Crusader Capture of Cyprus

Three Greek chronicles from Cyprus recording the Third Crusade and the conquest of Cyprus by King Richard I of England will be discussed. Whether their information is corroborated by Western sources will also be examined. The Greek chronicles are the following: two references to the conquest of Cyprus in two minor chronicles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the much fuller narrative and contemporary chronicle of the Greek monk Neophytos the Recluse, and the fifteenth-century chronicle of Leontios Makhairas. This last chronicle was written by a Greek with personal and familial connections to the Lusignan royal court. All the Greek accounts of the conquest of Cyprus relate that event and the campaigns in Syria and Palestine in extremely general terms, unlike the Western sources. They were probably unwilling to discuss in detail the Latins' defeat of the Greeks, which they found humiliating.

Cypriot support. 1 These facts intrigued me to engage with the enhanced naval siege warfare that occurred under Frankish rule, despite the mainly terrestrial dimension of the First Crusade. The logical effects of such warfare cannot be ignored, to the extent that the resistance of Jaffa in 1102 was strengthened by the appearance of the royal banner of Jerusalem on a ship. 2 I refer here to these testimonies as a background to my examination of the strategies adopted to conquer the Levantine harbours at the beginning of the twelfth century. Certain archaeological evidence too offers a fresh perspective on the counter-strategies that the Latins conceived in order to protect the cities of Ṭarṭūs, Acre, and Tyre during the Third Crusade and the War of Saint Sabas. Finally, I shall analyse the maritime rescue operations supervised by the crusaders between the Fatimid siege of Jaffa in 1102 and the fall of Ruad in 1302. The assistance of privateers and Italian fleets explains the promptness of these rescue responses, as well as the success of several operations that benefited from the good weather conditions.

2017

It has long been recognized that the island of Cyprus played an important role in the complex economic, political, socio-historical, and artistic network of the medieval Levant. 1 Even if the island was taken from the Byzantine Empire and not the Muslims, its conquest by Richard I of England in 1191 proved to be more than a by-product of the second Crusade. In particular, the strategic role of the island, serving as naval node in the eastern Mediterranean, was crucial for the later crusading policy. The purchase of the island by Guy de Lusignan in 1192 (after his loss of the throne of Jerusalem) paved the ground for what would become the longest lasting Latin kingdom in the East until its final conquest by the Ottoman fleet in 1571. Even more, when in 1291 the last crusader stronghold, Acre, was taken back by the Muslims, the city of Famagusta served as a "haven for refugees…and survivors from Syria" and, thus, as a last lifeline of the Christian Levant. 2 Cyprus became the last Latin kingdom in the eastern Mediterranean and the most easterly outpost of the Christian world. In spite of this enormous importance as a node in the Levantine network, research on crusader art only recently intensified the efforts to include

Normandy, 1066-1217 respectively, both of whom discuss the mechanics and purposes of certain aspects of medieval warfare. 3 David Bachrach, on the other hand, focuses on the role religion and religious rites had to play in medieval warfare in his book Religion and the Conduct of War, c. 300-c. 1215. 4 A paper concerning Richard the Lionheart's role in the Third Crusade would be incomplete without discussing the works concerning the king and his legacy. The two principal scholars on either side of the Richard debate are John Gillingham, author of Richard I and many other works concerning the Lionheart, and Jean Flori, author of Richard the Lionheart: King and Knight. Gillingham is a Richard apologist, restoring the recently lost reputation of the monarch through understanding the truth that existed behind the legend.

In this paper it is argued that despite its defeat in 1426 by the Mamluks at the battle of Khirokitia, and its reduction to tributary status, the kingdom of Lusignan Cyprus benefited from its commercial relations with Mamluk Egypt and Syria, which formed important markets for Cypriot exports and provided emplyment for large numbers of Cypriots.

This article examines how temporal and ecclesiastic authorities on Lusignan Cyprus used rhetoric and performance to mobilize support for the Alexandrian Crusade. While King Peter I appealed to the chivalric ideals of his Westernized vassals in order to overcome their reluctance to endanger the kingdom’s economic and military security, papal legate Peter of Thomas led interfaith processions that presented Cyprus’s population as united in its Christian devotion despite long-standing tensions between the Latin and Greek communities. This presentation of a shared Cypriot identity reflected nascent moves away from the physical and social segregation of confessional groups. It also clarifies the role played by perceptions of a constant threat of Muslim invasion in this process of acculturation. Such concerns and responses were not unique to Cyprus. By considering late-medieval Cyprus as a frontier society, we can gain insight into the complex politics of holy war in other composite Mediterranean communities, including Castile and the Crusader principalities.

Elites chretiennes et formes du pouvoir en Mediterranee centrale et orientale, eds. Marie-Anna Chevalier et Isabelle Ortega, 2017

In this paper it is argued that the Latin Christian nobles constituting the ruling elite of the Lusignan kingdom of Cyprus, a French Roman Catholic Dynasty that ruled the island for nearly 300 years (1192-1474) following the conquest of Cyprus in 1191 by King Richard I of England, allowed only small numbers of non-Latins to enter the ruling group. The non-Latins with the greatest success were the Armenians, on account of the creation of the kingdom of Cilician Armenai in 1198 under rulers who acknowledged papal primacy. This led to intermarriage between memebrs of the Lusignan and Armenian royal houses in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, as well as to intermarriage among memebrs of the Latin Cypriot and the Armenian nobility. A limited number of Greek and Syrian families also entered the nobility from the late fourteenth century onwards, but only after crossing over from Greek-rite to Latin-rite Christianity. Therefore by the end of the Lusignan period the nobility remained overwhelmingly Latin.

In the creation myth of the Crusades, Pope Urban II (r. 1088-1099) is the founding father and 1095 is the critical year. During the twentieth century, French, Spanish, and English scholars challenged this myth; yet this myth remains as durable as ever. Because the origins of the crusading enterprise came to be associated with the so-called First Crusade (1095-1102), scholars have created a vision of crusading at odds with Pope Urban’s vision, which views the ‘‘First’’ Crusade as the third part of a triptych: first, the Norman conquest of Sicily (1060-1091); then, the Castilian and Catalan advances in Iberia; and finally the 1095 Eastern Crusade. Today, the study of the Crusades is hampered by a failure to concentrate on the direct evidence and to take into account what contemporaries understood by crusading. To get a sense of what contemporaries understood by crusading, this paper examines the Norman Crusade in Sicily, drawing upon both Christian and Islamic sources.

This paper examines the policies of the Mamluk Empire toward the Kingdom of Cyprus during the years 1426-1517 and explains the relations possible between a Muslim Empire and a post-Crusader Christian Kingdom. In doing so, the author demonstrates that it is quite appropriate to use the modern term "protectorate" for the Mamluk-Cypriot relationship after 1426, when the Mamluks managed to subdue the island militarily and took the Cypriot king as prisoner to Cairo. After this event, it is argued, the relationship between the two fulfils the requirements of the definition of a protectorate. Mamluk-Cypriot relations were outlined after 1426 through a mutual treaty. In return for its annual tribute, the Kingdom of Cyprus, the controlled state, retained domestic autonomy and control over most of its internal affairs, but lost its independence in diplomatic relations. A clear indication of this fact is that the Cypriots were required to help the Mamluks by taking measures against pirates threatening Mamluk shores in the 15 th century and to serve as a naval base during the Mamluk expeditions against Rhodes. Cyprus remained a Mamluk protectorate until 1489 when the island came under the control of the Venetians.