The Lordship of Marash was a territorial lordship in northeastern Cilicia between 1104 and 1149, centred on the city of Marash (today Kahramanmaraş). One of the lesser Crusader states, it played a major role in the defence of the northern frontier in the 1130s and 1140s under Lords Geoffrey and Baldwin. Its position became untenable after the fall of Edessa in 1146. Primary sources The lordship of Marash is mentioned in passing in the Arabic (Muslim) sources, such as Ibn al-Furat and Ibn al-Athir. Likewise, only one charter of a lord of Marash survives. Thus, the history of the lordship must be reconstructed almost entirely from Christian narrative sources in Armenian, Syriac, Greek and Latin. The most important of these is the Armenian Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, continued from 1137 by Gregory the Priest. The Chronicle of the Kingdom of Little Armenia of Sempad the Constable also contains information. The Syriac Chronicle of Michael the Syrian and the anonymous Syriac Chronicle of 1234 are the next most valuable sources after Matthew of Edessa. The Syriac author Bar Hebraeus contributes a little. The most important Greek source is the Alexiad of Anna Komnene and its continuation after 1118 by John Kinnamos, while the most important Latin historians are Albert of Aachen, Ralph of Caen, Orderic Vitalis, Walter the Chancellor and William of Tyre. Background Marash had a population of several thousand and an Armenian majority since at least the battle of Manzikert in 1071. It had an Armenian bishop and was the seat of an autonomous principality ruled by an Armenian general, Philaretos Brachamios, under the nominal suzerainty of the Byzantine Empire. On Philaretos' death in 1085, most of his territory was taken by the Seljuk Turks. Marash and its immediate environs, however, continued to be ruled by his sons. Marash was a strategically important city, for it controlled a major pass through the Anti-Taurus Mountains. In the autumn of 1097, the armies of the First Crusade crossed by this route and stopped in Marash. They did not attempt to impose their own rule, but their presence allowed the Byzantines to appoint a governor, an Armenian named Thathoul. In 1097, one of the leaders of the First Crusade, Count Baldwin I of Edessa, married as his second wife an Armenian named Arda, who may have been the daughter of Thathoul. The first crusaders to seize control of Marash were Prince