Kingdom of Jerusalem in the context of "Tel es-Safi"

Charles I (Italian: Carlo; early 1226/1227 – 7 January 1285), commonly called Charles of Anjou or Charles d'Anjou, was King of Sicily from 1266 to 1285. He was a member of the Capetian dynasty and the founder of the House of Anjou-Sicily. Between 1246 and 1285, he was Count of Provence and Forcalquier in the Holy Roman Empire and Count of Anjou and Maine in France. In 1272 he was proclaimed King of Albania, in 1277 he purchased a claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and in 1278 he became Prince of Achaea after the previous ruler, William of Villehardouin, died without heirs.

The youngest son of Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile, Charles was destined for a church career until the early 1240s. He acquired Provence and Forcalquier through his marriage to Beatrice. His attempts to restore central authority brought him into conflict with his mother-in-law, Beatrice of Savoy, and the nobility. He relinquished control of Forcalquier to his mother-in-law in 1248, although she returned it to him in 1256. Charles received Anjou and Maine from his brother, Louis IX of France, in appanage. He accompanied Louis during the Seventh Crusade to Egypt. Shortly after he returned to Provence in 1250, Charles forced three wealthy autonomous cities—Marseille, Arles and Avignon—to acknowledge his suzerainty.

The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller (/ˈhɒspɪtələr/), is a Catholic military order. It was founded in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century and had its headquarters there, in Jerusalem and Acre, until 1291, thereafter being based in Kolossi Castle in Cyprus (1302–1310), the island of Rhodes (1310–1522), Malta (1530–1798), and Saint Petersburg (1799–1801).

The Hospitallers arose in the early 12th century at the height of the Cluniac movement, a reformist movement within the Benedictine monastic order that sought to strengthen religious devotion and charity for the poor. Earlier in the 11th century, merchants from Amalfi founded a hospital in Jerusalem dedicated to John the Baptist where Benedictine monks cared for sick, poor, or injured Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Blessed Gerard, a lay brother of the Benedictine order, became its head when it was established. After the Christian conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade, the Hospitallers rose in prominence and were recognized as a distinct order by Pope Paschal II in 1113.

The House of Lusignan (/ˈluːzɪn.jɒn/ LOO-zin-yon; French: [lyziɲɑ̃]) was a royal house of French origin, which at various times ruled several principalities in Europe and the Levant, including the kingdoms of Jerusalem, Cyprus, and Armenia, from the 12th through the 15th centuries during the Middle Ages. It also had great influence in England and France.

The family originated in Lusignan, in Poitou, western France, in the early 10th century. By the end of the 11th century, the family had risen to become the most prominent petty lords in the region from their castle at Lusignan. In the late 12th century, through marriages and inheritance, a cadet branch of the family came to control the kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus. In the early 13th century, the main branch succeeded to the Counties of La Marche and Angoulême.

The Crusader states, or Outremer, were four Catholic polities established in the Levant region and southeastern Anatolia from 1098 to 1291. Following the principles of feudalism, the foundation for these polities was laid by the First Crusade, which was proclaimed by the Latin Church in 1095 in order to reclaim the Holy Land after it was lost to the 7th-century Muslim conquest. From north to south, they were: the County of Edessa (1098–1150), the Principality of Antioch (1098–1268), the County of Tripoli (1102–1289), and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291).

The three northern states covered an area in what is now southeastern Turkey, northwestern Syria, and northern Lebanon; the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the southernmost and most prominent state, covered an area in what is now Israel, Palestine, southern Lebanon, and western Jordan. The description "Crusader states" can be misleading, as from 1130 onwards, very few people among the Franks were Crusaders. Medieval and modern writers use the term "Outremer" as a synonym, derived from the French word for overseas.

A military order (Latin: Ordo militaris) is a Latin Catholic religious order of knights. The original military orders were the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, the Order of Saint James, the Order of Calatrava, and the Teutonic Knights. They arose in the Middle Ages in association with the Crusades – the Crusader states (mainly the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Holy Land), the Baltics, and the Iberian peninsula; their members being initially dedicated to the protection of Christian pilgrims, and eventually to the defence of the Crusader states and the conquest of non-Christian or even non-Catholic lands. They are the predecessors of chivalric orders.

Most members of military orders were laymen who took religious vows, such as of poverty, chastity, and obedience, according to monastic ideals. The orders owned houses called commanderies all across Europe and had a hierarchical structure of leadership with the grand master at the top.

The Crusade of 1101, also known as the Crusade of the Faint-Hearted, was launched in the aftermath of the First Crusade with calls for reinforcements from the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem and to rescue the famous Bohemond of Taranto from Muslim captivity. Pope Paschal II, successor to Urban II (who died before learning of the outcome of the crusade that he had called), urged a new expedition. He especially urged those who had taken the crusade vow but had never departed and those who had turned back while on the march. The crusade was a resounding defeat of the West by the Seljuk Turks.

The term Norwegian Realm (Old Norse: *Noregsveldi, Bokmål: Norgesveldet, Nynorsk: Noregsveldet) and Old Kingdom of Norway refer to the Kingdom of Norway's peak of power in the 13th century after a long period of civil war before 1240. The kingdom was a loosely unified nation including the territory of modern-day Norway, modern-day Swedish territory of Jämtland, Herjedalen, Ranrike (Bohuslän) and Idre and Särna, as well as Norway's overseas possessions which had been settled by Norwegian seafarers for centuries before being annexed or incorporated into the kingdom as 'tax territories'. To the North, Norway also bordered extensive tax territories on the mainland. Norway, whose expansionism starts from the very foundation of the Kingdom in 872, reached the peak of its power in the years between 1240 and 1319.

At the peak of Norwegian expansion before the civil war (1130–1240), Sigurd I led the Norwegian Crusade (1107–1110). The crusaders won battles in Lisbon and the Balearic Islands. In the Siege of Sidon they fought alongside Baldwin I and Ordelafo Faliero, and the siege resulted in an expansion of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Leif Erikson, an Icelander of Norwegian origin and official hirdman of King Olaf I of Norway, explored America 500 years before Columbus. Adam of Bremen wrote about the new lands in Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum (1076) when meeting Sweyn I of Denmark, but no other sources indicate that this knowledge went farther into Europe than Bremen, Germany. The Kingdom of Norway was the second European country after England to enforce a unified code of law to be applied for the whole country, called Magnus Lagabøtes landslov (1274).

The Daughters of Jacob Bridge (Hebrew: גשר בנות יעקב, romanized: Gesher Bnot Ya'akov, Arabic: جسر بنات يعقوب, romanized: Jisr Benat Ya'kub) is a bridge that spans the last natural ford of the Jordan River between the Korazim Plateau in northern Israel and the Golan Heights.

The area has been used as a crossing point for thousands of years; it was part of the recently dubbed Via Maris, and was strategically important to the Ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Hittites, Jews, Saracens (early Muslims), Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mamluks, Ottomans, and to modern inhabitants and armies who crossed the river at this place.

The Principality of Antioch (Latin: Principatus Antiochenus; Norman: Princeté de Antioch) was one of the Crusader states created during the First Crusade which included parts of Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) and Syria. The principality was much smaller than the County of Edessa or the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It extended around the northeastern edge of the Mediterranean, bordering the County of Tripoli to the south, Edessa to the east, and the Byzantine Empire or the Kingdom of Armenia to the northwest, depending on the date.

It had roughly 20,000 inhabitants in the 12th century, most of whom were Armenians and Greek Orthodox Christians, with a few Muslims outside the Antioch city itself. Most of the crusaders who settled there were of Norman origin, notably from the Duchy of Apulia and Calabria in southern Italy, as were the first rulers of the principality, who surrounded themselves with loyal subjects. Few of the inhabitants apart from the crusaders were Roman Catholic even though the city was under the jurisdiction of the Latin Patriarchate of Antioch, established in 1100. This patriarchate would endure as a titular one after the Crusades, until it was dropped in 1964.