This chapter analyses the reciprocal connection and economic co-dependence between the city and its hinterland through patterns of property ownership among the different Jerusalemite institutions. It shows that the extra-urban activities of these institutions directly continued the mechanisms and strategies established earlier in their intra-urban engagement. Thus, for example, in the case of the Holy Sepulchre this included the establishment of close working relationships with local settlers, direct management of rural estates and the reallocation of previously acquired assets in accordance with the Holy Sepulchre’s changing economic needs. Furthermore, this chapter seeks to highlight the different interests that shaped patterns of property ownership outside the city and trace the shifts that occurred after the middle of the twelfth century, as well as their correspondence with the development of Jerusalemite institutions.

This chapter analyses the transformation that the communal bonds shaped between Jerusalem’s inhabitants and the Holy Sepulchre underwent in the second half of the twelfth century, first as the mechanisms established in Jerusalem were exported and adapted to its hinterland, and then when other institutions, such as the Hospital of St John, increased their involvement in the cityscape. When this process coalesced with the increasing autonomy of the burgess population, former social structures were replaced by looser forms of collaboration between the burgesses and individual institutions. Building on this analysis, this chapter then turns to examining the social structures of Frankish Jerusalem through the comparative framework of medieval immigrant cities, in order to readdress its unique status between Western perceptions and manifestations of medieval urbanism, and local, eastern Mediterranean challenges.