The Fourth Crusade (1201-1204), launched to restore Jerusalem to Christian control, veered widely off course, finally landing at Constantinople which it conquered and sacked. The effects of the crusade were far-reaching during the Middle Ages and remain powerful even today, which explains the continued vibrancy of its historiography. This volume, based on studies presented at the Sixth Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East in Istanbul, Turkey in 2004, represents some of the best new research on this fascinating event. With the "Diversion Question" of the...

The conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade shattered irreversibly the political and cultural unity of the Byzantine world in the Greek peninsula, the Aegean and western Asia Minor. Between the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire after 1204 and the consolidation of Ottoman power in the fifteenth century, the area was a complex political, ethnic and religious mosaic, made up of Frankish lordships, Italian colonies, Turkish beyliks, as well as a number of states that professed to be the continuators of the Byzantine imperial tradition. This volume brings together western...