Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem

Abstract

This book is a study of the spatial distribution of Frankish settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem at the time of the Crusades, and of the spatial and social interrelation between the Franks and the indigenous population. It is based on an unprecedented field study of more than two hundred Frankish rural sites and on a close re-examination of the historical sources. The division of the country between Christian and Muslim populations is explained by the far-reaching social process of nomadisation and sedentarisation which began with the Muslim conquest in the seventh century and which reached its zenith before the Frankish conquest of the country. The author re-examines some of the basic assumptions of standard recent scholarship, and advocates a new model of the nature of Frankish settlement, as a society of migrants who settled in the Levant, had close relations with eastern Christians, and were almost completely shut off from the Muslim society which lived elsewhere in the country.