For other people with this name, see John of Ibelin.

John of Ibelin (1215-1266), count of Jaffa and Ascalon, was a noted jurist and the author of the longest legal treatise from the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He was the son of Philip of Ibelin, bailli of the Kingdom of Cyprus, and Alice of Montbéliard, and was the nephew of John of Ibelin, the “Old Lord of Beirut”. To distinguish him from his uncle and other members of the Ibelin family named John, he is sometimes called John of Jaffa.

In 1229 he fled Cyprus with his family when Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor seized the Ibelin territories on the island. He was present at the Battle of Casal Imbert in 1232, when his uncle defeated Riccardo Filangiere, Frederick’s lieutenant in the east. Around 1240 he married Maria, the sister of Hethum I of Armenia; Hethum’s other daughter Stephanie had married King Henry I. In 1241 he was probably responsible for writing a compromise between the Ibelins and the emperor, in which Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester would govern the kingdom. This proposal did not work out and Simon never came to Holy Land; the Ibelins continued to quarrel with the representatives of the Hohenstaufens, and in 1242 they captured Tyre from. John participated in the siege.

Sometime within the next few years, John became count of Jaffa and Ascalon and lord Ramla. This probably occurred when King Henry also became king of Jerusalem, and distributed continental lands to his Cypriot barons. Jaffa was by now a minor port and Ascalon was captured from the Knights Hospitaller by the Mamluks in 1247; the formerly-powerful double-county was now merely a title.

In 1249 he joined the Seventh Crusade and participated in Louis IX of France’s capture of Damietta. When Damietta was recaptured and Louis taken prisoner, John seems to have escaped the same fate. Louis was released in 1252 and moved his army to Jaffa; Louis’ constable and chronicler Jean de Joinville portrays John very favourably. John was by now an extremely famous lord in the east, corresponding also with Henry III of England and Pope Innocent IV, who had confirmed Henry I’s grand to John.

Henry I died in 1253, and Louis IX left for France in 1254, leaving John as bailli of Jerusalem. John made peace with Damascus and used the forces of Jerusalem to attack Ascalon; the Egyptians besieged Jaffa in 1256 in response. John marched out and defeated them, and with this victory he gave up the bailliage to his cousin John of Arsuf.

Meanwhile the Genoese and Venetian trading communities in Acre came into conflict, in the “War of Saint Sabas.” John supported the Venetians. In order to bring some order back to the kingdom, John and Bohemund VI of Antioch summoned Plaisance of Antioch and Hugh II of Cyprus to take over the regency of the kingdom for the absentee king, Conradin. Nevertheless the Venetians defeated the Genoese in a naval battle in 1258 and the Genoese left Acre. With Plaisance and Hugh in Acre, the Ibelin family began to decline in importance, but around 1263 John began a scandalous affair with Plaisance.

John could do little while Baibars, the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, fought with the Mongols in Palestine. Baibars may have reduced Jaffa to vassalage, and certainly used its port to transport food to Egypt. During this time, John wrote his incredibly detailed legal treatise, now known simple as the “Livre des Assises.” This was the longest of the so-called Assizes of Jerusalem, detailing the procedures of the Haute Cour. John’s truce with Baibars did not last, and he himself died in 1266. By 1268 Baibars had captured Jaffa.

With Maria of Armenia, John had perhaps nine children, including James and Guy, who succeeded their father as (now completely titular) counts of Jaffa and Ascalon.

References

• Peter W. Edbury, John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Boydell Press, 1997.
• Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174-1277. MacMillan Press, 1973.