This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Bohemond of Taranto, a Norman nobleman of southern Italy and son of Robert Guiscard, joined the First Crusade with a force of Normans drawn from Sicily and Apulia, bringing to the expedition the same military energy his family had already used to carve out territory in southern Italy at Byzantine and Lombard expense. Born in San Marco Argentano, in Calabria, he arrived in the East as one of the crusade's most capable and ambitious commanders, a reputation the campaign at Antioch would soon confirm.
He played a leading role in the prolonged siege and eventual capture of Antioch in 1098, one of the hardest fought engagements of the entire crusade, a siege that dragged on for months before the city finally fell. Before the siege, Bohemond and the other crusade leaders had sworn an oath to restore any conquered Byzantine territory to the Byzantine Empire, the power under whose nominal authority the expedition had originally set out from Constantinople.
Bohemond broke that oath once Antioch fell, taking the city for himself as Prince of Antioch rather than returning it to Byzantine control. The result was the first of the Crusader states to be founded, an outcome that rewarded his role in the siege while directly contradicting the commitment he had made before it, a contradiction that would shape the rest of his career and eventually draw him back into open conflict with Byzantium itself.