Edessa is not now to be found on maps of the Near East; instead there is Urfa, the Turkish name for the former Christian city lying in the upper region of the Euphrates valley some two hundred and fifty kilometres from the Mediterranean. Like Christian Edessa, Moslem Urfa is a frontier city, where the mountains of Anatolia meet the Fertile Crescent, a situation helping to explain the city's chequered history. It is with the last phase of the city's Christian history, before it changed for ever at the hands of the conquering Moslem leader Nur-ed-Din that this article is concerned. This last phase saw Edessa and its neighbourhood ruled by Latin Counts as a consequence of the First Crusade, which, though concerned with the taking of Jerusalem, saw several other Latin states established in an arc ranging from the Euphrates to Galilee. The history of Edessa, of interest to Crusade historians, has also fascinated those concerned with the wider history of the Levant, as an illustration of which Edessa's frontier situation is peculiarly fitted. Moreover, the rule there of the