Page 396

396 A HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES I33 Grousset, Histoire des croisades, I, 335.
arrest and delivery into the hands of the youthful Tancred, regent of Antioch
for Bohemond, then a prisoner of Malik-Ghãzi. Tancred compelled Raymond
to swear to make no conquests between Antioch and Acre, and released him.
Observance of this oath would have virtually excluded St. Gilles from any
acquisitions on the coast of Syria and Palestine. 
 The count of Toulouse now proceeded to do just what Tancred had feared.
He started the conquest of an area south of Antioch in Tancred's natural
sphere of expansion. By now his hopes had to be reduced to the immediate
business of getting a foothold in Syria. Raymond had passed through this
area twice in 1099, and had become familiar with it. Grousset suggests that
it reminded him of his native Midi.33 Raymond began by capturing the port
of Tortosa in 1102, and used it as a base for further operations. Then he
laid siege to Hisn al-Akrãd (Castle of the Kurds, later Krak des Chevaliers),
which he had taken and abandoned in 1099. He gave up this siege when the
assassination of Janah-ad-Daulah of Homs in May 1103 seemed to offer an excellent
opportunity to seize that rich and powerful emirate. However, Homs delivered
itself to Dukak of Damascus and Raymond retired. Then in 1103 the count of
Toulouse found his objective at last. He established a permanent camp on
a hill outside the important port of Tripoli, living off the hinterland with
a few hundred followers and block ading the city by land. Gradually he transformed
this camp into a fortress, Mons Peregrinus (Pilgrim Mountain), with the help
of workmen and materials sent by Alexius's officials in Cyprus. In 1104 Raymond
with Genoese naval aid captured the port of Jubail, twenty miles to the south.
The Genoese admiral, Hugh Embriaco, received Jubail and established a hereditary
fief around it. But on February 28, 1105, count Raymond died, his ambition
to conquer Tripoli still unrealized. Disappointed in his hopes to carry through
the plans of pope Urban, Raymond had remained to play Out the role of a petty
conqueror. His monument was to be the county of Tripoli, the smallest of
the four Latin states. 
 Raymond's successor in Syria was his cousin, William Jordan, count of Cerdagne.
For four more years William, with slender re sources, kept up the land blockade
of Tripoli from Pilgrim Moun tain. Then in the beginning of March 1 109,
there arrived from France Raymond's son, Bertram of St. Gilles, to claim
his paternal inheritance. Bertram had left France with an army of four thou
sand men convoyed in a fleet largely Genoese. On the way out he