CRUSADERS - Bohemond III - Prince of Antioch: NGC AU-58 - 1163-1201 A.D. - Silver Billon Denier 17mm (1.00 grams) Antioch mint, struck circa 1163-1201 A.D.

Reference: MPS.69. Met.400.

Head in helmet and chain-mail between crescent and star.

Cross,  crescent in one angle.

LOTS of ORIGINAL LUSTER

BILLON IS AN ALLOY OF A PRECIOUS METAL (MOST COMMONLY SILVER) with a majority base metal content (such as copper). It is used chiefly for making coins, medals, and token coins. The word comes from the French bille. The use of billon coins dates from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages. During the 6th and 5th centuries BC, some cities on Lesbos Island used coins made of 60% copper and 40% silver. Billon coins are perhaps best known from the Roman Empire, where progressive debasements of the Roman denarius and the Roman provincial tetradrachm.

Bohemond III of Antioch, also known as Bohemond the Child or the Stammerer (French: Bohémond le Bambe/le Baube; c. 1148-1201), was Prince of Antioch from 1163 to 1201. He was the elder son of Constance of Antioch and her first husband, Raymond of Poitiers. Bohemond ascended to the throne after the Antiochene noblemen dethroned his mother with the assistance of Thoros II, Lord of Armenian Cilicia. He fell into captivity in the Battle of Artah in 1164, but the victorious Nur ad-Din, atabeg of Aleppo released him to avoid coming into conflict with the Byzantine Empire. Bohemond went to Constantinople to pay homage to Manuel I Komnenos, who persuaded him to install a Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Antioch. The Latin Patriarch of Antioch, Aimery of Limoges, placed Antioch under interdict. Bohemond restored Aimery only after the Greek patriarch died during an earthquake in 1170.

Bohemond remained a close ally of the Byzantine Empire. He fought against Mleh, Lord of Armenian Cilicia, assisting in the restoration of Byzantine rule in the Cilician plain. He also made alliances with the Muslim rulers of Aleppo and Damascus against Saladin, who had begun to unite the Muslim countries along the borders of the crusader states. Since Bohemond repudiated his second wife and married an Antiochene lady, Patriarch Aimery excommunicated him in 1180.

Bohemond forced the Armenian rulers of Cilicia to accept his suzerainty in the late 1180s. He also secured the County of Tripoli for his second son, Bohemond, in 1187. However, Saladin occupied almost the whole Principality of Antioch in the summer of 1188. To preserve the peace with Saladin, Bohemond did not provide military assistance to the crusaders during the Third Crusade. Leo of Cilicia's expansionist policy in the 1190s gave rise to a lasting conflict between Antioch and Cilicia. Bohemond was captured in 1194 by Leo, who tried to seize Antioch, but the burghers formed a commune and expelled the Armenian soldiers from the town. Bohemond was released only after he acknowledged Leo's independence.

New conflicts emerged after Bohemond's eldest son, Raymond, died in 1197. Raymond's widow, who was Leo's niece, gave birth to a posthumous son, Raymond-Roupen, but Bohemond's younger son, Bohemond of Tripoli, wanted to secure his succession in Antioch with the assistance of the commune. The elderly Bohemond seems to have supported his son during his last years. The War of the Antiochene Succession began with Bohemond's death and lasted until 1219.

The Principality of Antioch was one of the crusader states created during the First Crusade which included parts of modern-day Turkey and Syria.

The Principality of Antioch was much smaller than the County of Edessa or the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It extended around the northeastern edge of the Mediterranean, bordering the County of Tripoli to the south, Edessa to the east, and the Byzantine Empire or the Kingdom of Armenia to the northwest, depending on the date. It had roughly 20,000 inhabitants in the 12th century, most of whom were Armenians and Greek Orthodox Christians, with a few Muslims outside the city itself. Most of the crusaders who settled there were of Norman origin, notably from the Norman Kingdom of southern Italy, as were the first rulers of the principality, who surrounded themselves with their own loyal subjects. Few of the inhabitants apart from the Crusaders were Roman Catholic even though the city was turned into a Latin Patriarchate in 1100. 

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