Principality of Antioch

The crusader state that was always somebody else's by right, and outlived most of the others by refusing to admit it. Bohemond of Taranto took Antioch in June 1098 after an eight-month siege and immediately kept it, breaking the oath the crusade leaders had sworn to return former imperial cities to Byzantium - the origin of a legal dispute that ran for a century and a half. Antioch was the richest of the Latin states, an ancient patriarchal see with a large Greek and Armenian Christian population that the Latin clergy governed uneasily. Its position between Aleppo, the Seljuk sultanate and the Byzantine frontier meant permanent war on three sides. Disaster came at the Field of Blood in 1119, where Roger of Salerno's army was destroyed almost entirely, and the principality survived only because Baldwin II of Jerusalem took over its government. Emperor John Komnenos extracted homage in 1137 and Manuel staged a formal entry in 1159, but imperial authority never became practical control. Bohemond III's long reign kept it intact through Saladin's campaigns, which took Jerusalem but not Antioch. A succession war with Armenian Cilicia consumed its energies after 1201. Baybars stormed and destroyed the city in 1268, massacring or enslaving its population. It had lasted a hundred and seventy years. Antioch had been one of the largest cities of the Roman empire and a seat of early Christianity. Its walls climbed Mount Silpius above the Orontes. The principality also held Latakia and the port of Saint Symeon. The site is now Antakya in southern Turkey, badly damaged by the 2023 earthquake.

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