The Crusaders reached Ramla and Lydda, adjacent settlements on the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, in 1099. Ramla was to become a secular lordship within the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Lydda, on the other hand, was to become an ecclesiastical lordship, like that of the archbishop of Nazareth and perhaps also the patriarch of Jerusalem. Very little is known about the early development of lordships in the Holy Land, and the examples of Ramla and Lydda are more complicated than has (...) hitherto been recognized. My purpose here is to examine in detail when and how Ramla and Lydda acquired their seigneurial positions. (shrink)

For the last forty years our knowledge of the genealogy of the lords of Beirut from the Brisebarre family has been based on the research done by M. E. Nickerson, which was a true advance over earlier work on the same problem. Nickerson proposed the following succession of lords of Beirut.