the feudal kingdoms known as outremer were

Edessa extended east beyond the Euphrates. These areas were historically called Syria (known to the Arabs as al-Sham) and Upper Mesopotamia. The northern states covered what is now part of Syria, south-eastern Turkey, and Lebanon. The kingdom of Jerusalem extended over historical Palestine and at its greatest extent included some territory east of the Jordan River. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the holiest shrines of Christendom, in Jerusalem The Franks were mainly French-speaking Roman Catholics, while the natives were mostly Arabic- or Greek-speaking Muslims, Christians of other denominations, and Jews. These medieval ethnonyms reflect that the settlers could be differentiated from the indigenous population by language and faith. Alternatively, the chronicles used Latini, or Latins. Byzantine Greek sources use Frangoi and Arabic al-Ifranj.

The Latin chronicles of the First Crusade, written in the early 11th century, called the Western Christians who came from Europe Franci irrespective of their ethnicity. However, relatively few of the incoming Europeans took a crusader oath. The term Outremer is of medieval origin, whilst modern historians use Crusader states, and the term Franks for the European incomers. The terms Crusader states and Outremer ( French: outre-mer, lit.'overseas') describe the four feudal states established after the First Crusade in the Levant in around 1100: (from north to south) the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The indigenous peoples were from Christian and Islamic traditions speaking Arabic, Greek, and Syriac. Their consensus view was that the Franks, as the western Europeans were known, lived as a minority society that was largely urban, isolated from the indigenous peoples, with separate legal and religious systems. The study of the crusader states in their own right, as opposed to being a sub-topic of the Crusades, began in 19th-century France as an analogy to the French colonial experience in the Levant. When Acre, the capital of the kingdom of Jerusalem, fell in 1291, the last territories were quickly lost, with the survivors fleeing to the Kingdom of Cyprus (established after the Third Crusade). Antioch was captured in 1268 and Tripoli in 1289.

Edessa fell to a Turkish warlord in 1144, but the other realms endured into the 13th century before falling to the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. At the states' largest extent, their territory covered the coastal areas of southern modern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. Territorial consolidation followed, including the taking of Tripoli. In 1099, Jerusalem was taken after a siege. The crusader Baldwin of Boulogne replaced the Greek Orthodox ruler of Edessa after a coup d'état, and Bohemond of Taranto remained as the ruling prince in the captured city of Antioch. In 1098, the armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem passed through Syria. The term 'Outremer', used by medieval and modern writers as a synonym, is derived from the French for overseas. The description 'Crusader states' can be misleading, as from 1130 very few of the Frankish population were crusaders. The other northern states spanned the coastal areas of what are now Syria, southeastern Turkey, and Lebanon. The Kingdom of Jerusalem covered what is now Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and adjacent areas. The four states were the County of Edessa (1098–1150), the Principality of Antioch (1098–1287), the County of Tripoli (1102–1289), and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291). These feudal polities were created by the Latin Catholic leaders of the First Crusade through conquest and political intrigue. The Crusader states, also known as Outremer, were four Catholic realms in the Middle East that lasted from 1098 to 1291.

The feudal kingdoms known as outremer were