ABSTRACT
One of the most important scenes of the encounter between East and West in the Middle Ages was Outremer, that “land beyond the sea” stretching from northern Syria and Upper Mesopotamia to southern Palestine, where four Western principalities were established in the wake of the First Crusade: from north to south, the county of Edessa, the principality of Antioch, the county of Tripoli, and the kingdom of Jerusalem. Neither the Franks who remained in Outremer nor the Italian immigrants who were granted trading privileges in many of the cities were numerous enough to make up for the population losses caused by the destruction of Saracen and Jewish communities, and so their places were taken by native Christians. In terms of military capabilities and effectiveness the Armenians were clearly rated higher than the other indigenous Christian communities. This not only applied to the north, since the Franks of Jerusalem evidently attempted to make use of them in Palestine.
