Frankish Jerusalem: the transformation of a medieval city in the Latin East

In: Cambridge studies in medieval life and thought 123

Abstract

Focusing on Jerusalem under Frankish rule following the Crusader conquest of 1099, this book sheds light on the dynamic socio-economic factors that shaped Jerusalem's gradual urban transformation. In exploring the extensive corpus of medieval property records, it reveals that the growth of Jerusalem's monumental and symbolic landscape, as befitted its new status as the capital of the Latin Kingdom, was in tandem with more mundane facets of life in the city, such as growing residential settlement patterns, and the expansion of its rural hinterland. This places the history of Frankish Jerusalem in a broader theoretical framework by analyzing the socio-economic and institutional mechanisms - such as immigration and the formation of medieval trust - that shaped the cityscape during a particularly tumultuous period in its history, and places it against the backdrop of medieval urbanisation processes in other regions.