structural:scholar_edition
Outremer

The terms Crusader states and Outremer (French: outre-mer, lit. ' overseas ') describe the four feudal states established after the First Crusade in the Levant in around 1100: (from north to south) the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The term Outremer is of medieval origin, whilst modern historians use Crusader states, and the term Franks for the European incomers. However, relatively few of the incoming Europeans took a crusader oath. The Latin chronicles of the First Crusade, written in the early 11th century, called the Western Christians who came from Europe Franci irrespective of their ethnicity. Byzantine Greek sources use Φράγκοι Frangi and Arabic الإفرنجي al-Ifranji. Alternatively, the chronicles used Latini, or Latins. These medieval ethnonyms reflect that the settlers could be differentiated from the indigenous population by language and faith. The Franks were mainly French-speaking Roman Catholics, while the natives were mostly Arabic- or Greek-speaking Muslims, Christians of other denominations, and Jews.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem extended over historical Palestine and at its greatest extent included some territory east of the Jordan River. The northern states covered what is now part of Syria, south-eastern Turkey, and Lebanon. These areas were historically called Syria (known to the Arabs as al-Sham) and Upper Mesopotamia. Edessa extended east beyond the Euphrates. In the Middle Ages the Crusader states were also called Syria or Syrie. From around 1115, the ruler of Jerusalem was styled 'king of the Latins in Jerusalem'. Historian Hans Eberhard Mayer believes this reflected that only Latins held complete political and legal rights in the kingdom, and that the major division in the society was not between the nobility and the common people but between the Franks and the indigenous peoples. Despite sometimes receiving homage from, and acting as regent for, the rulers of the other states; the king held no formalised overlord status, and those states remained legally outside the kingdom.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims respected Palestine, known as the Holy Land, as an exceptionally sacred place. They all associated the region with the lives of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. All of the holy sites in Judaism were found there, including the remains of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70AD. The New Testament presented Palestine as the venue of the acts of Jesus and his Apostles. Islamic tradition described the region's principal city, Jerusalem, as the site of the Isra' and Mi'raj, Muhammad's miraculous night travel and ascension to Heaven. Places associated with holy people developed into shrines visited by pilgrims coming from faraway lands, often as an act of penance. The surge in Christian pilgrimage also inspired many Jews to return to the Holy Land. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built to commemorate Christ's crucifixion and resurrection in Jerusalem. The Church of the Nativity was thought to enclose his birthplace in Bethlehem. The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque commemorated Muhammad's night journey. Although the most sacred places of devotion were in Palestine, there were also shrines in neighbouring Syria. As a borderland of the Muslim world, Syria was an important theatre of jihad, though enthusiasm for pursuing it had faded by the end of the 11th century. In contrast, the Catholic ideology of religious war quickly developed, culminating in the idea of crusades for lands claimed for Christianity.