Siege of Tripoli - The Siege

The Siege

The following year, Raymond, with the aid of Byzantine engineers, constructed Mons Peregrinus, "Pilgrim's mountain" or "Qalaat Saint-Gilles" ("fortress of Saint-Gilles"), in order to block Tripoli's access inland. With the Genoese Hugh Embriaco, Raymond also seized Gibelet. After the Battle of Harran in 1104, Fakhr al-Mulk asked Sokman, the former Ortoqid governor of Jerusalem, to intervene; Sokman marched into Syria but was forced to return home.

Fakhr al-Mulk then attacked Mons Peregrinus in September, 1104, killing many of the Franks and burning down one wing of the fortress. Raymond himself was badly wounded, and died five months later in February, 1105. He was replaced as leader by his nephew William-Jordan, count of Cerdanya. On his deathbed, Raymond had reached an agreement with the qadi: if he would stop attacking the fortress, the crusaders would stop impeding Tripolitanian trade and merchandise. The qadi accepted.

In 1108, it became more and more difficult to bring food to the besieged by land. Many citizens sought to flee to Homs, Tyre, and Damascus. The nobles of the city, who had betrayed the city to the Franks by showing them how it was being resupplied with food, were executed in the crusader camp. Fakhr al-Mulk, left to wait for help from the Seljuk sultan Mehmed I, went to Baghdad at the end of March with five hundred troops and many gifts. He passed through Damascus, now governed by Toghtegin after the death of Duqaq, and was welcomed with open arms. In Baghdad, the sultan received him with great spectacle, but had no time for Tripoli while there was a succession dispute in Mosul. Fakhr al-Mulk returned to Damascus in August, where he learned Tripoli had been handed over to al-Afdal Shahanshah, vizier of Egypt, by the nobles, who were tired of waiting for him to return.

The next year, the Franks gathered in force outside Tripoli, led by Baldwin I of Jerusalem, Baldwin II of Edessa, Tancred, regent of Antioch, William-Jordan, and Raymond IV's eldest son Bertrand of Toulouse, who had recently arrived with fresh Genoan, Pisan and Provençal troops. Tripoli waited in vain for reinforcements from Egypt.

A compromise decided in the course of a dispute beneath the walls of the city, and arbitrated by Baldwin of Jerusalem, allowed the city to be captured: the County of Tripoli would be divided between the two claimants, William-Jordan, as a vassal of the Principality of Antioch, and Bertrand, as a vassal of Jerusalem.

The city fell on July 12, and was sacked by the crusaders. One hundred thousand volumes of the Dar-em-Ilm library were deemed "impious" and burned. The Egyptian fleet arrived eight hours too late. Most of the inhabitants were enslaved, the others were deprived of their possessions and expelled. Bertrand, Raymond IV's illegitimate son, had William-Jordan assassinated in 1110 and claimed two-thirds of the city for himself, with the other third falling to the Genoans. Thus Tripoli became a crusader state; the rest of the Mediterranean coast had already fallen to the crusaders or would pass to them within the next few years, with the capture of Sidon in 1111 and Tyre in 1124.