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97-594: Abu Qir Bay lies approximately 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Alexandria, bounded to the southwest by the Abu Qir headland, on which lies the town of Abu Qir , and to the northeast by the Rosetta mouth of the Nile . The bay is a highly fertile Egyptian coastal region but suffers from acute eutrophication and pollution from untreated industrial and domestic waste. The ABU QIR Fertilizers and Chemicals Industries Company ,

194-649: A century before Christ by the high priest Menelaus and the Greek King Antiochus of Jerusalem, with financing from Judas Maccabeus , and that it was first headed by Saint Stephen and had been visited by Christ and the Apostles. A historian of the Order in the 13th century wrote that this version was not true. In any case, the Hospitallers rose to fame and prestige in a short amount of time. By

291-600: A decisive victory against a numerically superior force that made use of firearms. When the Ottomans departed, the Hospitallers had but 600 men able to bear arms. The most reliable estimate puts the number of the Ottoman army at its height at some 40,000 men, of whom 15,000 eventually returned to Constantinople. The siege is portrayed vividly in the frescoes of Matteo Pérez in the Hall of St. Michael and St. George, also known as

388-648: A direct part in supporting the Malta native Iacob Heraclid who, in 1561, established a temporary foothold in Moldavia . The Hospitallers also continued their maritime actions against Muslims and especially the Barbary pirates . Although they had only a few ships, they quickly drew the ire of the Ottomans , who were unhappy to see the order resettled. In 1565 Suleiman sent an invasion force of about 40,000 men to besiege

485-479: A large producer of nitrogen fertilizer , is located on the bay. Classical sources indicate that the Canopic branch of the Nile delta once entered the sea in the vicinity of Heracleion or the eastern part of Canopus. A combination of Islamic texts and investigation using geoarchaeology suggest that this branch was still in existence in the eighth century, when a major inundation caused eastern Canopus to sink into

582-470: A long time now nothing at all. We only have something to keep us going, Sire, in your own Kingdom and in Spain. Maltese authorities did not mention the fact that they were making a substantial profit policing the seas and seizing infidel ships and cargoes. The authorities on Malta immediately recognised the importance of corsairing to their economy and set about encouraging it, as despite their vows of poverty,

679-806: A monastery in Jerusalem, near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre . The monastery, known as the abbey of St Mary of the Latins (to distinguish them from local Syriac Orthodox Church hierarchy), was served by the Order of Saint Benedict and took in Christian pilgrims travelling to visit the Christian holy sites. The increase in the number of pilgrims led the Benedictine monks to establish two hospitals in

776-483: A more militarized force. In 1334, they fought an attempted invasion by Andronicus and his Turkish auxiliaries, and in 1374 they took over the defence of nearby Smyrna on the Anatolian coast, which had been conquered by a crusade in 1344 ; the knights held the city until it was besieged and taken by Timur in 1402. On the peninsula of Halicarnassus (present-day Bodrum ), the knights reinforced their position with

873-583: A number of years, was tightly regulated as the island's government attempted to haul in the unscrupulous knights and appease the European powers and limited benefactors. Yet these efforts were not altogether successful, as the Consiglio del Mer received numerous complaints around the year 1700 of Maltese piracy in the region. Ultimately, the rampant over-indulgence in privateering in the Mediterranean

970-658: A reformist movement within the Benedictine monastic order that sought to strengthen religious devotion and charity for the poor. Earlier in the 11th century, merchants from Amalfi founded a hospital in Jerusalem dedicated to John the Baptist where Benedictine monks cared for sick, poor, or injured Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land . Blessed Gerard , a lay brother of the Benedictine order, became its head when it

1067-677: A separate entity from the monastery when he reformed the Catholic hierarchy in Palestine , and a step towards this was taken by Pope Paschal II when he recognized the abbey of St Mary as a church of the Holy See , placing it under his protection and exempting it from paying tithes on its land, on 19 June 1112. The monastic Hospitaller Order was formally created when the Pope issued the papal bull Pie postulatio voluntatis on 15 February 1113 to

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1164-549: A smaller Greek temple and ancient granite columns, treasure-laden ships, along with bronze coins from the reign of Ptolemy II , pottery dating back to the third and fourth centuries BC were found at the sunken city of Heracleion , known as Egypt's Atlantis. The investigations were conducted by Egyptian and European divers led by the underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio . They also uncovered an absolutely devastated historic underwater temple (city's main temple) off Egypt's north coast. A number of sunken ships have been excavated from

1261-592: A very similar climate. The wettest places in Egypt are Rafah , Alexandria, Abu Qir, Rosetta , Baltim , Kafr El Dawwar , Mersa Matruh . Attribution: Knights Hospitaller The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem ( Latin : Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani ), commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller ( / ˈ h ɒ s p ɪ t əl ər / ),

1358-569: Is a Catholic military order . It was founded in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century and had headquarters there until 1291, thereafter being based in Kolossi Castle in Cyprus (1302–1310), the island of Rhodes (1310–1522), Malta (1530–1798), and Saint Petersburg (1799–1801). The Hospitallers arose in the early 12th century at the height of the Cluniac movement ,

1455-562: Is a town on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt , near the ruins of ancient Canopus and 23 kilometers (14 mi) northeast of Alexandria by rail. It is located on Abu Qir Peninsula, with Abu Qir Bay to the east. The town's present name is Arabic for "Father Cyrus", one of a pair of fourth century Christian martyrs venerated as Saints Cyrus and John by the Coptic Church . The remains of many ancient buildings from

1552-403: Is likely that the Hospitallers were inspired by them to have their own knights. A charter made for a gift to the Hospital of St John in a Christian army on 17 January 1126 recorded that a brother from the Order was present as a witness and that he held a military title. Raymond du Puy , who succeeded Gerard as master of the hospital in 1120, is credited with establishing the military element of

1649-575: The Ad providam bull that turned over much of their property to the Hospitallers. At Rhodes, and later Malta, the resident knights of each langue were headed by a bailiff . The English Grand Prior at the time was Philip De Thame , who acquired the estates allocated to the English langue from 1330 to 1358. On Rhodes, the Hospitallers, by then also referred to as the Knights of Rhodes , were forced to become

1746-569: The County of Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch . Those notably included the Krak des Chevaliers in 1142, which they received from Raymond II, Count of Tripoli . According to one estimate the Hospitallers had 25 castles as of 1180. In addition to defending them, the Hospitallers also undertook construction projects to build new castles or repair and expand existing ones, with an example of

1843-675: The Johanniterorden to its continuing place as the chief non-Roman Catholic branch of the Knights Hospitaller. The Knights of Malta had a strong presence within the Imperial Russian Navy and the pre- revolutionary French Navy . When Phillippe de Longvilliers de Poincy was appointed governor of the French colony on Saint Kitts in 1639, he was a prominent Knight of St. John and dressed his retinue with

1940-858: The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John , the Bailiwick of Brandenburg of the Chivalric Order of Saint John , the Order of Saint John in the Netherlands , and the Order of Saint John in Sweden . In 603, Pope Gregory I commissioned the Ravennate Abbot Probus, who was previously Gregory's emissary at the Lombard court, to build a hospital in Jerusalem to treat and care for Christian pilgrims to

2037-560: The Ottoman -endorsed Barbary pirates operating out of North Africa. Boosted by an air of invincibility following the successful defence of their island in 1565, and compounded by the Christian victory over the Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the knights set about protecting Christian merchant shipping to and from the Levant and freeing the captured Christian slaves who formed

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2134-580: The Public Library was established in 1761. The University was founded seven years later, followed, in 1786, by a School of Mathematics and Nautical Sciences. Despite these developments, some of the Maltese grew to resent the Order, which they viewed as a privileged class. This even included some of the local nobility , who were not admitted to the Order. In Rhodes, the knights had been housed in auberges (inns) segregated by Langues. This structure

2231-637: The "Land of Severin" ( Terra de Zeurino ), along with the nearby mountains, from Béla IV of Hungary , as shown by a charter of grant issued on 2 June 1247. The Banate of Severin was a march , or border province, of the Kingdom of Hungary between the Lower Danube and the Olt River , today part of Romania, and back then bordered across the Danube by a powerful Bulgarian Empire . The Hospitaller hold on

2328-516: The 700 knights and 8,000 soldiers and expel them from Malta and gain a new base from which to possibly launch another assault on Europe. This is known as the Great Siege of Malta . At first the battle went as badly for the Hospitallers as Rhodes had: most of the cities were destroyed and about half the knights killed. On 18 August, the position of the besieged was becoming desperate: dwindling daily in numbers, they were becoming too feeble to hold

2425-469: The 7th century BC, port cities were established on the bay. The bay now contains the underwater archaeological sites of three cities from the pre-Hellenistic, Hellenistic and Roman periods. The eastern part of ancient city of Canopus is submerged in the bay, along with the remains of Menouthis and its sister-city Herakleion–Thonis which now lies 7 kilometres offshore. They were excavated by French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio . In November 2017,

2522-545: The Americas, briefly acquiring four Caribbean islands in the mid-17th century, which they turned over to France in the 1660s. The knights became divided during the Protestant Reformation , when rich commanderies of the order in northern Germany and the Netherlands became Protestant and largely separated from the Catholic main stem, remaining separate to this day ; modern ecumenical relations between

2619-620: The Banate was only brief. After the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291 (the city of Jerusalem had fallen in 1187 ), the Knights were confined to the County of Tripoli and, when Acre was captured in 1291, the order sought refuge in the Kingdom of Cyprus . Finding themselves becoming enmeshed in Cypriot politics, their Master, Guillaume de Villaret , created a plan of acquiring their own temporal domain, selecting Rhodes , then part of

2716-559: The Byzantine Empire. He also reorganised the order into eight langues , or "tongues", corresponding to a geographic or ethno-linquistic area: the Crown of Aragon , Auvergne , Crown of Castile , Kingdom of England , France , Holy Roman Empire , Italy and Provence . Each was administered by a Prior or, if there was more than one priory in the langue, by a Grand Prior. Guillaume's successor, Foulques de Villaret , executed

2813-615: The Conqueror in 1480, who, after capturing Constantinople and defeating the Byzantine Empire in 1453 , made the Knights a priority target. In 1522, an entirely new sort of force arrived: 400 ships under the command of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent deployed as many as 100,000 men to the island, and possibly up 200,000. Under Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam , the knights, though well-fortified, only had about 7,000 men-at-arms. The siege lasted six months, after which

2910-711: The Crusaders on 22 August 1153. It is not clear if the role of the Hospitallers was only advisory or if they were involved in the fighting at Ascalon. The Hospitallers and the Knights Templar became the most formidable military orders in the Holy Land. Frederick Barbarossa , the Holy Roman Emperor , pledged his protection to the Knights of St. John in a charter of privileges granted in 1185. The statutes of Roger de Moulins (1187) deal only with

3007-742: The Egyptian mission in cooperation with the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology announced the discovery of 2.000-year-old three sunken shipwrecks dated back to the Roman Era in Alexandria 's Abu Qir Bay. The sunken cargo included a royal head of crystal perhaps belong to the commander of the Roman armies of “Antonio”, three gold coins from the era of Emperor Octavius Augustus, large wooden planks and pottery vessels. In July 2019,

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3104-531: The Egyptian, Greek and Roman periods can be found near the town. About 3 kilometers (2 mi) southeast of the town are the ruins of the Ancient Egyptian coastal town of Canopus . A little farther east, the now-dry Canopic branch of the Nile once entered the Mediterranean. The wide Abu Qir Bay (Khalīj Abū Qīr) stretches eastward from the town as far as the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. On 1 August 1798

3201-528: The English branch was confiscated in 1540. The German Bailiwick of Brandenburg became Lutheran in 1577, then more broadly Evangelical, but continued to pay its financial contribution to the Order until 1812, when the Protector of the Order in Prussia, King Frederick William III , turned it into an order of merit; in 1852, his son and successor as Protector, King Frederick William IV of Prussia , restored

3298-434: The European states became more complacent about the Order, and more unwilling to grant money to an institution that was perceived to be earning a healthy sum on the high seas. Thus, a vicious cycle occurred, increasing the raids and reducing the grants received from the nation-states of Christendom to such an extent that the balance of payments on the island had become dependent on conquest. The European powers lost interest in

3395-656: The Fatimid garrison at Ascalon , and allowed the Hospitallers to manage one of them in 1136, the castle of Bethgibelin . This castle also allowed them to defend the pilgrim route between Jaffa and Jerusalem. Later in the century, the Hospitallers were given control over more castles in Syria than they had in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the next several decades after 1136 the Order was granted more castles and towns by nobles that needed assistance in defending them, especially in

3492-661: The French Navy over the long caravans favoured by the Maltese, and if the Knight desired, to indulge in some of the pleasures of a traditional debauched seaport. In return, the French gained and quickly assembled an experienced navy to stave off the threat of the Spanish and their Habsburg masters. The shift in attitudes of the Knights over this period is ably outlined by Paul Lacroix, who states: Inflated with wealth, laden with privileges which gave them almost sovereign powers ...

3589-404: The French Navy proving the most popular destination. This decision went against the knights' cardinal reason for existence, in that by serving a European power directly they faced the very real possibility that they would be fighting against another Roman Catholic force, as in the few Franco-Spanish naval skirmishes that occurred in this period. The biggest paradox is the fact that for many years

3686-592: The Holy Land were built by the Templars and the Hospitallers. At the height of the Kingdom of Jerusalem , the Hospitallers held seven great forts and 140 other estates in the area. The two largest of these, their bases of power in the Kingdom and in the Principality of Antioch , were the Krak des Chevaliers and Margat in Syria. The property of the Order was divided into priories , subdivided into bailiwicks , which in turn were divided into commanderies . As early as

3783-448: The Holy Land. Gerard acquired territory and revenues for his order throughout the Kingdom of Jerusalem and beyond. Under his successor, Raymond du Puy , the original hospice was expanded to an infirmary and by then was subordinated to the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Around this time the Hospital of St John became connected with that Church, and documents often referred to "the Holy Sepulchre and

3880-405: The Holy Land. In 800, Emperor Charlemagne enlarged Probus' hospital and added a library to it. About 200 years later, in 1009, the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah destroyed the hospital and three thousand other buildings in Jerusalem. Merchants from Amalfi in southern Italy were given permission by the Egyptian Fatimid Caliph al-Mustansir Billah ( r.  1036–1094 ) to build

3977-444: The Hospital of St John hired knights or foot soldiers after the First Crusade to provide security, before it formally established its own military organization. Knights in western Europe left their horses and weapons to the Hospitallers in their wills in the 1120s, and in the early 1140s Pope Innocent II mentioned that the Hospitallers had "servants" to protect pilgrims. An account from a Hospitaller priest in 16th century stated that as

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4074-400: The Hospital of St John of Jerusalem." Initially, the Hospitallers cared for pilgrims as well as others (including Muslims and Jews) in Jerusalem, but the order soon extended to provide pilgrims with an armed escort before eventually becoming a significant military force. Thus, the Order of St. John imperceptibly became militaristic without losing its charitable character. It is possible that

4171-443: The Hospitallers in Germany, into the Principality of Heitersheim , making the Grand Prior of Germany a prince of the Holy Roman Empire with a seat and vote in the Reichstag . The knights would stay in Malta for the next 268 years, transforming what they called "merely a rock of soft sandstone" into a flourishing island with mighty defences, whose capital city, Valletta , would become known as Superbissima , "Most Proud", among

4268-427: The Hospitallers was granted the status of Reichsfürst ( Prince of the Holy Roman Empire ), even though the Order's territory was always south of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1630, he was awarded ecclesiastic equality with cardinals , and the unique hybrid style His Most Eminent Highness , reflecting both qualities qualifying him as a true Prince of the Church . With their diminished strength and relocation to Malta in

4365-424: The Hospitallers, the "eight-pointed cross," is said to have originated in the Byzantine Empire before reaching the Duchy of Amalfi in Italy, and it was later used in Jerusalem by the monks that founded the Hospital of St John. After the Hospitallers moved to Malta, it became known as the Maltese cross . King Fulk of Jerusalem constructed several castles to defend the kingdom's southern border from attacks by

4462-431: The Kingdom of France remained on amicable terms with the Ottoman Empire, the Knights' greatest and bitterest foe and purported sole purpose for existence. Paris signed many trade agreements with the Ottomans and agreed to an informal (and ultimately ineffective) cease-fire between the two states during this period. That the Knights associated themselves with the allies of their sworn enemies shows their moral ambivalence and

4559-413: The Knights boosted the economy, were charitable, and protected against Muslim attacks. Hospitals were among the first projects to be undertaken in Malta, where French soon supplanted Italian as the official language (though the native inhabitants continued to speak Maltese among themselves). The knights also constructed fortresses, watch towers, and naturally, churches. Its acquisition of Malta signalled

4656-429: The Knights were granted the ability to keep a portion of the spoglio , which was the prize money and cargo gained from a captured ship, along with the ability to fit out their own galleys with their new wealth. The great controversy that surrounded the knights' corso was their insistence on their policy of 'vista'. This enabled the Order to stop and board all shipping suspected of carrying Turkish goods and confiscate

4753-410: The Order of St John became more wealthy it hired knights to defend its hospitals and pilgrims, and these knights eventually became Hospitallers themselves. It is known that secular knights and soldiers were hired by institutions in Jerusalem to provide protection after 1099, including churches, and some of them later joined military orders. The Order of Knights Templar was founded around 1119-1120 and it

4850-427: The Order. Raymond decided some time before 1136 that Hospitallers could fight to defend the kingdom or to besiege a pagan city. The Knights Hospitaller, like the other military orders, organized its fighting members into the ranks of knight and sergeant . In 1130, Pope Innocent II gave the order its coat of arms , a plain silver cross in a field of red, to differentiate them from the Templars. The other symbol of

4947-423: The Ottoman fleet, was a serious blow. The Turkish commanders, Piali Pasha and Mustafa Pasha, were careless. They had a huge fleet which they used with effect on only one occasion. They neglected their communications with the African coast and made no attempt to watch and intercept Sicilian reinforcements. On 1 September they made their last effort, but the morale of the Ottoman troops had deteriorated seriously and

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5044-412: The Throne Room, in the Grandmaster's Palace in Valletta ; four of the original modellos , painted in oils by Perez d'Aleccio between 1576 and 1581, can be found in the Cube Room of the Queen's House at Greenwich , London. After the siege a new city had to be built: the present capital city of Malta, named Valletta in memory of the Grand Master who had withstood the siege. In 1607, the Grand Master of

5141-401: The attack was feeble, to the great encouragement of the besieged, who now began to see hopes of deliverance. The perplexed and indecisive Ottomans heard of the arrival of Sicilian reinforcements in Mellieħa Bay. Unaware that the force was very small, they broke off the siege and left on 8 September. The Great Siege of Malta may have been the last action in history in which a force of knights won

5238-411: The basis of the Barbary corsairs' piratical trading and navies. This campaign became known as the "corso". Yet the Order soon struggled on a now reduced income. By policing the Mediterranean, they augmented the assumed responsibility of the traditional protectors of the Mediterranean, the naval city states of Venice and Genoa . Further compounding their financial woes; over the course of this period,

5335-404: The bay was the location of the Battle of the Nile , fought by the British Admiral Horatio Nelson . The battle is often referred to as the "Battle of Aboukir Bay", though this title is more properly applied to Battle of Abukir of 1799 , an engagement between the French expeditionary army and the Turks under Mustapha Pasha fought on 25 July the following year. Later in the war, on 8 March 1801 at

5432-472: The bay, including a ceremonial boat ( Neshmet boat) dedicated to Osiris and several Roman era ships. On August 1, 1798, Horatio Nelson fought the naval "Battle of the Nile", often referred to as the "Battle of Aboukir Bay". (Not to be confused with the Battle of Abukir (1799) and the Battle of Abukir (1801) .) On 1 March 1801, some 70 British warships, together with transports carrying 16,000 troops, anchored in Aboukir Bay near Alexandria . The intent

5529-409: The bay. The Canopic branch subsequently declined and eventually became closed. Land in the area of Canopus was subject to rising sea levels, earthquakes, tsunamis , and large parts of it seem to have already succumbed to soil liquefaction sometime at the end of the 2nd century BC, becoming submerged. In ancient times Abu Qir Bay was surrounded by marshland and contained several islands. As early as

5626-430: The beginning of the Battle of Alexandria , units of the British army commanded by Sir Ralph Abercromby landed from their transports near the town, and faced strenuous opposition from General Louis Friant's French forces entrenched on the beach. The battle continued further down the peninsula toward Alexandria and did not end until 22 March. The town contains a castle that was used as a state prison by Muhammad Ali in

5723-492: The beginning of the Order's renewed naval activity. The building and fortification of Valletta, named for Grand Master la Valette , was begun in 1566, soon becoming the home port of one of the Mediterranean's most powerful navies. Valletta was designed by Francesco Laparelli , a military engineer, and his work was then taken up by Girolamo Cassar . The city was completed in 1571. The island's hospitals were expanded as well. The Sacra Infermeria could accommodate 500 patients and

5820-404: The breaches, and the capture of Malta seemed more and more impossible. Many of the Ottoman troops in crowded quarters had fallen ill over the terrible summer months. Ammunition and food were beginning to run short, and the Ottoman troops were becoming increasingly dispirited by the failure of their attacks and their losses. The death on 23 June of skilled commander Dragut , a corsair and admiral of

5917-413: The care and defence of the Holy Land , and fought in the Crusades until the Siege of Acre in 1291. Following the reconquest of the Holy Land by Islamic forces , the knights operated from Rhodes, over which they were sovereign , and later from Malta, where they administered a vassal state under the Spanish viceroy of Sicily . The Hospitallers were one of the smallest groups to have colonized parts of

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6014-572: The cargo to be re-sold at Valletta, along with the ship's crew, who were by far the most valuable commodity on the ship. Naturally, many nations claimed to be victims of the knights' over-eagerness to stop and confiscate any goods remotely connected to the Turks. In an effort to regulate the growing problem, the authorities in Malta established a judicial court, the Consiglio del Mer, where captains who felt wronged could plead their case, often successfully. The practice of issuing privateering licenses and thus state endorsement, which had been in existence for

6111-413: The central Mediterranean, the knights found themselves devoid of their founding mission: assisting and joining the crusades in the Holy Land . Revenues subsequently dwindled as European sponsors were no longer willing to support a costly and seemingly redundant organization. The knights were forced to make do with their maritime location and turn to combating the increased threat of piracy, particularly from

6208-435: The construction of Petronium Castle , utilizing pieces of the partially destroyed Mausoleum at Halicarnassus , one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World , to strengthen their rampart. In the 15th century, the knights fought frequently with Barbary pirates , also known as Ottoman corsairs. They withstood two invasions by ascendant Muslim forces, one by the Sultan of Egypt in 1444 and another by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed

6305-463: The defeated surviving Hospitallers were allowed to withdraw to Sicily . Despite the defeat, both Christians and Muslims seem to have regarded Phillipe Villiers as extremely valiant, and the Grand Master was proclaimed a Defender of the Faith by Pope Adrian VI . In 1530, after seven years of displacement from Rhodes, Pope Clement VII – himself a knight – reached an agreement with Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain and Sicily, to provide

6402-401: The descendant chivalric orders are amicable. The order was suppressed in England, Denmark, and other parts of northern Europe, and was further damaged by Napoleon 's capture of Malta in 1798, after which it dispersed throughout Europe. Today, five organizations continue the traditions of the Knights Hospitaller and have mutually recognised each other: the Sovereign Military Order of Malta ,

6499-449: The early 19th century. The prison was known as Liman Abu Qir. In 2000, an Italian archaeological team discovered the remains of British officers, sailors, marines, women, and children on Nelson's Island , which lies in the bay. Köppen-Geiger climate classification system classifies its climate as hot desert (BWh), but it lies at the northern coast of Egypt , moderating its temperatures. Due to its proximity to Alexandria , it has

6596-426: The emblems of the Order. In 1651, the knights bought from the Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique the islands of Sainte-Christophe, Saint Martin , and Saint Barthélemy . The Order's presence in the Caribbean was eclipsed with De Poincy's death in 1660. He had also bought the island of Saint Croix as his personal estate and deeded it to the Knights of St. John. In 1665, the order sold their Caribbean possessions to

6693-493: The exchange rate of the local currencies against the 'scudo' that were established in the late 16th century gradually became outdated, meaning the knights were gradually receiving less at merchant factories. Economically hindered by the barren island they now inhabited, many knights went beyond their call of duty by raiding Muslim ships. More and more ships were plundered, from whose profits many knights lived idly and luxuriously, taking local women to be their wives and enrolling in

6790-399: The expense of his own defences. A wrong decision could mean defeat and exposing Sicily and Naples to the Ottomans. He had left his own son with La Valette, so he could hardly be indifferent to the fate of the fortress. Whatever may have been the cause of his delay, the Viceroy hesitated until the battle had almost been decided by the unaided efforts of the knights, before being forced to move by

6887-400: The great powers of Europe. However, the indigenous islanders were initially apprehensive about the order's presence and viewed them as arrogant intruders; they were especially loathed for taking advantage of local women. Most knights were French and excluded Maltese from serving in the order, even being generally dismissive of local nobility. However, the two groups coexisted peacefully, since

6984-451: The head of the Hospital of St John, Blessed Gerard de Martigues . The Pope subordinated the hospital to his own authority and exempted it from paying tithes on the lands it owned, and gave the right to its professed brothers to elect their master. He also placed several other hospitals and hospices in southern Italy under the governance of the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem, as they were located at port cities from which pilgrims traveled to

7081-492: The importance of a religious army), and thus in the Knights' regular tributes from European nations. That the knights, a chiefly Roman Catholic military order, pursued the readmittance of England as one of its member states – the Order there had been suppressed under King Henry VIII of England during the dissolution of the monasteries – upon the succession of the Protestant queen Elizabeth I of England aptly demonstrates

7178-472: The indignation of his own officers. On 23 August came yet another grand assault, the last serious effort, as it proved, of the besiegers. It was thrown back with the greatest difficulty, even the wounded taking part in the defence. The plight of the Turkish forces was now desperate. With the exception of Fort Saint Elmo , the fortifications were still intact. Working night and day the garrison had repaired

7275-1054: The island lay on a primary commercial route to the Nile River and became a major religious and commercial centre. There is archaeological evidence that a high-status necropolis was sited on the island. During the Ptolemaic Kingdom the island was fortified. Following the Battle of the Nile in 1798, a number of British dead were buried on the island. Their graves were discovered in 2000. As they were in danger of sea erosion, thirty bodies were reburied at Chatby Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Alexandria in 2005. Abu Qir 31°19′N 30°04′E  /  31.317°N 30.067°E  / 31.317; 30.067 Abu Qir ( Arabic : ابو قير , Abu Qīr , [æbuˈ] or [æbo ʔiːɾ] , Coptic : ⲁⲡⲁⲕⲩⲣⲓ Apakyri ), formerly also spelled Abukir or Aboukir ,

7372-474: The knights as they focused their intentions largely on one another during the Thirty Years' War . In February 1641 a letter was sent from an unknown dignitary in the Maltese capital of Valletta to the knights' most trustworthy ally and benefactor, Louis XIV of France , stating the Order's troubles: Italy provides us with nothing much; Bohemia and Germany hardly anything, and England and the Netherlands for

7469-638: The knights permanent quarters: In exchange for providing Malta, Gozo , and the North African port of Tripoli in perpetual fiefdom , Charles V would receive an annual fee of a single Maltese falcon (the Tribute of the Maltese Falcon ), which they were to send on All Souls' Day to the king's representative, the Viceroy of Sicily. In 1548, Charles V raised Heitersheim , the headquarters of

7566-454: The late 1060s, one for men and one for women, with the former known as the Hospital of St John. They did this with the support of a wealthy Amalfian named Mauro of Pantaleone. In the early 1070s the hospital was visited by Archbishop John of Amalfi during his pilgrimage. In later centuries, to help raise money in Europe, the Order of St John made claims that the hospital had been founded more than

7663-660: The late 12th century, the order had begun to achieve recognition in the Kingdom of England and Duchy of Normandy . As a result, buildings such as St John's Jerusalem and the Knights Gate, Quenington in England were built on land donated to the order by local nobility. An Irish house was established at Kilmainham , near Dublin, and the Irish Prior was usually a key figure in Irish public life. The Knights also received

7760-501: The latter being Krak des Chevaliers. One of the first battles that the Knights Hospitaller fought in was the Siege of Ascalon in 1153. After a group of Knights Templar, led by their Grand Master, Bernard de Tremelay , entered the besieged fortress and were all killed, King Baldwin III of Jerusalem wanted to withdraw, but Raymond du Puy convinced him to continue, and the fort surrendered to

7857-403: The long line of fortifications. But when his council suggested the abandonment of Birgu and Senglea and withdrawal to Fort St. Angelo , Grand Master Jean Parisot de Valette refused. The Viceroy of Sicily had not sent help; possibly the Viceroy's orders from Philip II of Spain were so obscurely worded as to put on his own shoulders the burden of the decision whether to help the Order at

7954-444: The military brothers, the brothers infirmarians, and the brothers chaplains, to whom was entrusted the divine service. In 1248, Pope Innocent IV (1243–1254) approved a standard military dress for the Hospitallers to be worn during battle. Instead of a closed cape over their armour (which restricted their movements), they wore a red surcoat with a white cross emblazoned on it. Many of the more substantial Christian fortifications in

8051-572: The navies of France and Spain in search of adventure, experience, and yet more money. The Knights' changing attitudes were coupled with the effects of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and the lack of stability from the Roman Catholic Church. All this affected the knights strongly as the 16th and 17th centuries saw a gradual decline in the religious attitudes of many of the Christian peoples of Europe (and, concomitantly,

8148-472: The new commercial-minded nature of the Mediterranean in the 17th century. Serving in a foreign navy, in particular that of the French, gave the Knights the chance to serve the Church and for many, their King, to increase their chances of promotion in either their adopted navy or in Malta, to receive far better pay, to stave off their boredom with frequent cruises, to embark on the highly preferable short cruises of

8245-400: The new religious tolerance within the Order. For a time, the Order even possessed a German langue which was part Protestant or Evangelical and part Roman Catholic. The moral decline that the knights underwent over the course of this period is best highlighted by the decision of many knights to serve in foreign navies and become "the mercenary sea-dogs of the 14th to 17th centuries", with

8342-628: The newly formed Langue, now occupied by the Lands Authority) and Provence (now National Museum of Archaeology ). In the Second World War, the auberge d'Auvergne was damaged (and later replaced by Law Courts) and the auberge de France was destroyed. In 1604, each Langue was given a chapel in the conventual church of Saint John and the arms of the Langue appear in the decoration on the walls and ceiling: The Order may have played

8439-445: The order at last became so demoralised by luxury and idleness that it forgot the aim for which it was founded, and gave itself up for the love of gain and thirst for pleasure. Its covetousness and pride soon became boundless. The Knights pretended that they were above the reach of crowned heads: they seized and pillaged without concern of the property of both infidels and Christians." With the knights' exploits growing in fame and wealth,

8536-484: The plan to take Rhodes, and on 15 August 1310, after more than four years of campaigning , the city of Rhodes surrendered to the knights. They also gained control of a number of neighbouring islands and the Anatolian port of Halicarnassus and the island of Kastellorizo . Not long after, in 1312, Pope Clement V dissolved the Hospitallers' rival order, the Knights Templar , with a series of papal bulls , including

8633-473: The service of the sick; the first mention of military service is in the statutes of the ninth grand master, Fernando Afonso of Portugal (about 1200). In the latter, a marked distinction is made between secular knights, externs to the order, who served only for a time, and the professed knights, attached to the order by a perpetual vow, and who alone enjoyed the same spiritual privileges as the other religious. The order numbered three distinct classes of membership:

8730-681: The time of the success of the First Crusade in 1099, the Hospital of St John was already well known among pilgrims and was regarded as a separate organization from the monastery of St Mary. The monastic brothers at the hospital saw it as their duty to provide the best possible treatment to the poor. They were given an endowment by Godfrey of Bouillon , the leader of the First Crusade, before he died in 1100. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem , Ghibbelin of Arles , formally recognized it as

8827-470: The wreck-site. Nelson's Island, also known as Aboukir Island, is a 350 m (1,150 ft)-long island in Abu Qir bay that is used for picnics and recreation. The island has been reduced considerably in size since antiquity as a result of erosion and sandstone quarrying. When it was a part of Ancient Egypt it was probably connected to the mainland at what is now the Aboukir naval base. In Pharaonic times

8924-578: Was ashore. The British then defeated the French army at the Battle of Alexandria . The Siege of Alexandria followed, with the city falling on 2 September 1801. L’Orient , Napoleon's flagship, was destroyed by Nelson's fleet and lies in the bay on the sea bottom. It was carrying five million francs in gold and one million in silver plate taken from the Knights Hospitaller in Malta . Between 1998 and 1999, French archaeologist Franck Goddio led an expedition that carried out an underwater archaeological study of

9021-410: Was established. After the Christian conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade , the Hospitallers rose in prominence and were recognized as a distinct order by Pope Paschal II in 1113. The Order of Saint John was militarized in the 1120s and 1130s, hiring knights that later became Hospitallers. The organization became a military religious order under its own papal charter, charged with

9118-520: Was famous as one of the finest in the world. In the vanguard of medicine, the Hospital of Malta included Schools of Anatomy, Surgery and Pharmacy. Valletta itself was renowned as a centre of art and culture. The Conventual Church of St. John , completed in 1577, contains works by Caravaggio and others. In Europe, most of the Order's hospitals and chapels survived the Reformation, though not in Protestant or Evangelical countries. In Malta, meanwhile,

9215-625: Was maintained in Birgu (1530–1571) and then Valletta (from 1571). The auberges in Birgu remain, mostly undistinguished 16th-century buildings. Valletta still has the auberges of Castile and Portugal (1574; renovated 1741 by Grand Master de Vilhena, now the Prime Minister's offices), Italy (renovated 1683 by Grand Master Carafa, now an art museum), Aragon (1571, now a government ministry), Bavaria (former Palazzo Carnerio, purchased in 1784 for

9312-467: Was to be the knights' downfall in this particular period of their existence as they transformed from serving as the military outpost of a united Christendom to becoming another nation-state in a commercially oriented continent soon to be overtaken by the trading nations of the North Sea . Even as it survived in Malta, the Order lost many of its European holdings during the Reformation . The property of

9409-620: Was to defeat the French expeditionary force that had remained in Egypt after Napoleon 's return to France. Bad weather delayed disembarkation by a week but, on 8 March, Captain Alexander Cochrane of HMS Ajax deployed 320 boats, in double line abreast, to bring the troops ashore. French shore batteries opposed the landing, but the British were able to drive them back and, by the next day, all of Sir Ralph Abercromby 's British army

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