Picture: The Monfort Castle.

Beyond seeing the traditional sites included in a traditional pilgrimage tour, I can offer you a composition of additional tours in the Holy Land of Israel. I am more than glad to offer various suggestions to groups and individuals wishing to experience Israel of today. I am happy to coordinate with you new particular sites that appear on this website and look forward to offering you any one of my Israel tours, providing you with necessary tools for a successful and meaningful experience.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem was a Christian kingdom established in the Levant in 1099 after the First Crusade. It lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks.

The First Crusade was preached at the Council of Clermont in 1095 by Pope Urban II, with the goal of assisting the Byzantine Empire against the invasions of the Seljuk Turks. Very soon, however, the participants saw the main objective as recapturing of the Holy Land. The kingdom came into being with the arrival of the crusaders in June 1099.

Background

Some historians have emphasized the influence of the rise of Islam generally, and the impact of the recent Seljuk onslaught specifically. In contrast, some think, the crusade was motivated by a combination of theological justification for holy war and a "general restlessness and taste for adventure", especially among the Normans and the "younger sons" of the French nobility who had no other opportunities.

At first the kingdom was little more than a loose collection of towns and cities captured during the crusade. At its height, the kingdom roughly encompassed the territory of modern-day Israel. It extended from modern Lebanon in the north to the Sinai Desert in the south, and into modern Jordan and Syria in the east. There were also attempts to expand the kingdom into Fatimid Egypt. Its kings also held a certain amount of authority over the other crusader states, Tripoli, Antioch, and Edessa.

Initially the Muslim world had little concern for the fledgling kingdom, but as the 12th century progressed, the Muslim neighbors of the Kingdom vigorously began to recapture lost territory.

Kingdom of Acre

Jerusalem itself was lost to Saladin in 1187, and by the 13th century the Kingdom was reduced to a small strip of land along the Mediterranean coast, dominated by a few cities. In this period, the kingdom, sometimes referred to as the "Kingdom of Acre", was dominated by the Lusignan dynasty of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. The kingdom was also increasingly dominated by the Italian city-states of Venice and Genoa, as well as the imperial ambitions of the Holy Roman Emperors.

Meanwhile the surrounding Muslim territories were united under the Ayyubid and later the Mamluk dynasties in Egypt and the Kingdom became little more than a pawn in the politics and warfare in the region, which saw invasions by the Khwarezmians and Mongols in the mid-13th century. The Mamluk sultans Baibars and al-Ashraf Khalil eventually re-conquered all the remaining crusader strongholds, culminating in the destruction of Acre in 1291 and the expulsion of the Crusaders from the Holy Land.

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