Principality of Antioch

The Principality of Antioch was one of the Crusader states founded during the First Crusade, holding parts of Anatolia and Syria around the north-eastern corner of the Mediterranean, smaller than Edessa or Jerusalem, and bordered by Tripoli, Edessa and, by date, Byzantium or Armenian Cilicia. It had some twenty thousand inhabitants in the twelfth century, mostly Armenians and Greek Orthodox Christians, with few Muslims outside the city and few Catholics besides the crusaders, although the Latin Patriarchate of Antioch, founded in 1100, would live on as a titular see until 1964. Most settlers were Normans from Apulia and Calabria, like the first rulers, who gathered loyal men about them. Antioch itself had been a great Byzantine stronghold under a dux until the Seljuks took it in 1084, and the crusaders who had sworn to return Byzantine lands besieged it from October 1097 through a hungry winter. On 3 June 1098 Bohemond persuaded the tower guard Firouz to open a gate, the city fell with a massacre of its Muslims, and four days later the besiegers were themselves besieged by Kerbogha of Mosul; the discovery of the Holy Lance under St Peter's church by the monk Peter Bartholomew lifted their spirits, and Bohemond's sortie beat Kerbogha against all expectation. Bohemond kept Antioch for the Normans against Byzantine claims, was captured in 1100 fighting the Danishmends, and left his nephew Tancred to govern and enlarge the principality.