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Crusader states

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A Christian state is a country that recognizes a form of Christianity as its official religion and often has a state church (also called an established church ), which is a Christian denomination that supports the government and is supported by the government.

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207-711: The Crusader states , or Outremer , were four Catholic polities that existed in the Levant from 1098 to 1291. Following the principles of feudalism , the foundation for these polities was laid by the First Crusade by the European Christians, which was proclaimed by the Latin Church in 1095 in order to reclaim the Holy Land after it was lost to the 7th-century Arab Muslim conquest . Situated on

414-482: A national church which is not established (as the official religion of the nation), but is nonetheless recognised under civil law as being the country's acknowledged religious denomination. Whilst these are not Christian states, the official Christian national church is likely to have certain residual state functions in relation to state occasions and ceremonial. Examples include Scotland ( Church of Scotland ) and Sweden ( Church of Sweden ). A national church typically has

621-601: A new crusade . Passionate sermons raised religious fervour, and it is likely that more people took the crusader oath than during recruitment for the previous crusades. Christian state Historically, the nations of Aksum , Armenia , Makuria , and the Holy Roman Empire have declared themselves as Christian states, as well as the Roman Empire and its continuation the Byzantine Empire ,

828-408: A secular state with guaranteed religious freedom . However, Orthodox Christians with 6,079,396 adherents comprise 84.5% of the country's population. The Serbian Orthodox Church is the largest traditional church of the country, adherents of which are overwhelmingly Serbs . The SOC directly or indirectly has cultural influence on both the decisions and positions of the state . Tonga became

1035-460: A secular state , an atheist state , or another religious state, such as a Jewish state , or an Islamic state . The Armenian Apostolic Church church puts its founding at 301, with the conversion of Tiridates and declaration of Christianity as the official state religion, although the date is disputed. In 380, three Roman emperors issued the Edict of Thessalonica ( Cunctos populos ), making

1242-674: A Christian state under George Tupou I in the 19th century, with the Free Wesleyan Church , a member of the World Methodist Council , being established as the country's state Church. Under the rule of George Tupou I, there was established a "rigorous constitutional clause regulating observation of the Sabbath ". The Church of Tuvalu , a Calvinist church in the Congregationalist tradition,

1449-744: A French official to teachers in the department of Finistère , in western Brittany, included the following: "And remember, Gents: you were given your position in order to kill the Breton language". The prefect of Basses-Pyrénées in the French Basque Country wrote in 1846: "Our schools in the Basque Country are particularly meant to replace the Basque language with French..." Students were taught that their ancestral languages were inferior and they should be ashamed of them; this process

1656-656: A borderland of the Muslim world , Syria was an important theatre of jihad , though enthusiasm for pursuing it had faded by the end of the 11th   century. In contrast, the Catholic ideology of religious war quickly developed, culminating in the idea of crusades for lands claimed for Christianity. Most crusades came from what had been the Carolingian Empire around 800. The empire had disintegrated, and two loosely unified successor states had taken its place:

1863-431: A comprehensive academic study entitled "The World's 10 most influential languages". In the article, Weber ranked French as, after English, the second-most influential language of the world, ahead of Spanish. His criteria were the numbers of native speakers, the number of secondary speakers (especially high for French among fellow world languages), the number of countries using the language and their respective populations,

2070-555: A foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050. French is the fastest growing language on the continent (in terms of either official or foreign languages). French is increasingly being spoken as a native language in Francophone Africa, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and

2277-541: A group of pious knights about a monastic order for deeply religious warriors was likely first discussed at the council of Nablus. Church leaders quickly espoused the idea of armed monks, and within a decade, two military orders , the Knights Templar and Hospitaller , were formed. As the Fatimid Caliphate no longer posed a major threat to Jerusalem, but Antioch and Edessa were vulnerable to invasion,

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2484-471: A large force, committing all of his kingdom's available resources. The leadership divided on tactics. Raynald urged an offensive, while Raymond proposed defensive caution, although Saladin was besieging his castle at Tiberias. Guy decided to deal with the siege. The march towards Tiberias was arduous, and Saladin's troops overwhelmed the exhausted Frankish army at the Horns of Hattin on 4   July 1187. Hattin

2691-516: A marriage alliance with the Byzantines. Baldwin married Manuel's niece, Theodora , and received a significant dowry. With his consent, Manuel forced Raynald into accepting Byzantine overlordship. The childless Baldwin   III died in 1163. His younger brother Amalric had to repudiate his wife Agnes of Courtenay on grounds of consanguinity before his coronation, but the right of their two children, Baldwin IV and Sibylla , to inherit

2898-699: A military campaign against the Turks who had attacked Byzantine territories in Anatolia. Turkic migration permeated the Middle East from the 9th   century. Muslim border raiders captured unconverted Turkic nomads in the Central Asian borderlands and sold them to Islamic leaders who used them as slave soldiers. These were known as ghilman or mamluk and were emancipated when converted to Islam. Mamluks were valued primarily because

3105-558: A monopoly on official state recognition, although unusually Finland has two national churches (the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Finnish Orthodox Church ), both recognised under civil law as joint official churches of the nation. French language French ( français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] )

3312-549: A month after Baldwin's arrival, a Christian mob killed Thoros and acclaimed Baldwin as doux , the Byzantine title Thoros had used. Baldwin's position was personal rather than institutional, and the Armenian governance of the city remained in place. Baldwin's nascent County of Edessa consisted of pockets separated from his other holdings of Turbessel, Rawandan and Samosata by the territory of Turkic and Armenian warlords and

3519-544: A period of one thousand years Norway has been a kingdom with a Christian state church " and that a decree went out in 1739 ordering that "Elementary schooling for all Norwegian children became mandatory, so that all Norwegians should be able to read the Bible and the Lutheran Catechism firsthand." The modern Constitution of Norway stipulates that " The Church of Norway , an Evangelical-Lutheran church, will remain

3726-705: A period of prosperity and prominence among European nations. Richelieu established the Académie française to protect the French language. By the early 1800s, Parisian French had become the primary language of the aristocracy in France. Near the beginning of the 19th century, the French government began to pursue policies with the end goal of eradicating the many minorities and regional languages ( patois ) spoken in France. This began in 1794 with Henri Grégoire 's "Report on

3933-494: A relic of the old nominal case system of Latin longer than most other Romance languages (with the notable exception of Romanian which still currently maintains a case distinction), differentiating between an oblique case and a nominative case. The phonology was characterized by heavy syllabic stress, which led to the emergence of various complicated diphthongs such as -eau which would later be leveled to monophthongs. The earliest evidence of what became Old French can be seen in

4140-587: A second language. French is the second most taught foreign language in the EU. All institutions of the EU use French as a working language along with English and German ; in some institutions, French is the sole working language (e.g. at the Court of Justice of the European Union ). French is also the 16th most natively spoken language in the world, the sixth most spoken language by total number of speakers , and

4347-526: A second language. However it has also become a native language in a number of urban areas, especially in regions like Ivory Coast , Cameroon , Gabon, Madagascar , and the Democratic Republic of the Congo . In some North African countries, though not having official status, it is also a first language among some upper classes of the population alongside indigenous languages, but only

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4554-881: A second one among the general population. In 2015, approximately 40% of the Francophone population (including L2 and partial speakers) lived in Europe, 36% in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas, and 1% in Asia and Oceania. French is the second most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union . Of Europeans who speak other languages natively, approximately one-fifth are able to speak French as

4761-686: A split in the Ismā'īlist branch of Shia Islam. The Persian missionary Hassan-i Sabbah led a breakaway group, creating the Nizari branch of Isma'ilism. This was known as the New Preaching in Syria and the Order of Assassins in western historiography. The Order used targeted murder to compensate for their lack of military power. The Seljuk invasions, the subsequent eclipse of the Byzantines and Fatimids, and

4968-721: A state faith, it gives Catholic Christianity a preferential status. Before its 1994 amendment , the Constitution stated that the President of the Republic must be a Roman Catholic. In Armenia Christianity is the state religion and the Armenian Apostolic Church is the national church . Armenia is the first country who recognised Christianity as a state religion. The constitution of Costa Rica states that "The Catholic and Apostolic Religion

5175-482: A truce with Saladin. Gümüshtekin released Raynald of Châtillon and Baldwin's maternal uncle, Joscelin III of Courtenay , for a large ransom. They hastened to Jerusalem, and Raynald seized Oultrejourdain by marrying Stephanie of Milly . As Baldwin, a leper, was not expected to father children, his sister's marriage was to be arranged before his inevitable premature death from the disease. His regent, Raymond, chose William of Montferrat for Sybilla's husband. William

5382-547: A variant of Canadian French , is spoken in parts of New England . Missouri French was historically spoken in Missouri and Illinois (formerly known as Upper Louisiana ), but is nearly extinct today. French also survived in isolated pockets along the Gulf Coast of what was previously French Lower Louisiana , such as Mon Louis Island , Alabama and DeLisle, Mississippi (the latter only being discovered by linguists in

5589-437: Is 95%, and in the French collectivity of Wallis and Futuna , it is 84%. In French Polynesia and to a lesser extent Wallis and Futuna, where oral and written knowledge of the French language has become almost universal (95% and 84% respectively), French increasingly tends to displace the native Polynesian languages as the language most spoken at home. In French Polynesia, the percentage of the population who reported that French

5796-719: Is a Romance language of the Indo-European family . Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . French evolved from Gallo-Romance , the Latin spoken in Gaul , and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl —languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French ( Francien ) largely supplanted. French

6003-803: Is a member of the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches . All public schools have mandatory education in Christianity , although an exemption may be considered by the Minister of Education. Liechtenstein 's constitution designates the Catholic Church as being the state Church of that country. In public schools, per article 16 of the Constitution of Liechtenstein , religious education

6210-472: Is a widespread second language among the Lebanese people , and is taught in many schools along with Arabic and English. French is used on Lebanese pound banknotes, on road signs, on Lebanese license plates , and on official buildings (alongside Arabic). Today, French and English are secondary languages of Lebanon , with about 40% of the population being Francophone and 40% Anglophone. The use of English

6417-489: Is also a working language in nonprofit organisations such as the Red Cross (alongside English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian), Amnesty International (alongside 32 other languages of which English is the most used, followed by Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian), Médecins sans Frontières (used alongside English, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic), and Médecins du Monde (used alongside English). Given

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6624-430: Is among the top five most studied languages worldwide, with about 120 million learners as of 2017. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 16th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. French has a long history as an international language of literature and scientific standards and is a primary or second language of many international organisations including

6831-462: Is an official language in 27 countries , as well as one of the most geographically widespread languages in the world, with about 50 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. Most of these countries are members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the community of 54 member states which share

7038-731: Is ecclesiastically under the direct jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople . Being an autonomous constituent country within the Kingdom of Denmark , the Church of Denmark is the established church of Greenland through the Constitution of Denmark : The Evangelical Lutheran Church shall be the Established Church of Denmark, and, as such, it shall be supported by the State. This applies to all of

7245-652: Is enacted only in New Brunswick, where about one third of the population is Francophone. French is also an official language of all of the territories ( Northwest Territories , Nunavut , and Yukon ). Out of the three, Yukon has the most French speakers, making up just under 4% of the population. Furthermore, while French is not an official language in Ontario , the French Language Services Act ensures that provincial services are available in

7452-716: Is given by Church authorities. Section Two of the Constitution of Malta specifies the state's religion as being the Roman Catholic Apostolic Religion. It holds that the "authorities of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church have the duty to teach which principles are right and which are wrong" and that "religious teaching of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Faith shall be provided in all State schools as part of compulsory education". Article 9 of

7659-503: Is growing in the business and media environment. Out of about 900,000 students, about 500,000 are enrolled in Francophone schools, public or private, in which the teaching of mathematics and scientific subjects is provided in French. Actual usage of French varies depending on the region and social status. One-third of high school students educated in French go on to pursue higher education in English-speaking institutions. English

7866-404: Is known as Old French. The period of Old French spanned between the 8th and 14th centuries. Old French shared many characteristics with Latin. For example, Old French made use of different possible word orders just as Latin did because it had a case system that retained the difference between nominative subjects and oblique non-subjects . The period is marked by a heavy superstrate influence from

8073-469: Is often considered to be a useful skill by business owners in the United Kingdom; a 2014 study found that 50% of British managers considered French to be a valuable asset for their business, thus ranking French as the most sought-after foreign language there, ahead of German (49%) and Spanish (44%). MIT economist Albert Saiz calculated a 2.3% premium for those who have French as a foreign language in

8280-828: Is one of the official languages of such major international and regional courts, tribunals, and dispute-settlement bodies as the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights , the Caribbean Court of Justice , the Court of Justice for the Economic Community of West African States , the Inter-American Court of Human Rights , the International Court of Justice , the International Criminal Tribunal for

8487-471: Is responsible for the "maintenance of church buildings and cemeteries". In the mid-20th century, the vast majority of Norwegians participated in the Lutheran Church. According to a 1957 description, "[o]ver 90 percent of the population are married by state church clergymen, have their children baptized and confirmed , and finally are buried with a church service." However, current membership in

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8694-576: Is taught in universities around the world, and is one of the world's most influential languages because of its wide use in the worlds of journalism, jurisprudence , education, and diplomacy. In diplomacy, French is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (and one of the UN Secretariat 's only two working languages ), one of twenty official and three procedural languages of the European Union , an official language of NATO ,

8901-553: Is the language of business and communication, with French being an element of social distinction, chosen for its emotional value. French is an official language of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu , where 31% of the population was estimated to speak it in 2023. In the French special collectivity of New Caledonia , 97% of the population can speak, read and write French while in French Polynesia this figure

9108-431: Is the native language of about 23% of the Swiss population, and is spoken by 50% of the population. Along with Luxembourgish and German, French is one of the three official languages of Luxembourg , where it is generally the preferred language of business as well as of the different public administrations. It is also the official language of Monaco . At a regional level, French is acknowledged as an official language in

9315-402: Is the religion of the State". As such, Catholic Christian holy days are recognized by the government and "public schools provide religious education ", although parents are able to opt-out their children if they choose to do so. As early as the 11th century AD, "Denmark was considered to be a Christian state", with the Church of Denmark , a member of the Lutheran World Federation , being

9522-492: Is the second-most spoken language (after English) in the states of Maine and New Hampshire . In Louisiana , it is tied with Spanish for second-most spoken if Louisiana French and all creoles such as Haitian are included. French is the third most spoken language (after English and Spanish) in the states of Connecticut , Rhode Island , and New Hampshire . Louisiana is home to many distinct French dialects, collectively known as Louisiana French . New England French , essentially

9729-424: Is the sole official language in the province of Quebec , where some 80% of the population speak it as a native language and 95% are capable of conducting a conversation in it. Quebec is also home to the city of Montreal , which is the world's fourth-largest French-speaking city, by number of first language speakers. New Brunswick and Manitoba are the only officially bilingual provinces, though full bilingualism

9936-440: Is the state church of Tuvalu and was established as such in 1991. The Constitution of Tuvalu identifies Tuvalu as "an independent State based on Christian principles". Vatican City is a Christian state, in which the " Pope is ex officio simultaneously leader of the Catholic Church as well as Head of State and Head of the Government of the State of the Vatican City; he also possesses ( de jure ) absolute authority over

10143-437: The atabeg kept power after his ward reached the age of majority or died. The Seljuks adopted and strengthened the traditional iqta' system of the administration of state revenues. This system secured the payment of military commanders through granting them the right to collect the land tax in a well-defined territory, but it exposed the taxpayers to an absent lord's greed and to his officials' arbitrary actions. Although

10350-481: The Aosta Valley region of Italy where it is the first language of approximately 50% of the population, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands . It is also spoken in Andorra and is the main language after Catalan in El Pas de la Casa . The language is taught as the primary second language in the German state of Saarland , with French being taught from pre-school and over 43% of citizens being able to speak French. The majority of

10557-413: The Aosta Valley region of Italy; and various communities elsewhere. French is estimated to have about 310 million speakers, of which about 80 million are native speakers. According to the OIF, approximately 321 million people worldwide are "able to speak the language" as of 2022, without specifying the criteria for this estimation or whom it encompasses. In Francophone Africa, it is spoken mainly as

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10764-458: The Constitution of Monaco describes " La religion catholique, apostolique et romaine [the catholic, apostolic and Roman religion]" as the religion of the state. Church and state were formally separated in 2017 after a change to the constitution in 2012. A timeline for the relationship between church and state is provided on the Norwegian Government's official website. Cole Durham and Tore Sam Lindholm, writing in 2013, stated that "For

10971-539: The Democratic Republic of Congo . There is not a single African French , but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages . Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth. It is also where the language has evolved the most in recent years. Some vernacular forms of French in Africa can be difficult to understand for French speakers from other countries, but written forms of

11178-399: The Eastern Mediterranean , the four states were, in order from north to south: the County of Edessa (1098–1144), the Principality of Antioch (1098–1268), the County of Tripoli (1102–1289), and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291). The three northern states covered an area in what is now southeastern Turkey , northwestern Syria , and northern Lebanon ; and the Kingdom of Jerusalem,

11385-421: The Euphrates . In the Middle Ages the Crusader states were also called Syria or Syrie . From around 1115, the ruler of Jerusalem was styled 'king of the Latins in Jerusalem'. Historian Hans Eberhard Mayer believes this reflected that only Latins held complete political and legal rights in the kingdom, and that the major division in the society was not between the nobility and the common people but between

11592-485: The European Union , French was the dominant language within all institutions until the 1990s. After several enlargements of the EU (1995, 2004), French significantly lost ground in favour of English, which is more widely spoken and taught in most EU countries. French currently remains one of the three working languages, or "procedural languages", of the EU, along with English and German. It is the second-most widely used language within EU institutions after English, but remains

11799-510: The Fatimid vizier , Al-Afdal Shahanshah at Ascalon . When Daimbert of Pisa , the papal legate, arrived in the Levant with 120 Pisan ships, Godfrey gained much-needed naval support by backing him for the Patriarchate of Jerusalem , as well as granting him parts of Jerusalem and the Pisans a section of the port of Jaffa . Daimbert revived the idea of creating an ecclesiastic principality and extracted oaths of fealty from Godfrey and Bohemond. When Godfrey died in 1100, his retainers occupied

12006-441: The Francien dialect is one that not only continued but also thrived during the Middle French period (14th–17th centuries). Modern French grew out of this Francien dialect. Grammatically, during the period of Middle French, noun declensions were lost and there began to be standardized rules. Robert Estienne published the first Latin-French dictionary, which included information about phonetics, etymology, and grammar. Politically,

12213-547: The Greek patriarch of Antioch . Bohemond never returned. He died, leaving an underage son Bohemond II . Tancred continued as regent of Antioch and ignored the treaty. Richard's son, Roger of Salerno , succeeded as regent on Tancred's death in 1112. The fall of Tripoli prompted Sultan Muhammad Tapar to appoint the atabeg of Mosul, Mawdud , to wage jihad against the Franks. Between 1110 and 1113, Mawdud mounted four campaigns in Mesopotamia and Syria, but rivalry among his heterogeneous armies' commanders forced him to abandon

12420-456: The Holy Land and North Africa. The First Great Awakening , American Revolution , and Second Great Awakening caused two rounds of disestablishment among the states of the new United States , from 1776 to 1833. Article 2 of the Constitution of Argentina explicitly states that "the Federal Government supports the Roman Catholic Apostolic Faith" and Article 14 guarantees freedom of religion . Although it enforces neither an official nor

12627-429: The Holy Roman Empire , which encompassed Germany , part of northern Italy , and the neighbouring lands; and France. Germany was divided into duchies , such as Lower Lorraine and Saxony , and their dukes did not always obey the emperors. Northern Italy was even less united, divided into numerous de facto independent states, and the authority of the emperor was barely felt. Carolingian's western successor state, France,

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12834-410: The Iberian Peninsula to fight the Moors of Al-Andalus ; and Italian fleets launched pillaging raids against the north African ports. This shift of power especially benefited merchants from the Italian city-states of Amalfi , Genoa , Pisa , and Venice . They replaced the Muslim and Jewish middlemen in the lucrative trans-Mediterranean commerce, and their fleets became the dominant naval forces in

13041-439: The International Olympic Committee , the Council of Europe , the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , Organization of American States (alongside Spanish, Portuguese and English), the Eurovision Song Contest , one of eighteen official languages of the European Space Agency , World Trade Organization and the least used of the three official languages in the North American Free Trade Agreement countries. It

13248-424: The Levant in around 1100: (from north to south) the County of Edessa , the Principality of Antioch , the County of Tripoli , and the Kingdom of Jerusalem . The term Outremer is of medieval origin, whilst modern historians use Crusader states, and the term Franks for the European incomers. However, relatively few of the incoming Europeans took a crusader oath. The Latin chronicles of the First Crusade, written in

13455-420: The Oaths of Strasbourg and the Sequence of Saint Eulalia , while Old French literature began to be produced in the eleventh century, with major early works often focusing on the lives of saints (such as the Vie de Saint Alexis ), or wars and royal courts, notably including the Chanson de Roland , epic cycles focused on King Arthur and his court , as well as a cycle focused on William of Orange . It

13662-476: The People of the Book , like Christians and Jews. The dhimmi were second-class citizens, obliged to pay a special poll tax , the jizya , but they could practise their religion and maintain their own law courts. Theological, liturgical, and cultural differences had given rise to the development of competing Christian denominations in the Levant before the 7th-century Muslim conquest . The Greek Orthodox natives, or Melkites , remained in full communion with

13869-417: The Roman Empire had previously held, would be handed to Alexios' Byzantine representatives. Only Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse refused this oath, instead promising non-aggression towards Alexios. The Byzantine Tatikios guided the crusade on the arduous three-month march to besiege Antioch , during which the Franks made alliances with local Armenians. Before reaching Antioch, Baldwin and his men left

14076-621: The Russian Empire , the Spanish Empire , the British Empire , the Portuguese Empire , and the Frankish Empire , the Belgian colonial empire , the French empire . Today, several nations officially identify themselves as Christian states or have state churches. These countries include Argentina , Armenia , Costa Rica , El Salvador , Denmark (incl. Greenland and the Faroes ), England , Georgia , Greece , Hungary , Iceland , Liechtenstein , Malta , Monaco , Norway , Samoa , Serbia , Tonga , Tuvalu , Vatican City , and Zambia . A Christian state stands in contrast to

14283-457: The Tower of David to secure his inheritance for his brother Baldwin. Daimbert and Tancred sought Bohemond's help against the Lotharingians, but the Danishmends captured Bohemond under Gazi Gümüshtigin while securing Antioch's northern marches. Before departing for Jerusalem, Baldwin ceded Edessa to his cousin, Baldwin of Bourcq . His arrival thwarted Daimbert, who crowned Baldwin as Jerusalem's first Latin king on Christmas Day 1100. By performing

14490-520: The United Nations , the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization , the World Trade Organization , the International Olympic Committee , the General Conference on Weights and Measures , and the International Committee of the Red Cross . French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin ) that evolved out of the Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in northern France. The language's early forms include Old French and Middle French . Due to Roman rule, Latin

14697-636: The prophets of the Hebrew Bible . All of the holy sites in Judaism were found there, including the remains of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70AD. The New Testament presented Palestine as the venue of the acts of Jesus and his Apostles . Islamic tradition described the region's principal city, Jerusalem, as the site of the Isra' and Mi'raj , Muhammad's miraculous night travel and ascension to Heaven. Places associated with holy people developed into shrines visited by pilgrims coming from faraway lands, often as an act of penance . The surge in Christian pilgrimage also inspired many Jews to return to

14904-506: The 1990s) but these varieties are severely endangered or presumed extinct. French is one of two official languages in Haiti alongside Haitian Creole . It is the principal language of education, administration, business, and public signage and is spoken by all educated Haitians. It is also used for ceremonial events such as weddings, graduations, and church masses. The vast majority of the population speaks Haitian Creole as their first language;

15111-836: The 20th century, when it was replaced by English as the United States became the dominant global power following the Second World War . Stanley Meisler of the Los Angeles Times said that the fact that the Treaty of Versailles was written in English as well as French was the "first diplomatic blow" against the language. During the Grand Siècle (17th century), France, under the rule of powerful leaders such as Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV , enjoyed

15318-563: The 4th century, in the Kingdom of Aksum , after Ezana 's conversion to the faith, this empire also became a Christian state. In the Middle Ages , efforts were made in order to establish a Pan-Christianity state by uniting the countries within Christendom . Christian nationalism played a role in this era in which Christians felt the impulse to also recover those territories in which Christianity historically flourished, such as

15525-531: The Arab Banu Munqidh seized Shaizar , and Tutush's sons Duqaq and Ridwan succeeded in Damascus and Aleppo respectively, but their atabegs , Janah ad-Dawla and Toghtekin were in control. Ridwan's retainer Sokman ben Artuq held Jerusalem; Ridwan's father-in-law, Yağısıyan , ruled Antioch; and a warlord representing Byzantine interests, called Thoros , seized Edessa. During this period

15732-500: The Byzantine alliance. This dispute resulted in the march stalling in north Syria. The crusaders were becoming aware of the chaotic state of Muslim politics through frequent diplomatic relations with the Muslim powers. Raymond indulged in a small expedition. He bypassed Shaizar and laid siege to Arqa to enforce the payment of a tribute. In Raymond's absence, Bohemond expelled Raymond's last troops from Antioch and consolidated his rule in

15939-619: The Byzantine imperial church, and their religious leaders often came from the Byzantine capital, Constantinople . In the 5th   century, the Nestorians , and the Monophysite Jacobites , Armenians , and Copts , broke with the Byzantine state church. The Maronites ' separate church organisation emerged under Muslim rule. During the late 10th and early 11th   centuries, the Byzantine Empire had been on

16146-662: The Byzantines and Franks jointly besieged Aleppo and Shaizar but could not take the towns. Zengi soon seized Homs from the Damascenes, but a Damascene–Jerusalemite coalition prevented his southward expansion. Joscelin made an alliance with the Artuqid Kara Arslan , who was Zengi's principal Muslim rival in Upper Mesopotamia. While Joscelin was staying west of the Euphrates at Turbessel, Zengi invaded

16353-550: The Byzantines from campaigning in the Levant. In theory, Saladin was Nur ad-Din's lieutenant, but mutual distrust hindered their cooperation against the crusader states. As Saladin remitted suspiciously small revenue payments to him, Nur ad-Din began gathering troops for an attack on Egypt, but he died in May 1174. He left an 11-year-old son, As-Salih Ismail al-Malik . Within two months, Amalric died. His son and successor, Baldwin   IV,

16560-630: The Byzantines, Arabs, and Turks squeezed populations of Armenians . The Seljuks contested control of southern Palestine with Egypt, where Shia rulers ruled a majority Sunni populace through powerful viziers who were mainly Turkic or Armenian, rather than Egyptian or Arab. The Seljuks and the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt hated each other, as the Seljuk saw themselves as defenders of the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate and Fatimid Egypt

16767-703: The Canadian capital, is also effectively bilingual, as it has a large population of federal government workers, who are required to offer services in both French and English, and is just across the river from the Quebecois city of Gatineau . According to the United States Census Bureau (2011), French is the fourth most spoken language in the United States after English, Spanish, and Chinese, when all forms of French are considered together and all dialects of Chinese are similarly combined. French

16974-917: The Caribbean that are collectively referred to as the French West Indies , namely Guadeloupe , Saint Barthélemy , Saint Martin , and Martinique . French is the official language of both French Guiana on the South American continent, and of Saint Pierre and Miquelon , an archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland in North America. French was the official language of the colony of French Indochina , comprising modern-day Vietnam , Laos , and Cambodia . It continues to be an administrative language in Laos and Cambodia, although its influence has waned in recent decades. In colonial Vietnam,

17181-684: The Cilician Armenian prince, Ruben   III . Saladin granted a truce to Bohemond and made preparations for an invasion of Jerusalem where Guy took command of the defence. When Saladin invaded Galilee, the Franks responded with what William of Tyre described in his contemporaneous chronicle as their largest army in living memory but avoided fighting a battle. After days of fierce skirmishing, Saladin withdrew towards Damascus. Baldwin dismissed Guy from his position as bailli , apparently because Guy had proved unable to overcome factionalism in

17388-722: The Cilician plain. In 1133, the Antiochene nobility asked Fulk to propose a husband for Constance, and he selected Raymond of Poitiers , a younger son of William IX of Aquitaine . Raymond finally arrived in Antioch three years later and married Constance. He reconquered parts of Cilicia from the Armenians. In 1137, Pons was killed battling the Damascenes, and Zengi invaded Tripoli. Fulk intervened, but Zengi's troops captured Pons' successor Raymond   II , and besieged Fulk in

17595-711: The Ecumenical Patriarch against the Papacy, but the East–West Schism was not yet inevitable, and the Catholic and Orthodox Churches remained in full communion . The Gregorian Reform enhanced the popes' influence on secular matters. To achieve political goals, popes excommunicated their opponents, placed entire realms under interdict and promised spiritual rewards to those who took up arms for their cause. In 1074 Pope Gregory VII even considered leading

17802-538: The Empire, this local elite had been slowly abandoning Gaulish entirely, but the rural and lower class populations remained Gaulish speakers who could sometimes also speak Latin or Greek. The final language shift from Gaulish to Vulgar Latin among rural and lower class populations occurred later, when both they and the incoming Frankish ruler/military class adopted the Gallo-Roman Vulgar Latin speech of

18009-635: The Established Church of Norway and will as such be supported by the State." As such, the "Norwegian constitution decrees that Lutheranism is the official religion of the State and that the King is the supreme temporal head of the Church." The administration of the Church "is shared between the Ministry for Church, Education and Research centrally and municipal authorities locally", and the Church of Norway "depends on state and local taxes". The Church of Norway

18216-401: The Euphrates. As the crusaders marched towards Antioch, Syrian Muslims asked Sultan Barkiyaruq for help, but he was engaged in a power struggle with his brother Muhammad Tapar . At Antioch, Bohemond persuaded the other leaders the city should be his if he could capture it, and Alexios did not come to claim it. Alexios withdrew, rather than join the siege, after Stephen, Count of Blois (who

18423-871: The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway is much lower, standing at 65% of the population in 2021. Samoa became a Christian state in 2017. Article 1 of the Samoan Constitution states that “Samoa is a Christian nation founded of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”. Serbia as a territory became a Christian state during the time of Constantine the Great in Christianization of Eastern Roman Empire , according to

18630-643: The Frankish lands east of the river in late 1144. Before the end of the year, he captured the region, including the city of Edessa. Losing Edessa strategically threatened Antioch and limited opportunities for a Jerusalemite expansion in the south. In September 1146, Zengi was assassinated, possibly on orders from Damascus. His empire was divided between his two sons, with the younger Nur ad-Din succeeding him in Aleppo. A power vacuum in Edessa allowed Joscelin to return to

18837-401: The Franks and the indigenous peoples. Despite sometimes receiving homage from, and acting as regent for, the rulers of the other states; the king held no formalised overlord status, and those states remained legally outside the kingdom. Jews, Christians, and Muslims respected Palestine, known as the Holy Land , as an exceptionally sacred place. They all associated the region with the lives of

19044-826: The Franks offered the regency and the Egyptian invasion's command to Baldwin's crusader cousin Philip ;I, Count of Flanders . He wanted to be free to return to Flanders and rejected both offers. The plan for the invasion was abandoned, and the Byzantine fleet sailed for Constantinople. Baldwin negotiated a marriage between Hugh III, Duke of Burgundy , and Sibylla, but the succession crisis in France prevented him from sailing. Tension between Baldwin's maternal and paternal relatives grew. When Raymond and Bohemond, both related to him on his father's side, came to Jerusalem unexpectedly before Easter in 1180, Baldwin panicked, fearing they had arrived to depose him and elevate Sibylla to

19251-483: The French colonial experience in the Levant, though this was rejected by 20th-century historians. Their consensus was that the Frankish population, as the Western Europeans were known at the time, lived as a minority society that was largely urban and isolated from the indigenous Levantine peoples , having separate legal and religious systems. The ancient Jewish communities that had survived and remained in

19458-478: The French nobleman Raynald of Châtillon as her second husband. From 1149, all Fatimid caliphs were children, and military commanders were competing for power. Ascalon, the Fatimids' last Palestinian bridgehead, hindered Frankish raids against Egypt, but Baldwin captured the town in 1153. The Damascenes feared further Frankish expansion, and Nur ad-Din seized the city with ease a year later. He continued to remit

19665-484: The Germanic Frankish language , which non-exhaustively included the use in upper-class speech and higher registers of V2 word order , a large percentage of the vocabulary (now at around 15% of modern French vocabulary ) including the impersonal singular pronoun on (a calque of Germanic man ), and the name of the language itself. Up until its later stages, Old French , alongside Old Occitan , maintained

19872-591: The Holy Land, although in the decades following the destruction of the large Crusade of 1101 in Anatolia, only smaller groups of armed pilgrims departed for Outremer. The Fatimids' feud with the Seljuks hindered Muslim actions for more than a decade. Outnumbered by their enemies, the Franks remained in a vulnerable position, but they could forge temporary alliances with their Armenian, Arab, and Turkic neighbours. Each crusader state had its own strategic purpose during

20079-750: The Holy Land. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built to commemorate Christ's crucifixion and resurrection in Jerusalem. The Church of the Nativity was thought to enclose his birthplace in Bethlehem . The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque commemorated Muhammad's night journey. Although the most sacred places of devotion were in Palestine, there were also shrines in neighbouring Syria. As

20286-711: The Kingdom of Denmark, except for the Faroe Islands , as the Church of the Faroe Islands became independent in 2007. The preamble to the Hungarian Constitution of 2011 describes Hungary as "part of Christian Europe" and acknowledges "the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood", while Article VII provides that "the State shall cooperate with the Churches for community goals". However,

20493-683: The Levant collapsed shortly thereafter, when the Mamluks captured Acre in 1291 , ending the Kingdom of Jerusalem nearly 200 years after it was founded. With all four of the states defeated and annexed, the survivors fled to the Kingdom of Cyprus , which had been established by the Third Crusade . The study of the Crusader states in their own right, as opposed to being a sub-topic of the Crusades , began in 19th-century France as an analogy to

20700-562: The Levant profoundly. Frankish rulers replaced local warlords in the cities, but large-scale colonisation did not follow, and the new conquerors did not change the traditional organisation of settlements and property in the countryside. The Muslim leaders were massacred or forced into exile, and the natives, accustomed to the rule of well-organised warbands, offered little resistance to their new lords. Western Christianity's canon law recognised that peace treaties and armistices between Christians and Muslims were valid. The Frankish knights regarded

20907-470: The Mediterranean coast to Jerusalem. On 15 July 1099, crusaders took the city after a siege lasting barely longer than a month. Thousands of Muslims and Jews were killed, and the survivors sold into slavery. Proposals to govern the city as an ecclesiastical state were rejected. Raymond refused the royal title, claiming only Christ could wear a crown in Jerusalem. This may have been to dissuade

21114-647: The Muslims were on the offensive , and commercial contacts primarily enriched the Islamic world . Europe was rural and underdeveloped, offering little more than raw materials and slaves in return for spices, cloth, and other luxuries from the Middle East . Climate change during the Medieval Warm Period affected the Middle East and western Europe differently. In the east, it caused droughts, while in

21321-661: The Patriarch of Georgia . The Orthodox Church is the most trusted institution in the country and its head, Patriarch Ilia II , the most trusted person. Greece is a Christian state, with the Greek Orthodox Church playing "a dominant role in the life of the country". Mount Athos and most of the Athos peninsula are governed as an autonomous region in Greece by the monastic community of Mount Athos , which

21528-828: The Roman Empire a Christian state, and establishing Nicene Christianity , in the form of its State Church , as its official religion. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, the Eastern Roman Empire under the emperor Justinian (reigned 527–565), became the world's predominant Christian state, based on Roman law, Greek culture, and the Greek language." In this Christian state, in which nearly all of its subjects upheld faith in Jesus, an "enormous amount of artistic talent

21735-512: The Seljuk state worked when family ties and personal loyalty overlapped the leaders' personal ambitions, the lavish iqta' grants combined with rivalries between maliks , atabegs , and military commanders could lead to disintegration in critical moments. The region's ethnic and religious diversity led to alienation among the ruled populations. In Syria, the Seljuk Sunnis ruled indigenous Shias . In Cilicia and northern Syria,

21942-610: The Seljuk threat. What the Emperor probably had in mind was a relatively modest force, and Urban far exceeded his expectations by calling for the First Crusade at the later Council of Clermont . He developed a doctrine of bellum sacrum (Christian holy war) and, based mainly on Old Testament passages in which God leads the Hebrews to victory in war, reconciled this with Church teachings. Urban's call for an armed pilgrimage for

22149-534: The Seljuks of Rum, Saladin concluded a two-year truce with Baldwin and, after launching a short but devastating campaign along the coast of Tripoli, with Raymond. For the first time in the history of Frankish–Muslim relations, the Franks could not set conditions for the peace. Between 1180 and 1183, Saladin asserted his suzerainty over the Artuqids, concluded a peace treaty with the Rum Seljuks, seized Aleppo from

22356-519: The Sultanate of Rum to reopen the Anatolian pilgrimage route towards the Holy Land. His defeat at Myriokephalon weakened the Byzantines' hold on Cilicia. Upholding the balance of power in Syria was apparently Raymond's main concern during his regency. When Saladin besieged Aleppo in 1174, Raymond led a relief army to the city; next year, when a united Zengid army invaded Saladin's realm, he signed

22563-434: The Turkic mounted warlords as their peers with familiar moral values, and this familiarity facilitated their negotiations with the Muslim leaders. The conquest of a city was often accompanied by a treaty with the neighbouring Muslim rulers who were customarily forced to pay a tribute for the peace. The crusader states had a special position in Western Christianity's consciousness: many Catholic aristocrats were ready to fight for

22770-443: The United Kingdom. English schools have a legal requirement for a daily act of collective worship "of a broadly Christian character" that is widely flouted. The Church of the Faroe Islands is the state church of Faroe Islands . Georgia is one of the oldest Christian states. Article 8 of Georgian Constitution and the Concordat of 2002 grants the Georgian Orthodox Church special privileges, which include legal immunity to

22977-413: The West for campaigning. Thierry, Baldwin, Raynald and Raymond III of Tripoli attacked Shaizar. Baldwin offered the city to Thierry, who refused Raynald's demands he become his vassal, and the siege was abandoned. After Nur ad-Din seized Shaizar in 1157, the Nizari remained the last independent Muslim power in Syria. As prospects for a new crusade from the West were poor, the Franks of Jerusalem sought

23184-434: The Zengids and re-established the Egyptian navy. Meanwhile, after the truce expired in 1182, Saladin demonstrated the strategic advantage he had by holding both Cairo and Damascus. While he faced Baldwin in Oultrejordain, his troops from Syria pillaged Galilee. The Franks adopted a defensive tactic and strengthened their fortresses. In February 1183, a Jerusalemite assembly levied an extraordinary tax for defence funding. Raynald

23391-436: The ailing Baldwin   V's guardianship. As there was no consensus on what should happen if the boy king died, it would be for the pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, the kings of France and England to decide whether his mother Sibylla or her half-sister Isabella had stronger claim to the throne. Bohemond was staying at Acre around this time, allegedly because Baldwin   IV wanted to secure Bohemond's support for his decisions on

23598-483: The army. In November 1183, Baldwin made Guy's five-year-old stepson, also called Baldwin , co-ruler, and had him crowned king while attempting to annul the marriage of Guy and Sibylla. Guy and Sibylla fled to Ascalon, and his supporters vainly intervened on their behalf at a general council. An embassy to Europe was met with offers of money but not of military support. Already dying, Baldwin   IV appointed Raymond bailli for 10   years, but charged Joscelin with

23805-470: The barons but Baldwin of Ibelin and Raymond swore fealty to the royal couple. Baldwin went into exile, and Raymond forged an alliance with Saladin. Raynald seized another caravan, which violated the truce and prompted Saladin to assemble his forces for the jihād. Raymond allowed Muslim troops to pass through Galilee to raid around Acre. His shock at the Frankish defeat in the resulting Battle of Cresson brought him to reconciliation with Guy. Guy now gathered

24012-421: The barons to Nablus to a general council. In his absence, Sybilla's supporters, led by Joscelin and Raynald, took full control of Jerusalem, Acre and Beirut. Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem crowned her queen and appointed Guy her co-ruler. The barons assembling at Nablus offered the crown to Isabella's husband Humphrey IV of Toron , but he submitted to Sybilla to avoid a civil war. After his desertion, all

24219-464: The border castle of Montferrand . Fulk surrendered the castle and paid Zengi 50,000   dinars for his and Raymond's freedom. Emperor Alexios' son and successor, John II Komnenos , reasserted Byzantine claims to Cilicia and Antioch. His military campaign compelled Raymond of Poitiers to give homage and agree that he would surrender Antioch by way of compensation if the Byzantines ever captured Aleppo, Homs , and Shaizar for him. The following year

24426-501: The ceremony, the Patriarch abandoned his claim to rule the Holy Land. Tancred remained defiant to Baldwin until an Antiochene delegation offered him the regency in March 1101. He ceded his Principality of Galilee to the king, but reserved the right to reclaim it as a fief if he returned from Antioch within fifteen months. For the next two years, Tancred ruled Antioch. He conquered Byzantine Cilicia and parts of Syria. The Fatimid Caliphate attacked Jerusalem in 1101 , 1102 and 1105 , on

24633-449: The city leaders sought external protection. They allied with the adventurous Artuqid princes, Ilghazi and Balak , who inflicted crucial defeats on the Franks between 1119 and 1124, but could rarely prevent Frankish counter-invasions. In 1118 Baldwin of Bourcq succeeded Baldwin   I as King of Jerusalem, naming Joscelin his successor in Edessa. After Roger was killed at Ager Sanguinis ('Field of Blood'), Baldwin   II assumed

24840-462: The city, but he was unable to take the citadel. When Nur ad-Din arrived, the Franks were trapped, Joscelin fled and the subsequent sack left the city deserted. The fall of Edessa shocked Western opinion, prompting the largest military response since the First Crusade. The new crusade consisted of two great armies led overland by Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany , arriving in Acre in 1148. The arduous march had greatly reduced

25047-455: The connection between the two processes is unclear. As feudal lordships could be established by the acquiring land, western aristocrats willingly launched offensive military campaigns, even against faraway territories. Catholic Europe's expansion in the Mediterranean began in the second half of the 11th century. Norman warlords conquered southern Italy from the Byzantines and ousted the Muslim rulers from Sicily; French aristocrats hastened to

25254-486: The conquest, but tens of thousands of Franks were enslaved. Those who could negotiate a free passage or were ransomed swarmed to Tyre, Tripoli, or Antioch. Conrad of Montferrat commanded the defences of Tyre . He was William's brother and arrived only days after Hattin. The childless Raymond died, and Bohemond's younger son, also called Bohemond , assumed power in Tripoli. After news of the Franks' devastating defeat at Hattin reached Italy, Pope Gregory VIII called for

25461-483: The constitution also guarantees freedom of religion and separation of church and state. Around AD 1000, Iceland became a Christian state . The Encyclopedia of Protestantism states that: The majority of Icelanders are members of the state church. Almost all children are baptized as Lutheran and more than 90 percent are subsequently confirmed . The church conducts 75 percent of all marriages and 99 percent of all funerals. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Iceland

25668-420: The defence of the northern crusader states took much of Baldwin   II's time. His absence, its impact on government, and his placement of relatives and their vassals in positions of power created opposition in Jerusalem. Baldwin's sixteen-month captivity led to a failed deposition attempt by some of the nobility, with the Flemish count , Charles the Good , considered as a possible replacement. Charles declined

25875-404: The demographic prospects of the French-speaking nations of Africa, researcher Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote in 2014 that French "could be the language of the future". However, some African countries such as Algeria intermittently attempted to eradicate the use of French, and as of 2024 it was removed as an official language in Mali and Burkina Faso . Significant as a judicial language, French

26082-446: The developing Principality of Antioch. Under pressure from the poorer Franks, Godfrey and Robert II, Count of Flanders reluctantly joined the eventually unsuccessful siege of Arqa. Alexios asked the crusade to delay the march to Jerusalem, so the Byzantines could assist. Raymond's support for this strategy increased division among the crusade leaders and damaged his reputation among ordinary crusaders. The crusaders marched along

26289-479: The disintegration of the Seljuk Empire revived the old Levantine system of city-states. The region had always been highly urbanised, and the local societies were organised into networks of interdependent settlements, each centred around a city or a major town. These networks developed into autonomous lordships under the rule of a Turkic, Arab or Armenian warlord or town magistrate in the late 11th   century. The local quadis took control of Tyre and Tripoli ,

26496-467: The early 11th century, called the Western Christians who came from Europe Franci irrespective of their ethnicity. Byzantine Greek sources use Φράγκοι Frangi and Arabic الإفرنجي al-Ifranji . Alternatively, the chronicles used Latini , or Latins . These medieval ethnonyms reflect that the settlers could be differentiated from the indigenous population by language and faith. The Franks were mainly French-speaking Roman Catholics, while

26703-448: The economic power of the countries using the language, the number of major areas in which the language is used, and the linguistic prestige associated with the mastery of the language (Weber highlighted that French in particular enjoys considerable linguistic prestige). In a 2008 reassessment of his article, Weber concluded that his findings were still correct since "the situation among the top ten remains unchanged." Knowledge of French

26910-489: The elites primarily spoke French, while many servants who worked in French households spoke a French pidgin known as " Tây Bồi " (now extinct). After French rule ended, South Vietnam continued to use French in administration, education, and trade. However, since the Fall of Saigon and the opening of a unified Vietnam's economy, French has gradually been effectively displaced as the first foreign language of choice by English in Vietnam. Nevertheless, it continues to be taught as

27117-440: The expenses of the Church of Denmark to run the civil registration and the burial system for all citizens." Barbara Yorke writes that the " Carolingian Renaissance heightened appreciation within England of the role of king and church in a Christian state." As such, Since the 1701 Act of Establishment , England's official state church has been the Church of England , the monarch being its supreme governor and ' defender of

27324-431: The faith '. He , together with Parliament, has a say in appointing bishops , twenty-six of whom have ex officio seats in the House of Lords . In characteristically British fashion, where the state is representative of civil society, it was Parliament that determined, in the Act of Establishment, that the monarch had to be Anglican . Christian religious education is taught to children in primary and secondary schools in

27531-426: The feudal armies commanded by western nobles. By dazzling them with wealth and charming them with flattery, Alexios extracted oaths of fealty from most of the Crusader commanders. As his vassals, Godfrey of Bouillon , nominally duke of Lower Lorraine ; the Italo-Norman Bohemond of Taranto ; Bohemond's nephew Tancred of Hauteville ; and Godfrey's brother Baldwin of Bologne all swore that any territory gained which

27738-447: The first Christian state. That honour traditionally goes to the church of Armenia. As a Christian state, Armenia "embraced Christianity as the religion of the King, the nobles, and the people". In 326, according to official tradition of the Georgian Orthodox Church, following the conversion of Mirian and Nana , the country of Georgia became a Christian state, the Emperor Constantine the Great sending clerics for baptising people. In

27945-406: The first government authority to adopt Modern French as official was the Aosta Valley in 1536, while the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539) named French the language of law in the Kingdom of France . During the 17th century, French replaced Latin as the most important language of diplomacy and international relations ( lingua franca ). It retained this role until approximately the middle of

28152-545: The first years of its existence. Jerusalem needed undisturbed access to the Mediterranean; Antioch wanted to seize Cilicia and the territory along the upper course of the Orontes River ; and Edessa aspired to control the Upper Euphrates valley. The most powerful Syrian Muslim ruler, Toghtekin of Damascus , took a practical approach to dealing with the Franks. His treaties establishing Damascene–Jerusalemite condominiums (shared rule) in debated territories created precedents for other Muslim leaders. In August 1099, Godfrey defeated

28359-439: The former Yugoslavia , International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda , the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea the International Criminal Court and the World Trade Organization Appellate Body . It is the sole internal working language of the Court of Justice of the European Union , and makes with English the European Court of Human Rights 's two working languages. In 1997, George Weber published, in Language Today ,

28566-715: The gender of the corresponding word in Gaulish. The estimated number of French words that can be attributed to Gaulish is placed at 154 by the Petit Robert , which is often viewed as representing standardized French, while if non-standard dialects are included, the number increases to 240. Known Gaulish loans are skewed toward certain semantic fields, such as plant life ( chêne , bille , etc.), animals ( mouton , cheval , etc.), nature ( boue , etc.), domestic activities (ex. berceau ), farming and rural units of measure ( arpent , lieue , borne , boisseau ), weapons, and products traded regionally rather than further afield. This semantic distribution has been attributed to peasants being

28773-400: The grantor, or lord. A vassal owed fealty to the lord and was expected to provide military aid and advice to him. Violence was endemic, and a new class of mounted warriors, the knights , emerged. Many built castles, and their feuds brought much suffering to the unarmed population. The development of the knightly class coincided with the subjection of the formerly free peasantry into serfdom, but

28980-415: The holy cities of Jerusalem, Tiberias , Hebron , and Safed since the Jewish–Roman wars and the destruction of the Second Temple were heavily persecuted in a pattern of rampant Christian antisemitism accompanying the Crusades . The terms Crusader states and Outremer ( French : outre-mer , lit.   'overseas') describe the four feudal states established after the First Crusade in

29187-416: The kingdom was confirmed. The Fatimid Caliphate had rival viziers, Shawar and Dirgham , both eager to seek external support. This gave Amalric and Nur ad-Din the opportunity to intervene. Amalric launched five invasions of Egypt between 1163 and 1169, on the last occasion cooperating with a Byzantine fleet, but he could not establish a bridgehead. Nur ad-Din appointed his Kurdish general Shirkuh to direct

29394-421: The kingdom. In 1134, he repressed a revolt by Hugh II of Jaffa , a relative of Melisende, but was still compelled to accept the shared inheritance. He also thwarted frequent attempts by his sister-in-law Alice to assume the regency in Antioch, including alliances with Pons of Tripoli and Joscelin   II of Edessa . Taking advantage of Antioch's weakened position, Leo , a Cilician Armenian ruler, seized

29601-401: The language are very closely related to those of the rest of the French-speaking world. French is the second most commonly spoken language in Canada and one of two federal official languages alongside English. As of the 2021 Canadian census , it was the native language of 7.7 million people (21% of the population) and the second language of 2.9 million (8% of the population). French

29808-424: The language, although it has now given way to Tamil and English. A former French mandate , Lebanon designates Arabic as the sole official language, while a special law regulates cases when French can be publicly used. Article 11 of Lebanon's Constitution states that "Arabic is the official national language. A law determines the cases in which the French language is to be used". The French language in Lebanon

30015-501: The language. The Act applies to areas of the province where there are significant Francophone communities, namely Eastern Ontario and Northern Ontario . Elsewhere, sizable French-speaking minorities are found in southern Manitoba, Nova Scotia , Prince Edward Island and the Port au Port Peninsula in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the unique Newfoundland French dialect was historically spoken. Smaller pockets of French speakers exist in all other provinces. The Ontarian city of Ottawa ,

30222-399: The last occasion in alliance with Toghtekin. Baldwin   I repulsed these attacks and with Genoese, Venetian, and Norwegian fleets conquered all the towns on the Palestinian coast except Tyre and Ascalon . Raymond laid the foundations of the fourth crusader state, the County of Tripoli. He captured Tartus and Gibelet and besieged Tripoli. His cousin William II Jordan continued

30429-428: The last to hold onto Gaulish. The beginning of French in Gaul was greatly influenced by Germanic invasions into the country. These invasions had the greatest impact on the northern part of the country and on the language there. A language divide began to grow across the country. The population in the north spoke langue d'oïl while the population in the south spoke langue d'oc . Langue d'oïl grew into what

30636-438: The legislative, executive and judicial branches." Jeroen Temperman, a professor of international law at Erasmus University Rotterdam writes that: Zambia is officially a Christian state as well, though the legal ramifications clearly do not compare to the latter state. The Preamble of the Constitution of Zambia establishes Zambia as a Christian state without specifying "Christian" denominationally. It simply proclaims: "We,

30843-413: The liberation of the Eastern Christians and the recovery of the Holy Land aroused unprecedented enthusiasm in Catholic Europe. Within a year, tens of thousands of people, both commoners and aristocrats, departed for the military campaign. Individual crusaders' motivations to join the crusade varied, but some of them probably left Europe to make a new permanent home in the Levant. Alexios cautiously welcomed

31050-505: The link of their prospects to a single master generated extreme loyalty. In the context of Middle Eastern politics this made them more trustworthy than relatives. Eventually, some mamluk descendants climbed the Muslim hierarchy to become king makers or even dynastic founders. In the mid-11th   century, a minor clan of Oghuz Turks named Seljuks , after the warlord Saljūq from Transoxiana , had expanded through Khurasan , Iran , and on to Baghdad. There, Saljūq's grandson Tughril

31257-402: The main army and headed to the Euphrates river, engaging in local politics and seizing the fortifications of Turbessel and Rawandan , where the Armenian populace welcomed him. Thoros, then ruler of this territory, could barely control or defend Edessa, so he tried to hire the Franks as mercenaries. Later, he went further and adopted Baldwin as his son in a power-share arrangement. In March 1098,

31464-485: The military operations in Egypt. Weeks before Shirkuh died in 1169, the Fatimid caliph Al-Adid made him vizier. His nephew Saladin , who ended the Shi'ite caliphate when Al-Adid died in September 1171, succeeded Shirkuh. In March 1171, Amalric undertook a visit to Manuel in Constantinople to get Byzantine military support for yet another attack on Egypt. To this end, he swore fealty to the Emperor before his return to Jerusalem, but conflicts with Venice and Sicily prevented

31671-418: The more popular Godfrey from assuming the throne, but Godfrey adopted the title Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri ('Defender of the Holy Sepulchre') when he was proclaimed the first Frankish ruler of Jerusalem. In Western Europe an advocatus was a layman responsible for the protection and administration of church estates. The foundation of these three crusader states did not change the political situation in

31878-468: The natives were mostly Arabic- or Greek-speaking Muslims, Christians of other denominations, and Jews. The Kingdom of Jerusalem extended over historical Palestine and at its greatest extent included some territory east of the Jordan River . The northern states covered what is now part of Syria, south-eastern Turkey, and Lebanon. These areas were historically called Syria (known to the Arabs as al-Sham ) and Upper Mesopotamia . Edessa extended east beyond

32085-420: The necessity and means to annihilate the patois and to universalize the use of the French language". When public education was made compulsory , only French was taught and the use of any other ( patois ) language was punished. The goals of the public school system were made especially clear to the French-speaking teachers sent to teach students in regions such as Occitania and Brittany . Instructions given by

32292-540: The next decades. Raymond of Poitiers joined forces with the Nizari and Joscelin with the Rum Seljuks against Aleppo. Nur ad-Din invaded Antioch and Raymond was defeated and killed at Inab in 1149. The next year Joscelin was captured and tortured and later died. Beatrice of Saone , his wife, sold the remains of the County of Edessa to the Byzantines with Baldwin's consent. Already 21 and eager to rule alone, Baldwin forced Melisende's retirement in 1152. In Antioch, Constance resisted pressure to remarry until 1153 when she chose

32499-485: The offensive on each occasion. As Edessa was Mosul's chief rival, Mawdud directed two campaigns against the city. They caused havoc, and the county's eastern region could never recover. The Syrian Muslim rulers saw the Sultan's intervention as a threat to their autonomy and collaborated with the Franks. After an assassin, likely a Nizari, murdered Mawdud, Muhammad Tapar dispatched two armies to Syria, but both campaigns failed. As Aleppo remained vulnerable to Frankish attacks,

32706-722: The offensive, recapturing Antioch in 969, after three centuries of Arab rule, and invading Syria. Turkic brigands and their Byzantine, also often ethnically Turkic, counterparts called akritai indulged in cross-border raiding. In 1071, while securing his northern borders during a break in his campaigns against the Fatimid Caliphate, Sultan Alp Arslan defeated Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes at Manzikert . Romanos' capture and Byzantine factionalism that followed broke Byzantine border control. This enabled large numbers of Turkic warbands and nomadic herders to enter Anatolia . Alp Arslan's cousin Suleiman ibn Qutulmish seized Cilicia and entered Antioch in 1084. Two years later, he

32913-509: The offer. Baldwin had four daughters. In 1126, Bohemond reached the age of majority and married the second-oldest, Alice , in Antioch. Aleppo had plunged into anarchy, but Bohemond II could not exploit this because of a conflict with Joscelin. The new atabeg of Mosul Imad al-Din Zengi seized Aleppo in 1128. The two major Muslim centres' union was especially dangerous for the neighbouring Edessa, but it also worried Damascus's new ruler, Taj al-Muluk Buri . Baldwin's eldest daughter Melisende

33120-460: The official use or teaching of French. It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France; Canada (especially in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick); Belgium ( Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region ); western Switzerland (specifically the cantons forming the Romandy region); parts of Luxembourg; parts of the United States (the states of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont); Monaco;

33327-422: The old Islamic conflict between Sunni and Shia made the Muslim peoples more likely to wage war on each other than on Christians. The Byzantines augmented their armies with mercenaries from the Turks and Europe. This compensated for a shortfall caused by lost territory, especially in Anatolia. In 1095 at the Council of Piacenza , Emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested support from Pope Urban II against

33534-475: The other main foreign language in the Vietnamese educational system and is regarded as a cultural language. All three countries are full members of La Francophonie (OIF). French was the official language of French India , consisting of the geographically separate enclaves referred to as Puducherry . It continued to be an official language of the territory even after its cession to India in 1956 until 1965. A small number of older locals still retain knowledge of

33741-478: The people of Zambia...declare the Republic a Christian nation..." As far as state practice is concerned, it may be pointed out that the Government maintains relations with the Zambian Council of Churches and requires Christianity to be taught in the public school curriculum. After "Zambia declared itself a Christian nation in 1991", "the nation's vice president urged citizens to 'have a Christian orientation in all fields, at all levels'." A number of countries have

33948-417: The popes as no more than one of the five highest ranking church leaders, titled patriarchs , and rejected the idea of papal supremacy . This opposition, together with differences in theology and liturgy, caused acrimonious disputes which escalated when a papal legate excommunicated the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 1054. The patriarchs of Alexandria , Antioch , and Jerusalem sided with

34155-399: The population of Denmark are members of the Lutheran Church of Denmark, which is "officially headed by the queen of Denmark". Furthermore, clergy "in the Church of Denmark are civil servants employed by the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs" and the "economic base of the Church of Denmark is state-collected church taxes combined with a direct state subsidiary (12%), which symbolically covers

34362-401: The preferred language of certain institutions or administrations such as the Court of Justice of the European Union , where it is the sole internal working language, or the Directorate-General for Agriculture . Since 2016, Brexit has rekindled discussions on whether or not French should again hold greater role within the institutions of the European Union. A leading world language , French

34569-443: The regency of Antioch for the absent Bohemond   II. Public opinion attributed a series of disasters affecting the Outremer—defeats by enemy forces and plagues of locusts—as punishments for the Franks' sins. To improve moral standards, the Jerusalemite ecclesiastic and secular leaders assembled a council at Nablus and issued decrees against adultery, sodomy, bigamy, and sexual relations between Catholics and Muslims. A proposal by

34776-536: The regency of Edessa. The Byzantines took the opportunity to reconquer Cilicia. They took the port but not the citadel of Laodikeia . Bohemond returned to Italy to recruit allies and gather supplies. Tancred assumed leadership in Antioch, and his cousin Richard of Salerno did the same in Edessa. In 1107, Bohemond crossed the Adriatic Sea and failed in besieging Dyrrachion in the Balkan Peninsula . The resulting Treaty of Devol forced Bohemond to restore Laodikeia and Cilicia to Alexios, become his vassal and reinstate

34983-423: The region. On the eve of the Crusades, after a thousand years of reputedly uninterrupted succession of popes, the Papacy was Catholic Europe's oldest institution. The popes were seen as the Apostle Saint Peter 's successors, and their prestige was high. In the west, the Gregorian Reform reduced lay influence on church life and strengthened papal authority over the clergy. Eastern Christians continued to consider

35190-553: The research and discoveries of artifacts left by the Illyrians , Triballi and other kindred tribes. More research has since been made that perhaps prove the existence of Serbs living in the Balkans during Roman times in Ilyria . In the centuries that followed from the fourth- to the 12th-century, when Catholic Church was in a battleground between Serbia due the Eastern Orthodox Church , Serbia prevailed as Orthodox Christian state under his jurisdiction through Saint Sava . Serbia as modern state, defines in his constitution as

35397-407: The rest largely speak French as a first language. As a French Creole language , Haitian Creole draws the large majority of its vocabulary from French, with influences from West African languages, as well as several European languages. It is closely related to Louisiana Creole and the creole from the Lesser Antilles . French is the sole official language of all the overseas territories of France in

35604-430: The richest heiress of the kingdom, and gaining Galilee. Nur ad-Din's empire quickly disintegrated. His eunuch confidant Gümüshtekin took As-Salih from Damascus to Aleppo. Gümüshtekin's rival, Ibn al-Muqaddam , seized Damascus but soon surrendered it to Saladin. By 1176, Saladin reunited much of Muslim Syria through warring against Gümüshtekin and As-Salih's relatives, the Zengids . That same year, Emperor Manuel invaded

35811-430: The roads impassable. In 1130 Bohemond II was killed raiding in Cilicia, leaving Alice with their infant daughter, Constance . Baldwin II denied Alice control, instead resuming the regency until his death in 1131. On his deathbed Baldwin named Fulk, Melisende, and their infant son Baldwin   III joint heirs. Fulk intended to revoke the arrangement, but his favouritism toward his compatriots roused strong discontent in

36018-564: The siege after Raymond's death in 1105. It was completed in 1109 when Raymond's son Bertrand arrived. Baldwin brokered a deal, sharing the territory between them, until William Jordan's death united the county. Bertrand acknowledged Baldwin's suzerainty, although William Jordan had been Tancred's vassal. When Bohemond was released for a ransom in 1103, he compensated Tancred with lands and gifts. Baldwin of Bourcq and his cousin and vassal, Joscelin of Courtenay , were captured while attacking Ridwan of Aleppo at Harran with Bohemond. Tancred assumed

36225-430: The southernmost and most prominent state, covered an area in what is now Israel , Palestine , southern Lebanon, and western Jordan . The description "Crusader states" can be misleading, as from 1130 onwards, very few people among the Franks were Crusaders. Medieval and modern writers use the term "Outremer" as a synonym, derived from the French word for overseas . By 1098, the Crusaders' armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem

36432-428: The state church. Prof. Wasif Shadid, of Leiden University , writes that: The Lutheran established church is a department of the state. Church affairs are governed by a central government ministry, while clergy are government employees. The registration of births, deaths and marriages falls under this ministry of church affairs, and normally speaking the local Lutheran pastor is also the official registrar. Over 82% of

36639-405: The succession. Back in Antioch, Bohemond kidnapped Ruben of Cilicia and forced him into becoming his vassal. Saladin signed a four-year truce with Jerusalem and attacked Mosul. He could not capture the city but extracted an oath of fealty from Mosul's Zengid ruler, Izz al-Din Mas'ud , in March 1186. A few months later, Baldwin   V died, and a power struggle began in Jerusalem. Raymond summoned

36846-430: The taking of Tripoli . In 1144, Edessa fell to the Zengid Turks , but the other three realms endured until the final years of the 13th   century, when they fell to the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt . The Mamluks captured Antioch in 1268 and Tripoli in 1289 , leaving only the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been severely weakened by the Ayyubid Sultanate after the siege of Jerusalem in 1244 . The Crusader presence in

37053-413: The throne under their control. To thwart their coup, he sanctioned her marriage to Guy of Lusignan , a young aristocrat from Poitou . Guy's brother Aimery held the office of constable of Jerusalem , and their family had close links to the House of Plantagenet . Baldwin's mother and her clique marginalised Raymond, Bohemond and the influential Ibelin family . To prepare for a military campaign against

37260-414: The total number of French speakers will reach approximately 500 million in 2025 and 650 million by 2050, largely due to rapid population growth in sub-Saharan Africa . OIF estimates 700 million French speakers by 2050, 80% of whom will be in Africa. In a study published in March 2014 by Forbes , the investment bank Natixis said that French could become the world's most spoken language by 2050. In

37467-489: The tribute that Damascus' former rulers had offered to the Jerusalemite kings. Baldwin extracted tribute from the Egyptians as well. Raynald lacked financial resources. He tortured the Latin Patriarch of Antioch , Aimery of Limoges , to appropriate his wealth and attacked the Byzantine's Cilician Armenians. When Emperor Manuel I Komnenos delayed the payment he had been promised, Raynald pillaged Byzantine Cyprus . Thierry, Count of Flanders , brought military strength from

37674-619: The two official languages—along with Dutch —of the Brussels-Capital Region , where it is spoken by the majority of the population (approx. 80%), often as their primary language. French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian, and Romansh , and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland, called Romandy , of which Geneva is the largest city. The language divisions in Switzerland do not coincide with political subdivisions, and some cantons have bilingual status: for example, cities such as Biel/Bienne and cantons such as Valais , Fribourg and Bern . French

37881-411: The two rulers' forces. At a leadership conference, including the widowed Melisende and her son Baldwin   III, they agreed to attack Damascus rather than attempt to recover distant Edessa. The attack on Damascus ended in a humiliating defeat and retreat. Scapegoating followed the unexpected failure, with many westerners blaming the Franks. Fewer crusaders came from Europe to fight for the Holy Land in

38088-508: The urban intellectual elite. The Gaulish language likely survived into the sixth century in France despite considerable Romanization . Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French contributing loanwords and calques (including oui , the word for "yes"), sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, and influences in conjugation and word order. Recent computational studies suggest that early gender shifts may have been motivated by

38295-425: The use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words. In Belgium, French is an official language at the federal level along with Dutch and German. At the regional level, French is the sole official language of Wallonia (excluding a part of the East Cantons , which are German-speaking ) and one of

38502-413: The west, it improved conditions for agriculture. Higher agricultural yields led to population growth and the expansion of commerce, and to the development of prosperous new military and mercantile elites. In Catholic Europe, state and society were organised along feudal lines. Landed estates were customarily granted in fief —that is, in return for services that the grantee, or vassal , was to perform for

38709-481: The workplace. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese . In English-speaking Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, French is the first foreign language taught and in number of pupils is far ahead of other languages. In the United States, French is the second-most commonly taught foreign language in schools and universities, although well behind Spanish. In some areas of

38916-402: The world's French-speaking population lives in Africa. According to a 2023 estimate from the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie , an estimated 167 million African people spread across 35 countries and territories can speak French as either a first or a second language . This number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as

39123-435: Was 13 and a leper . The accession of underage rulers led to disunity both in Jerusalem and in Muslim Syria. In Jerusalem, the seneschal Miles of Plancy took control, but unknown assailants murdered him on the streets of Acre. With the baronage's consent, Amalric's cousin, Raymond   III of Tripoli, assumed the regency for Baldwin   IV as bailli . He became the most powerful baron by marrying Eschiva of Bures ,

39330-451: Was a massive defeat for the Franks. Nearly all the major Frankish leaders were taken prisoner, but only Raynald and the armed monks of the military orders were executed. Raymond was among the few Frankish leaders who escaped captivity. He fell seriously ill after reaching Tripoli. Within months after Hattin, Saladin conquered almost the entire kingdom. The city of Jerusalem surrendered on 2   October 1187. There were no massacres following

39537-417: Was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the ( Germanic ) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to the French colonial empire , there are numerous French-based creole languages , most notably Haitian Creole . A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French

39744-406: Was decentralised, polyglot, and multi-national. A junior Seljuk ruling a province as an appanage was titled malik , Arabic for king. Mamluk military commanders acting as tutors and guardians for young Seljuk princes held the position of atabeg ('father-commander'). If his ward held a province in appanage, the atabeg ruled it as regent for the underage malik . On occasion,

39951-471: Was deserting) told him defeat was imminent. In June 1098, Bohemond persuaded a renegade Armenian tower commander to let the crusaders into the city. They slaughtered the Muslim inhabitants and, by mistake, some local Christians. The crusade leaders decided to return Antioch to Alexios as they had sworn to at Constantinople, but when they learnt of Alexios' withdrawal, Bohemond claimed the city for himself. The other leaders agreed, apart from Raymond, who supported

40158-531: Was during the period of the Crusades in which French became so dominant in the Mediterranean Sea that became a lingua franca ("Frankish language"), and because of increased contact with the Arabs during the Crusades who referred to them as Franj , numerous Arabic loanwords entered French, such as amiral (admiral), alcool (alcohol), coton (cotton) and sirop (syrop), as well as scientific terms such as algébre (algebra), alchimie (alchemy) and zéro (zero). Within Old French many dialects emerged but

40365-400: Was gradually adopted by the inhabitants of Gaul. As the language was learned by the common people, it developed a distinct local character, with grammatical differences from Latin as spoken elsewhere, some of which is attested in graffiti. This local variety evolved into the Gallo-Romance tongues, which include French and its closest relatives, such as Arpitan . The evolution of Latin in Gaul

40572-420: Was granted the title sultan —'power' in Arabic —by the Abbasid Caliph . The caliphs kept their legitimacy and prestige, but the sultans held political power. Seljuk success was achieved by extreme violence. It brought disruptive nomadism to the sedentary society of the Levant, and set a pattern followed by other nomadic Turkic clans such as the Danishmendids and the Artuqids . The Great Seljuk Empire

40779-405: Was his heir. He married her to Fulk of Anjou , who had widespread western connections useful to the kingdom. After Fulk's arrival, Baldwin raised a large force for an attack on Damascus. This force included the leaders of the other crusader states, and a significant Angevin contingent provided by Fulk. The campaign was abandoned when the Franks' foraging parties were destroyed, and bad weather made

40986-447: Was killed in a conflict with the Great Seljuk Empire. Between 1092 and 1094, Nizam al-Mulk, the Sultan Malik-Shah , the Fatimid Caliph, Al-Mustansir Billah and the vizier Badr al-Jamali all died. Malik-Shah's brother Tutush and the atabegs of Aleppo and Edessa were killed in the succession conflict, and Suleiman's son Kilij Arslan I revived his father's Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia. The Egyptian succession resulted in

41193-469: Was known in the Occitan-speaking region as Vergonha . Spoken by 19.71% of the European Union's population, French is the third most widely spoken language in the EU, after English and German and the second-most-widely taught language after English. Under the Constitution of France , French has been the official language of the Republic since 1992, although the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts made it mandatory for legal documents in 1539. France mandates

41400-425: Was not united either; the French kings only controlled a small central region directly. Counts and dukes ruled other regions, and some of them were remarkably wealthy and powerful—in particular, the dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy , and the counts of Anjou , Champagne , Flanders , and Toulouse . Western Christians and Muslims interacted mainly through warring or commerce. During the 8th and 9th centuries,

41607-430: Was passing through the Syria region . Edessa, under the rule of Greek Orthodoxy , was subject to a coup d'état in which the leadership was taken over by Baldwin of Boulogne , and Bohemond of Taranto remained as the ruling prince in the captured city of Antioch . The siege of Jerusalem in 1099 resulted in a decisive Crusader victory over the Fatimid Caliphate , after which territorial consolidation followed, including

41814-455: Was poured into the construction of churches, church ceremonies, and church decoration". John Binns describes this era, writing that: A new stage in the history of the Church began when not just localised communities but nations became Christian. The stage is associated with the conversion of Constantine and the beginnings of a Christian Empire, but the Byzantine Emperor was not the first ruler to lead his people into Christianity, thus setting up

42021-411: Was shaped by its coexistence for over half a millennium beside the native Celtic Gaulish language , which did not go extinct until the late sixth century, long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire . The population remained 90% indigenous in origin; the Romanizing class were the local native elite (not Roman settlers), whose children learned Latin in Roman schools. At the time of the collapse of

42228-426: Was the chief Shi'ite power in Islam. The root of this was beyond cultural and racial conflict but originated in the splits within Islam following Muhammad's death. Sunnis supported a caliphal succession that began with one of his associates, Abu Bakr , while Shi'ites supported an alternative succession from his cousin and son-in-law, Ali . Islamic law granted the status of dhimmi , or protected peoples, to

42435-405: Was the cousin of both Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Louis   VII of France. In 1176, Baldwin reached the age of 15 and majority, ending Raymond's regency. He revisited plans for an invasion of Egypt and renewed his father's pact with the Byzantines. Manuel dispatched a fleet of 70 galleys plus support ships to Outremer. As William had died, and Baldwin's health was deteriorating,

42642-437: Was the language they use the most at home rose from 67% at the 2007 census to 74% at the 2017 census. In Wallis and Futuna, the percentage of the population who reported that French was the language they use the most at home rose from 10% at the 2008 census to 13% at the 2018 census. According to a demographic projection led by the Université Laval and the Réseau Démographie de l'Agence universitaire de la Francophonie ,

42849-413: Was the sole Frankish ruler to pursue an offensive policy. He attacked an Egyptian caravan and built a fleet for a naval raid into the Red Sea . Byzantine influence declined after Manuel died in 1180. Bohemond repulsed his Byzantine wife Theodora and married Sybil, an Antiochene noblewoman with a bad reputation. Patriarch Aimery excommunicated him and the Antiochene nobles who opposed the marriage fled to

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