ABSTRACT
In 1102 Constantine I of Vahka, son of Roupen I, died. He, in his capacity as an Armenian Christian ruler in the Levant, had helped the forces of the First Crusade maintain the siege of Antioch until it fell to the crusaders. He left two sons, Toros and Levon. Toros, or Theodoros, succeeded his father and ruled from the fortresses of Vahka and Pardzerpert. During the years preceding Zengi’s conquest of Edessa, Prince (Baron) Levon I, son of Constantine I, learned to exploit the open, yet restrained, hostilities between Byzantium and the Frankish principalities of Edessa and Antioch. Any increased Armenian imposition on the stability of the principality’s political, commercial and religious fabric would naturally alarm the non-Armenian inhabitants into action. Hence, it was the anti-Armenian faction—the Latin merchants and Greeks, that resisted the growth of Armenian power in Antioch. They had the most to lose.
