The Frankish County of Edessa had a brief life; established in 1098 when Baldwin of Boulogne was acclaimed the ruler by a rebellious faction of the population, it had vanished by 1150, when its remaining lands passed to the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus. The brevity of the county's existence, however, is belied by its long afterlife among Eastern Christian communities.

Religious Practices, Cultural Values and Historical Perspectives

The Frankish principalities have long been portrayed as alien to Syria, and scholars are now beginning to see them as an integrated part of a complex Levantine world. Little attention has been paid, however, to what their heritage was after their political power was extinguished. When this topic is considered, the conclusion has generally been negative. The condemnation of Steven Runciman, while dated, still resounds in scholarship: ‘When they were ejected, they left the local Christians to bear the wrath of the Moslem conquerors.’ While in many senses this dire portrait may be true, scholars fail to acknowledge the myriad ways in which the Franks and their influence have lingered.

Of all the communities of Syria, the Frankish encounter with Armenians was the most influential on both communities. Two events loom large in Armenian historical memory concerning the Frankish County of Edessa: the conquest of Edessa by Zengi in 1144 and its subsequent recapture by his son Nur al-Din in 1146, and the transfer of the castle of Hromklay to the Armenian kat‘olikos Grigor III around 1150. These two events have marked the beginning and the end of the collapse of the county in historical narrative: the city of Edessa was the first great loss that signalled (in hindsight at least) the doom facing the remaining lands, and the castle of Hromklay was one of the last remaining strongholds of the county in 1150. Each event was prominent in Armenian historical narratives at different moments; the conquest of Edessa was seared into the memory of the Armenian generation that lived through the events in the twelfth century, but by the thirteenth century, its importance faded.