A difficult problem in the study of crusader law is the lack of legal texts from the twelfth century, when the kingdom of Jerusalem was at its height. In the first period of the kingdom, from the end of the First Crusade in 1099 until the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187, there was evidently a legal system, which is occasionally mentioned in passing in the contemporary sources. The nobility participated in the Haute Cour, the “high court,” which dealt with questions of property ownership and inheritance among the nobles, and services owed to the king or regent. In the thirteenth century, many of these nobles wrote legal treatises, including John of Ibelin (Le Livre des assises), Philip of Novara (Le Livre de forme de plait), Geoffrey le Tor, James of Ibelin, and other authors whose texts do not survive.1 There were

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement n° 249416. This research reflects only the author’s views and the European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. This article was written as part of the ERC research project “The Legal Status of Religious Minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean World, 5th15th Centuries” at the Université de Nantes. It is ultimately based on a paper written for Prof. Mark Meyerson at the University of Toronto in 2005, which was presented at the “Crusades: Medieval Worlds in Conflict” symposium at Saint Louis University in 2006.