ASSISES ( a word with several meanings: here both lawbooks and the legislative acts they purport to record)
"ELECTION" (from Latin ELIGO, to choose, Select)
SUZERAINTY From Old French "sovrin, sovrainete, meaning highly-placed, summit, and so top person, as in our "sovereign". Generally, lordship or, at a pinch, overlordship makes better sense before the modern period.
POWER and AUTHORITY
HAUTE COUR (High Court, the local equivalent of royal court or Curia Regis)
THREE ORDERS: ORATORES, BELLATORES, LABORATORES. This division of society into three, though very ancient, is fouind in the West as an organizing motif from the tenth century, Those who pray, those who fight and those who work are in descending order of importance.
SERFS, though unfree, usually live on land which they may regard as their own, and so differ from the even more closely controlled slaves
INCIDENTS. These are windfall consequences of lordship (so often called Feudal Incidents). Examples are WARDSHIP (the right to look after a dead man's heir and meanwhile take the profits from his estates), MARRIAGE (the right to give an heiress, or sometimes male heir, away in marriage, to your profit), AID (the right to seek on a supposedly voluntary basis military or more often financial aid in an hour of need, the standard basis for medieval taxation), ESCHEAT (the right to be the residual heir and take over a dead vassal's lands if he leaves none or in the event of confiscation for some serious offense)
OUTREMER (= Overseas, Abriad, generally indicating a Westerner's view of Palestine, but also used by Syrians of Western Europe)
BAILLI (Guardian as in Wardship, but also Regent, Guardian of the kingdom when the king is captured or too ill to rule, or dead leaving an heir too young to rule)
QUEEN MELISENDE
HUGH (II) OF LE PUISET, Lord of JAFFA
WILLIAM OF TYRE with his HISTORY one of the very greatest medieval writers of history
PEERS (from Old French "par", equal)
JOSHUA PRAWER
ZENGI, NUREDDIN
TITHE (one tenth, as in the amount Christians are supposed to give in alms to the poor, but also used for a tax of one tenth of movable property)
BOURGEOIS (from Old French "bourg", defensible place or borough, in Palestine not necessarily urban, so non-noble inhabitant like burgess but different)
LO CODI (Provencal law code that lpriovided the main source of the Latin Kingdom's ASSISE DES BOURGEOIS)
LETTERS OF THE HOLY SEPULCHER
PARLEMENT
FAMILIARES
COUNSEL Another duty owed to (feudal) lords, as in Aid & Counsel, Counsel & Consent.
ASSISE SUR LA LIGECE       ASSIZE OF NOVEL DISSEISIN
DUE PROCESS
MARONITE
COUNCIL OF NABLUS 1120