Amalric (French: Amaury; 1136 – 11 July 1174), formerly known in historiography as Amalric I, was the king of Jerusalem from 1163 until his death. His Muslim adversaries described him as the bravest and cleverest of the Crusader kings.
Amalric was the younger son of King Fulk and Queen Melisende. His elder brother, King Baldwin III, served as their mother's co-ruler. Melisende made Amalric the count of Jaffa, and he took her side in her conflict with Baldwin until Baldwin deposed her in 1152. From 1154 Amalric was fully reconciled with his brother and made count of both Jaffa and Ascalon. In 1157, he married Agnes of Courtenay despite the misgivings of the Church and had two children with her, Sibylla and Baldwin. When his brother died in 1163, Amalric was obliged to leave Agnes in order to be recognized as king. He was crowned on 18 February.
Amalric's reign was marked by a ceaseless struggle with the Muslim atabeg of Damascus and Aleppo, Nur al-Din Zengi, and persistent attempts to subjugate Egypt. In his first invasion he induced the vizier, Dirgham, to pay tribute, and in the following two he supported the rival vizier, Shawar, against Dirgham and Nur al-Din's general Shirkuh. Nur al-Din took advantage of the king's expeditions to Egypt to wreak havoc on the kingdom and the northern crusader states, Antioch and Tripoli, and Amalric had to intervene in the north as well. Throughout his reign Amalric sought support of Western European rulers in his struggle against the Muslims of Syria and Egypt, but concluded the most concrete alliance with the Byzantine emperor, Manuel I Komnenos, whose grandniece Maria became Amalric's second wife. They had a daughter, Isabella.
In 1167 Amalric again prevented Shirkuh from seizing Egypt and took Alexandria. Without waiting for the Byzantines, and in contravention of his treaty with Shawar, he invaded Egypt in 1167–68 with the intention to conquer it, but it fell to Shirkuh instead. Shirkuh died in 1169, and Amalric launched an invasion in concert with Manuel, but the two armies cooperated poorly and failed in their attempt. Shirkuh's successor, Saladin, emerged as a major threat. Amalric's only son, Baldwin, started exhibiting symptoms of leprosy during Amalric's lifetime. Amalric sought a husband for his daughter, Sibylla, but her suitor, Count Stephen I of Sancerre, declined and left the kingdom. While trying to take advantage of the confusion in Syria following the death of Nur al-Din in 1174, Amalric caught dysentery and died on 11 July. He was succeeded by his son, Baldwin IV.
On his deathbed in 1131 King Baldwin II conferred the Kingdom of Jerusalem–one of the crusader states established by the Latin Christians who invaded the Levant and defeated its Muslim rulers–on his eldest daughter, Melisende; her husband, Fulk of Anjou; and their infant son, Baldwin. Fulk was considerably older than Melisende and had adult children in Europe from his first marriage, including Count Geoffrey V of Anjou and Countess Sibylla of Flanders. He excluded Melisende from power until she and the barons forced him to acknowledge her as co-ruler in 1135. Fulk was eager to be reconciled, and historian Malcolm Barber suggests that Melisende agreed because the succession of her family rested on only one son. The couple consequently conceived Amalric in late 1135 or early 1136. To the north of the kingdom were three more crusader states: the County of Tripoli, the Principality of Antioch, and the County of Edessa. Antioch and Tripoli were ruled by the families of Melisende's sisters Alice and Hodierna.
Amalric's father, King Fulk, was fatally injured in a horse-riding accident on a family outing near Acre in 1143. He died on 10 November. Queen Melisende seized power and was crowned again on 25 December, this time alongside her elder son, the 13-year-old King Baldwin III. In 1144 the Turkic Muslim atabeg of Mosul, Imad al-Din Zengi captured Edessa. This prompted the Second Crusade, which failed in its objective to conquer Damascus, one of the greatest Muslim-held cities. Melisende continued to withhold power from Baldwin after he reached the age of majority, and by 1151 their relationship had broken down. In 1151 Melisende bestowed on Amalric the County of Jaffa as part of her endeavor to consolidate her position against Baldwin. Amalric became his mother's most important partisan besides the Church.
In 1152 King Baldwin III besieged his mother, Queen Melisende, and her most loyal men, including Amalric, Viscount Rohard the Elder, and Philip of Milly, in the Tower of David in Jerusalem. Although they put up a defense, Melisende was deposed; by the end of April, Baldwin was the sole ruler of the kingdom. Based on charter evidence, Mayer concludes that Baldwin punished Amalric for siding with their mother by depriving him of the County of Jaffa in 1152. The king conquered Ascalon from Fatimid Egypt in 1153 and forced the Egyptians to pay a tribute. He granted both Ascalon and Jaffa to Amalric. Historian Hans E. Mayer dates Amalric's acquisition of the double county to shortly after July 1154.
In 1157 Amalric married Agnes of Courtenay, whose father, Count Joscelin II of Edessa, was the dispossessed second cousin of Queen Melisende. Agnes was a widow since the death in battle of her first husband, Reynald of Marash. The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Fulcher of Angoulême, objected to Amalric's marriage with Agnes. According to contemporary chronicler William of Tyre, Fulcher disapproved because of the couple's kinship; but the late-13th-century Lignages d'Outremer states that Agnes had been betrothed to the lord of Ramla, Hugh of Ibelin, and that Amalric married her when she came to marry Hugh, which the patriarch deemed uncanonical. Mayer argues that Agnes had already been married to Hugh in 1157, making her marriage to Amalric bigamous and, in Barber's opinion, possibly the result of an abduction. Historian Bernard Hamilton rejects this interpretation and states that a bigamous marriage would have resulted in the excommunication of both Amalric and Agnes. Fulcher died in November 1157, possibly before the couple married.
In 1159 Amalric accompanied King Baldwin to Antioch, where they welcomed Emperor Manuel I Komnenos. Baldwin and Manuel were allied through Baldwin's marriage with Manuel's niece Theodora. Both Baldwin and Amalric placed a great value on good relations with the Byzantine Empire, a Greek Orthodox state that claimed suzerainty over the Christian states in the Levant. Amalric and Agnes had a daughter, Sibylla, between 1157 and 1161 and a son, Baldwin, in 1161. The children were named after Amalric's siblings.
Amalric's mother, Queen Melisende, died on 11 September 1161. His brother, King Baldwin, barely outlived her. He came down with dysentery while visiting Antioch in late 1162 and died in Beirut on 10 February 1163. Baldwin and Theodora had had no children, and Amalric was thus his heir. The chronicler Ernoul relates that Baldwin named Amalric as his heir.
Having convened to discuss the succession, the High Court refused to recognize Amalric as king unless he repudiated his wife, Agnes. Their spokesman was the patriarch, Amalric of Nesle. According to William of Tyre, the patriarch objected because of the couple's kinship. Barber describes this story as "so unlikely that historians have been unwilling to accept it at
face value". Hamilton notes that such an objection to an established marriage was "extremely unusual", and argues that behind it stood a "deep-seated animosity" of the barons towards Agnes. Amalric accepted the High Court's demand, and his marriage to Agnes was annulled on the grounds of consanguinity. Cardinal John of Santi Giovanni e Paolo al Celio, the legate of Pope Alexander III, was present. Amalric obtained papal confirmation of the legitimacy of his children, Sibylla and Baldwin, and exoneration of Agnes from any moral censure. On 18 February, the day of Baldwin III's funeral, the patriarch crowned Amalric in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.