A Self-Made Man: The First Ibelin

The Seal of John d'Ibelin

The Ibelins were one of the most powerful noble families in the crusader states.  Sons of the house held many noble titles over time: Lords of Ibelin, Ramla and Mirabel, Caymont, Beirut, Arsur, and Count of Jaffa and Ascalon, the last traditionally being a royal domain and title of the heirs to the throne.  The daughters married into the royal families of Jerusalem, Antioch, Cyprus, and Armenia. Ibelins served as regents of Jerusalem and Cyprus on multiple occasions, and they led revolts against what they viewed as over-reaching royal authority, most notably taking on the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich II in 1229-1233.   

Ibelins were also respected as scholars, and one (John of Beirut) wrote a legal treatise that is not only a goldmine of information about the laws of the crusader kingdoms, but is admired for the elegance of its style and the sophistication of its analysis. The Ibelins also built magnificent palaces, whose mosaic courtyards, fountains, gardens and polychrome marble excited admiration (See A Home in the Holy Land). During the 7^th crusade led by St. Louis, the Ibelin Count of Jaffa attracted the amazement of the French Seneschal Jean de Joinville who wrote:

[Ibelin’s] galley came to shore painted all over above and below the water with armorial bearings, or a cross paté gules. He had full three hundred oarsmen in the galley, and each man had a shield bearing his arms, and with each shield was a pennon with his arms sewn in gold. (Joinville’s “Life of St. Louis,” Chapter 4: Landing in Egypt.)

 

Ibelin Arms

A splashier display of wealth was hardly imaginable in the midst of battle….

The Ibelins exemplified the Latin East in many ways. They were rich, luxury-loving, patrons of the arts. They were highly-educated and multi-lingual. And they were fighting men, who could not only hold their own in wars against the Saracens and Mamlukes -- or humiliate the most powerful Western monarch on earth, the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich II. They also exemplified the crusader states in another way: the origins of the family are completely obscure, and the first Ibelin was almost certainly an adventurer, a man of knightly-rank but without land or title in whatever country he originated.

The Ibelins themselves from the beginning of the 14^th century claimed their descent from the Counts of Chartres, but most historians dismiss this claim as concocted. Peter Edbury, one of the most important modern historians of the crusader states, writing in 1991 claims “onomastic evidence points to a presumably less exalted Italian background, perhaps in Pisa or Sardinia.” (Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades 1191 -1374, p. 39) Six years later, however, Edbury had revised his thesis slightly, now suggesting Tuscan or Ligurian origins (Edbury, John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, p. 4). Sir Steven Runciman, in contrast, claimed that the house of Ibelin “was founded by the younger brother of a certain Guelin, who was deputy viscount of Chartes, that is to say, the Count of Blois’ representative in Chartes; and such officers in those days did not enjoy hereditary rank but were often drawn from lawyers’ families.” (In light of the fact that two later Ibelins, John and James, were both authors of respected legal treatises, it is tempting to follow this theory....)

Whatever his place of origin and whatever he called himself before coming to the Holy Land, the first man to identify himself as an “Ibelin” was a certain Barisan. Not only are his origins unknown, so are his dates of birth and death. All that we know about him for sure is that in 1115 he was appointed “Constable” of Jaffa. He was not raised to the nobility, however, until 1140, when the new castle of Ibelin, built as a bastion against attacks from Muslim-held Ascalon against the Kingdom of Jerusalem was built. At some point (and this is a hotly debated issue among scholars of the topic) he married the heiress to the already extant barony of Ramla and Mirabel, Helvis. She, however, may not have been an heiress at the time of her wedding, as she had a brother, who clearly also had title to Ramla. Only after her brother died did Helvis obtain clear title to the barony, which she then passed to her husband and sons respectively.

Heiresses were common and powerful in the Latin East

Barisan is known to have had three sons, Hugh, Baldwin and Barisan the Younger, more commonly known as Balian. Hugh succeed to his father’s titles at the time of Barisan-the-Elder’s death ca. 1150, and was active in military campaigns throughout the 1160s.  He was also the first man to style himself “d'Ibelin” (of Ibelin).  However, since Barisan-the-elder would have had to be a mature man (at least 30 years old) before he was entrusted with the constableship of one of the most important ports in the kingdom (Jaffa is not a good harbor but is the port closest to Jerusalem), we can assume that he was born no later than 1085. If he did not marry until 1140, he would have been a fifty-five-year-old bridegroom. While this is not exceptional in itself, it is rare for a first marriage, making it far more likely that Hugh was the son of an earlier, unrecorded marriage to a woman of more obscure origins than Helvis of Ramla. The next sons, Baldwin and Balian, however, are almost certainly the children of Helvis, and Baldwin always used his mother’s more prestigious title of “Ramla” rather than Ibelin. Balian, in contrast, initially used “Ibelin” as a family name because he was not lord of Ibelin (his brothers were) until he married the Dowager Queen of Jerusalem.  But that is another story.

Barisan-the-Elder probably died in 1150.  He probably died peacefully in his bed, as a more spectacular death would have been more likely to attract comment. He would have been about 65 years old when he died, which was a ripe old age in the early 12^th century, particularly for a man who had spent most of his life fighting in a notoriously brutal environment. He would have been justified in being well-pleased with his rise form landless, younger son of a quasi-bourgeois family to baron in the Holy Land, but at his death he could hardly envisage the power, prestige and fame that his descendants would achieve over the next three centuries. 

My novels Knight of Jerusalem and Defender of Jerusalem tell the story of his son, Balian.

The Land of Opportunity, A Nation of Immigrants

“The Italian and the Frenchman of yesterday have been transplanted…We have already forgotten the land of our birth; who now remembers it? Men no longer speak of it…Every day relatives and friends…come to join us. They do not hesitate to leave everything they have behind them. Indeed…he who was poor attains riches here. He who had no more than a few pennies finds himself in possession of a fortune.”

A description of the United States in the late 19^th Century?

No, the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1125.

Long before the discovery of the “New World,” before the rise from rags-to-riches became known as “the American dream,” and before the Statue of Liberty became of symbol of the United States, the crusader states briefly experimented with building a “melting-pot” society that welcomed immigrants and drew ambitious young men like a beacon.

Obviously, there were huge differences. The crusader states were carved out of territory that had been inhabited by great civilizations for longer than we have written records. The crusaders did not come to a “new” world, but rather occupied a biblical one—literally. Yet the “land of milk and honey” that the crusaders conquered (or liberated, depending on your perspective) was not so densely populated that it could not accommodate immigrants. On the contrary, while always a minority, within less than 100 years the immigrant population (first and second generations) made up roughly 22% of the total population. More importantly, the immigrants had contributed greatly to a renaissance in agricultural production and to an economic boom. More land had been brought under cultivation, new settlements had been established, abandoned cities brought back to life and sleepy coastal ports turned into flourishing metropolises. 

All that was possible because the crusader states offered immigrants opportunities they did not have at home—not on the same scale or in the same way as America would 600 years later—but in the context of the 12^th century. For a start, the immigrants to the crusader states were by definition all freemen. Serfs could not leave their land and could not go on a pilgrimage half-way across the known world. Thus all the men and women who went to the crusader states were free before they left, and if they stayed in the crusader states they enjoyed the status of “burghers” not “peasants.”

Likewise the merchant classes in the crusader states enjoyed an exceptional degree of prosperity and status. This was because the Italian city states had provided the naval power necessary to expand crusader control. With the help of Genoese, Pisan and Venetian fleets, the crusaders had spread out from isolated inland cities (Jerusalem, Antioch and Edessa) to claim hold of the entire coastline of the Levant. The capture of key coastal cities such as Acre, Tyre, Tripoli and Beirut had only been possible because of the naval blockades set up by the Italian fleets while the “Frankish” (crusader) land forces besieged or assaulted these cities by land. The financially savvy Italian city-states had, however, “lent” their fighting ships to the crusader cause in exchange for trading privileges in the cities they helped capture. The “communes” they established in these crusader cities not only enjoyed valuable monopolies on trade, they were also largely autonomous, governing their affairs with little interference from their nominal feudal overlords. 

Those feudal overlords were, furthermore, in many ways “self-made” men quite different from modern stereotypes of medieval lords.  Social mobility in the 12^th century was considerably greater than most people think. Men could be knighted for bravery and allowed to start living on the fringes of aristocratic society. Girls with sufficient dowries, regardless of how obtained, could marry into the gentry.  And younger sons and landless knights could seek to make their fortune either on the tournament circuit —or on crusade.

Even the Kings of Jerusalem and the Counts of Tripoli were derived from “cadet” branches of their respective noble houses. Baldwin II of Jerusalem had an elder brother Eustace, who was passed over because Baldwin was present in the East, a known quantity, while his elder brother was still in France. The first Count of Tripoli was even less conventional: he was the illegitimate son of Raymond of St. Gillies, one of the leaders of the First Crusade, who died shortly before the successful capture of Tripoli.  The Principality of Antioch, although founded by the Prince of Taranto (a leader of the First Crusade and a Norman), soon fell into the hands of less exalted hands, when the family failed to produce male heirs. The Principality passed to a daughter, Constance, and she married first Raymond of Poitiers, the younger brother of the Duke of Aquitaine, and then — and this is where it gets truly interesting — a relatively low-born adventurer by the name of Reynald de Châtillon.

Reynald depicted in "The Kingdom of Heaven"

Châtillon exemplifies the opportunities that the crusader states offered men of the feudal elite who lacked lands of their own. His origins are obscure, but presumably came from a place in France called Châtillon, Châtillon-sur-Loire has been suggested. He may have been the lord of it, or simply hailed from there. He took part in the Second Crusade in the train King Louis, but remained in the Holy Land after the French King had returned to France. He evidently seduced the widowed Princess Constance of Antioch into a secret marriage, and through her became Prince of Antioch—until her death. She died while Reynald was in a Saracen prison, where he was incarcerated for no less than 15 years! When he was released, his step-son, Constance’s son by her first marriage, had come of age and had no room at his court for his step-father. So Reynald promptly found another powerful, heiress, in this case the Lady of Oultrejourdain, one of the most important baronies of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Hollywood Guy de Lusignan

Of course, no adventurer topped the record of Guy de Lusignan. Born the fourth son of a Poitevan lord, he distinguished himself by being part of the rebellion against his feudal overlord Eleanor of Aquitaine (not a great distinction, of course, as it was very common in this period), possibly participated in the murder of the Earl of Salisbury, and then fled to the Holy Land, where he promptly seduced and married the widowed heir-apparent to the entire kingdom: Princess Sibylla of Jerusalem. His brother-in-law, the dying Leper King, spent most of the rest of his reign trying to get rid of Guy either via divorce or by check-mating his claims to the throne in various other arrangements, but he ultimately failed and Guy de Lusignan became King of Jerusalem. Within a year he’d led it to total desctruction.

While these are the spectacular and familiar cases of young men “striking it rich” in the Holy Land, there were countless more obscure examples. Sir Steven Runcimen notes in his essay "The Families of Outremer" (published by University of London, 1960) that many men who later attained power and peerage had no title to start with. Indeed, they were without any kind of last name when the arrived and were known simply as "Guy the Frenchman" or "Stephanie the Fleming." Runicman also points out that even apparent connections to noble families in the West were often not based on blood relations but rather on service.  A case in point was the Falconberg family that became lords of Tiberias and were connected to the minor fief of Fauquembergue near Boulogne, but were descended from the custodian of the castle not the the lord. One of those adventurers of obscure origin was the father of Balian d'Ibelin, the hero of my novels. 

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