The Crusades, the Genoese and the Latin East - DSpace at ...

is correct and the significance of the 1186 correspondence
will
be discussed in length in Chapter
Four. However, the developments at the beginning of the thirteenth century have very little to do
with the pre-war demands of the Genoese. In 1186, Pope Urban III instructed the bishop of
Tripoli to encourage the count of Tripoli to give the Genoese one-third of the city of Tripoli as
had been promised to them at the beginning of that century: `... eundem comitem diligenter
moneas et inducas ut vel eisdem civibus terciam illam partem absque dicultate restituas. ' The
bishop was also instructed to use the ecclesiastical stick if necessary: `si facere forte noluerit, tu
eum ad hoc ecclesiastica districtione appellatione cessante compellas. '208 The letter which the
pope wrote to the count himself was along the same lines, only more polite 209 These demands
were never realised, of course, because the conflict became irrelevant when Saladin conquered
the territory. Interestingly, when the crusader states were re-established these Genoese demands
in Tripoli and Gibelet were not simply reduced but never mentioned again. Genoa did not bring
up its old claims even when it later negotiated with Bohemond IV in 1203 and in 1205.
Local developments in Tripoli and Antioch urged these political changes too. Bohemond
IV was the person behind many of the changes that happened in the northern states in this period.
In 1201, Bohemond made his first military collaboration with the Ayyubid ruler of Aleppo al-
Malik az-Zähir. Peter Edbury suggested that the motivation for this Ayyubid support was that al-
Malik `preferred a comparatively weak Latin prince in Antioch to the king of a much enlarged
Armenian kingdom '210 This
. comment puts the political and economic developments in the region
in the context of the conflict between King Leon of Armenia and Prince Bohemond III over
Antioch, a conflict which began shortly after the end of the Third Crusade. However, when
Bohemond IV became the Prince of Antioch in 1201 he made a strategic decision and came to
terms with al-Malik az-Zähir.
This political step had opened up many new commercial opportunities which spelled
economic prosperity for all sides involved. The Genoese hastened
to seize this opportunity. At the
beginning of the thirteenth century the relationship between Bohemond IV and the de Biblio was
strong. One of Bohemond's closest companions at the time was Guy de Biblio, the lord of
Gibelet. Guy descended
from the Genoese family Embriaco but, as will be discussed in Chapter
Four, he did not refer to himself as an Embriaco or as Genoese. Bohemond IV married Placentia
de Biblio, Guy's sister and he gave his own sister's hand to Guy 211 The important role that the
members of the de Biblio family played in Bohemond's court may be seen in the fact that they
2081
Libri lurium, vol. 1/2, number 323, p. 128.
2091
Libri lurium, vol. 1/2, number 322, pp. 126-7.
210
Peter Edbury, `The Crusader States' in David Abulafia (ed. ) The New Cambridge Medieval History
vol. 5 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 597.
211
See Claude Cahen, La Syrie du Nord a l'epoque des croisades et la principaute franque d'Antioche
(Paris, 1940), p. 608
70
,