Toulouse in 1109. Edessa, the first crusader state, was also the most easterly and exposed of them all; Antioch, under Bohemond of Taranto and his successors, maintained tense relations with both Byzantium and the neighboring Muslim states of Syria; and Jerusalem was the most important of the crusader states, both politically and symbolically, with its capital in the Holy City itself.