County of Tripoli

Also known as Comitatus Tripolitanus

The southern-Frankish coastal county on the Lebanese seaboard, founded by Raymond IV of Toulouse and held for almost two centuries before its capture by Qalawun in 1289.

The County of Tripoli was the latest-founded of the four classic Crusader states. After the success of the First Crusade, Raymond IV of Toulouse — its wealthiest and most senior leader — turned to the conquest of the Lebanese coast and established a base on the headland of Mount Pilgrim above the Muslim city of Tripoli. He died in 1105 before completing the siege; his cousin William-Jordan and his son Bertrand quarrelled over the inheritance, and Tripoli itself only fell to a combined Frankish-Genoese assault on 12 July 1109.

From its capital at Tripoli the county controlled a long strip of mountainous coast running from Maraclea in the north to the heights above Beirut in the south, including the great inland fortress of Krak des Chevaliers (granted to the Hospitallers in 1142) and the Templar-held Tortosa. Politically the counts maintained a careful relationship with their stronger neighbour the Kingdom of Jerusalem; Raymond III of Tripoli, the most famous of the line, served twice as regent of Jerusalem and led the baronial party in the catastrophe of 1186–87.

The county survived Hattin and the loss of Jerusalem largely intact, propped up by its Italian merchant connections and its formidable inland castles. The Mamluk advance under Baybars in the 1260s and 1270s reduced its hinterland — Krak des Chevaliers fell in 1271 — and the city of Tripoli itself was finally taken and razed by Sultan Qalawun in April 1289, two years before the fall of Acre.

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