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Battle Of Ager Sanguinis
In the Battle of ''Ager Sanguinis'', also known as the Battle of the Field of Blood, the Battle of Sarmada, or the Battle of Balat, Roger of Salerno's Crusader army of the Principality of Antioch was annihilated by the army of Ilghazi of Mardin, the Artuqid ruler of Aleppo on 28 June 1119. Background Antioch and the other Crusader States were constantly at war with the Muslim states of Northern Syria and the Jazeerah, principally Aleppo and Mosul. When Ridwan of Aleppo died in 1113, there was a period of peace, at least for a few years. However, Roger of Salerno, who was ruling Antioch as regent for Bohemond II, did not take advantage of Ridwan's death; likewise, Baldwin II, count of Edessa, and Pons, count of Tripoli, looked after their own interests and did not ally with Roger against Aleppo. In 1115, Roger defeated a Seljuk Turkish invasion force led by Bursuq ibn Bursuq at the Battle of Sarmin. In 1117, Aleppo came under the rule of the Artuqid atabeg Ilghazi. ...
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Crusade
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were intended to recover Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Islamic rule. Beginning with the First Crusade, which resulted in the recovery of Jerusalem in 1099, dozens of Crusades were fought, providing a focal point of European history for centuries. In 1095, Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont. He encouraged military support for Byzantine emperor AlexiosI against the Seljuk Turks and called for an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Across all social strata in western Europe, there was an enthusiastic response. The first Crusaders had a variety of motivations, including religious salvation, satisfying feudal obligations, opportunities for renown, and economic or political advantage. Later crusades were ...
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Al Jazira, Mesopotamia
Al-Jazira ( ar, الجزيرة), also known as Jazirat Aqur or Iqlim Aqur, was a province of the Rashidun, Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, spanning at minimum most of Upper Mesopotamia (al-Jazira proper), divided between the districts of Diyar Bakr, Diyar Rabi'a and Diyar Mudar, and at times including Mosul, Arminiya and Adharbayjan as sub-provinces. Following its conquest by the Muslim Arabs in 639/40, it became an administrative unit attached to the larger district of Jund Hims. It was separated from Hims during the reigns of caliphs Mu'awiya I or Yazid I and came under the jurisdiction of Jund Qinnasrin. It was made its own province in 692 by Caliph Abd al-Malik. After 702, it frequently came to span the key districts of Arminiya and Adharbayjan along the Caliphate's northern frontier, making it a super-province. The predominance of Arabs from the Qays/ Mudar and Rabi'a groups made it a major recruitment pool of tribesmen for the Umayyad armies and the troops of the Ja ...
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Artah
Artah ( ar, أرتاح; modern-day Reyhanlı) was a medieval town and castle located 25 miles east-northeast of Antioch, to the east of the Iron Bridge on the Roman road from Antioch to Aleppo. History After the reconquest of Antioch by the Byzantine Empire in the late 10th century, Artah became the last Byzantine castle before the emirate of Aleppo. Nevertheless, the city changed possession several times during the 1060s and by the time of First Crusade, it was in the hand of local Turkmen rulers and was one of the keys to the success in the Crusaders' siege of Antioch. Ralph of Caen, in his '' Gesta Tancredi'', described Artah as the "shield of Antioch" and Albert of Aachen describes it as "very well fortified with a wall and ramparts and a turreted fortress". From Marash, a detachment under Robert of Flanders went in October 1098 to the southwest to capture Artah. Robert's force numbered 1000 armed men. Their mission was aided by the Armenian Christian population that had def ...
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Azaz
Azaz ( ar, أَعْزَاز, ʾAʿzāz) is a city in northwest Syria, roughly north-northwest of Aleppo. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Azaz had a population of 31,623 in the 2004 census.General Census of Population and Housing 2004
. Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Aleppo Governorate.
, its inhabitants were almost entirely Sunni Muslims, mostly but also some

Atabeg
Atabeg, Atabek, or Atabey is a hereditary title of nobility of Turkic origin, indicating a governor of a nation or province who was subordinate to a monarch and charged with raising the crown prince. The first instance of the title's use was with early Seljuk Turks who bestowed it on the Persian vizier Nizam al-Mulk It was later used in the Kingdom of Georgia, first within the Armeno-Georgian family of Mkhargrdzeli as a military title and then within the house of Jaqeli as princes of Samtskhe. Title origins and meanings The word ''atabeg'' is a compound of the Turkic word ''ata'', "ancestor", or "father" and the word ''beg'' or ''bey'', "lord, leader, prince". ''Beg'' is stated in some sources as being of Iranian origin (as in the compound Baghdad from ''bag/beg'' and ''dad'', "lord" given). However, according to Gerhard Doerfer, the word ''beg'' may have possibly been of Turkic origin – the origin of the word still remains disputed to this day. The title ''Atabeg'' was ...
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Battle Of Sarmin
The Battle of Sarmin, also known as the Battle of Tell Danith, took place on September 14, 1115 with Roger of Salerno's Crusader army surprising and routing the Seljuk Turkish army of Bursuq ibn Bursuq of Hamadan. It is also known as the First Battle of Tell Danith, distinguishing it from the Battle of Hab of 1119, the Second Battle of Tell Danith. Background In November 1114, a severe earthquake struck the Principality of Antioch, damaging many of its castles. The following spring, while supervising the repair of his strongholds, Prince Roger heard rumors of a Turkish invasion. Since 1111, the Seljuk sultan Muhammad I Tapar had directed a series of attacks on Antioch and the County of Edessa, which were both established in 1098 by Frankish crusading lords and their followers. In 1115, the Sultan sent Bursuq against Antioch. Jealous that their authority would be diminished if the Sultan's forces proved victorious, several Syrian Muslim princes allied themselves with the Latin ...
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Bursuq Ibn Bursuq
Bursuq ibn Bursuq, also known as Bursuk ibn Bursuk (died in 1116 or 1117), was the emir (or lord) of Hamadan. General He was the most notable son of Bursuq the Elder. Bursuq ibn Bursuq was a Turkic general in the service of the Seljuq Sultan Muhammad I Tapar. As emir of Hamadan, he participated in the military campaigns against the crusader states from the 1110s. The Artuqid ruler of Mardin Ilghazi defeated the supreme commander of the Sultan's army, Aqsunqur al-Bursuqi, in late 1114. Muhammad I soon replaced Aqsunqur with Bursuq, also charging him with the direction of the '' jihad'' (or holy war) against the crusaders (or Franks). After gathering new troops in Mosul and the Jazira, Bursuq invaded Syria in early 1115. After besieging Edessa for a short time, he marched towards Aleppo where he wanted to establish his base of operation. The eunuch atabeg of Aleppo, Lulu, sent envoys to Ilghazi, and the atabeg of Damascus, Toghtekin, seeking their assistance against Bursuq. Il ...
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Great Seljuq Empire
The Great Seljuk Empire, or the Seljuk Empire was a high medieval, culturally Turko-Persian, Sunni Muslim empire, founded and ruled by the Qïnïq branch of Oghuz Turks. It spanned a total area of from Anatolia and the Levant in the west to the Hindu Kush in the east, and from Central Asia in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south. The Seljuk Empire was founded in 1037 by Tughril (990–1063) and his brother Chaghri (989–1060), both of whom co-ruled over its territories; there are indications that the Seljuk leadership otherwise functioned as a triumvirate and thus included Musa Yabghu, the uncle of the aforementioned two. From their homelands near the Aral Sea, the Seljuks advanced first into Khorasan and into the Iranian mainland, where they would become largely based as a Persianate society. They then moved west to conquer Baghdad, filling up the power vacuum that had been caused by struggles between the Arab Abbasid Caliphate and the Iranian Buyid Empire. The su ...
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County Of Tripoli
The County of Tripoli (1102–1289) was the last of the Crusader states. It was founded in the Levant in the modern-day region of Tripoli, northern Lebanon and parts of western Syria which supported an indigenous population of Christians, Druze and Muslims. When the Frankish Crusaders – mostly southern French forces – captured the region in 1109, Bertrand of Toulouse became the first count of Tripoli as a vassal of King Baldwin I of Jerusalem. From that time, the rule of the county was decided not strictly by inheritance but by factors such as military force (external and civil war), favour and negotiation. In 1289 the County of Tripoli fell to Sultan Qalawun of the Muslim Mamluks of Cairo. The county was absorbed into Mamluk Egypt. Capture by Christian forces Raymond IV of Toulouse was one of the wealthiest and most powerful of the crusaders.Tyerman C"God's war – a new history of the crusades"Harvard University Press. February, 2009. Even so, after the Firs ...
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Pons Of Tripoli
Pons ( 1098 – 25 March 1137) was count of Tripoli from 1112 to 1137. He was a minor when his father, Bertrand, died in 1112. He swore fealty to the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos in the presence of a Byzantine embassy. His advisors sent him to Antioch to be educated in the court of Tancred of Antioch, ending the hostilities between the two crusader states. Tancred granted four important fortresses to Pons in the Principality of Antioch. Since Pons held his inherited lands in fief of the kings of Jerusalem, Tancred's grant strengthened the autonomy of the County of Tripoli. On his deathbed, Tancred also arranged the marriage of his wife, Cecile of France, to Pons. Pons closely cooperated with Tancred's successor, Roger of Salerno, against the Muslim rulers in the 1110s. He refused obedience to Baldwin II of Jerusalem in early 1122, but their vassals soon mediated a reconciliation between the two rulers. Pons was one of the supreme commanders of the crusader troops during t ...
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County Of Edessa
The County of Edessa (Latin: ''Comitatus Edessanus'') was one of the Crusader states in the 12th century. Ferdinandi, Sergio (2017). La Contea Franca di Edessa. Fondazione e Profilo Storico del Primo Principato Crociato nel Levante (1098-1150). Pontificia Università Antonianum - Rome. . Its seat was the city of Edessa (present-day Şanlıurfa, Turkey). In the late Byzantine period, Edessa became the centre of intellectual life within the Syriac Orthodox Church. As such it also became the centre for the translation of Ancient Greek philosophy into Syriac, which provided a stepping stone for the subsequent translations into Arabic. When the Crusades arrived, it was still important enough to tempt a side-expedition after the siege of Antioch. Baldwin of Boulogne, the first Count of Edessa, became King of Jerusalem, and subsequent counts were his cousins. Unlike the other Crusader states, the County was landlocked. It was remote from the other states and was not on particular ...
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Baldwin II Of Edessa
Baldwin II, also known as Baldwin of Bourcq or Bourg (; – 21August 1131), was Count of Edessa from 1100 to 1118, and King of Jerusalem from 1118 until his death. He accompanied his cousins Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin of Boulogne to the Holy Land during the First Crusade. He succeeded Baldwin of Boulogne as the second count of Edessa when he left the county for Jerusalem following his brother's death. He was captured at the Battle of Harran in 1104. He was held first by Sökmen of Mardin, then by Jikirmish of Mosul, and finally by Jawali Saqawa. During his captivity, Tancred, the Crusader ruler of the Principality of Antioch, and Tancred's cousin, Richard of Salerno, governed Edessa as Baldwin's regents. Baldwin was ransomed by his cousin, Joscelin of Courtenay, lord of Turbessel, in the summer of 1108. Tancred attempted to retain Edessa, but Bernard of Valence, the Latin patriarch of Antioch, persuaded him to restore the county to Baldwin. Baldwin allied with Jawali, b ...
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