Templar

War

The Order's mission developed from protecting pilgrims to taking part in regular military campaigns early on, and this is shown by the fact that the first castle received by the Knights Templar was located four hundred miles north of the pilgrim road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, on the northern frontier of the Principality of Antioch: the castle of Bagras in the Amanus Mountains. It may have been as early as 1131, and by 1137 at the latest, that the Templars were given the mountainous region that formed the border of Antioch and Cilician Armenia, which included the castles of Bagras, Darbsak, and Roche de Roissel. The Templars were there when Byzantine emperorJohn II Komnenos tried to make the Crusader states of Antioch, Tripoli, and Edessa his vassals between 1137 and 1142. Templar knights accompanied John II Komnenos with troops from those states during his campaign against Muslim powers in Syria from 1137 to 1138, including at the sieges of Aleppo and Shaizar. In 1143, the Templars also began taking part in the Reconquista in Iberia at the request of the count of Barcelona.