Bohemond, Norman prince of Taranto, Prince of…

Bohemond, Norman prince of Taranto, Prince of Antioch, and a leader of the First Crusade, had in 1100 been captured by Malik Ghazi Danishmend of Sivas, and had languished in prison until 1103.

At the beginning of the First Crusade, Crusader armies had assembled at Constantinople and promised Emperor Alexios I Komnenos that they would return to the Empire any land they might conquer.

However, Bohemond, the son of Alexios' former enemy Robert Guiscard, had claimed the Principality of Antioch for himself.

Alexios did not recognize the legitimacy of the Principality, and Bohemond, not long after his release in 1103, had traveled to Europe, where he had succeeded in winning over Pope Paschal II to the idea of a new Crusade.

Whatever the original intention, there results not an expedition against Muslims but an attack on the imperial port city of Dyrrhachium.

Like its predecessor, the ill-fated campaign of 1081, the enterprise fails: Dyrrhachium holds firm against the private crusade.