House of Ibelin

Also known as Ibelins

The most influential baronial dynasty of the 13th-century kingdom, holding at various points Beirut, Jaffa, Arsuf, Caesarea, and the regencies of Jerusalem and Cyprus.

The Ibelins took their name from the small castle of Ibelin (Yibna) south of Jaffa, granted to a knight named Barisan in the 1140s. From this modest base they built, over four generations, the most powerful baronial network of the kingdom: by the early 13th century cousins of the Ibelin line held the lordships of Beirut, Arsuf, Caesarea, and Jaffa, and in 1247 a senior Ibelin became regent of the Kingdom of Cyprus as well.

Three Ibelins shaped the politics of the realm decisively. Balian of Ibelin (d. 1193) negotiated the surrender of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187 and was the family's bridge between the 12th-century kingdom and the 13th. His son John, the Old Lord of Beirut, led the baronial opposition to Frederick II in the War of the Lombards. John's nephew, John of Jaffa (1216–66), wrote the second great Ibelin legal treatise (the Livre of John of Jaffa) and built one of the kingdom's most splendid palaces at Jaffa.

By the late 13th century the family's centre of gravity had shifted to Cyprus, where it survived as a major baronial dynasty into the 14th.

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