What are some good books or other sources on the Kingdom of Cyprus (1192-1489)? I've noticed that despite lasting as an independent kingdom for nearly 3 centuries that its very difficult to find information on, and even the wiki page is super short.
As a secondary question, whats the reason for this? Is it due more to a lack of public interest, or a lack of surviving documents?
There are actually quite a lot of surviving primary documents for Cyprus, probably even more than there are for Jerusalem. There are administrative and legal documents, chronicles in French, Latin, Italian, and Greek, songs and poems and scientific literature…so there is a lot of information that historians can use to write a history. But I think you’re right, there isn’t as much interest in Cyprus. I suppose it just isn’t as “sexy” as the Kingdom of Jerusalem!
The classic work, although very outdated now, is George Hill, A History of Cyprus, vol. 2: The Frankish Period (1192-1432) (Cambridge University Press, 1948). General histories of the crusades usually deal with at least some of Cyprus’ history, such as Elizabeth Chapin Furber, “The Kingdom of Cyprus, 1191-1291” in A History of the Crusades, vol. II: The Later Crusades, 1189-1311, ed. R.L. Wolff and H.W. Hazard (University of Wisconsin Press, 1969). This is also pretty outdated today though.
There has been a lot of work on Cyprus more recently, but there still isn’t really a history covering the entire period of the kingdom including the Venetian period from 1489-1571. As far as I know there is hardly anything written about the Venetian period, at least not in English.
The best modern history of the kingdom is Peter W. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), although it stops soon after the assassination of King Peter I in 1369.
There are a few other books about particular aspects of the kingdom:
Nicholas Coureas, The Latin Church in Cyprus, 1195-1312 (Routledge, 1997)
Benjamin Arbel. "Slave trade and slave labour in Frankish Cyprus (1191-1571)”, in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 24 (1993), pp. 149-190.
Angel Nicolaou-Konnari and Chris Schabel, eds., Cyprus: Society and Culture, 1191-1374 (Brill, 2005
Angel Nicolaou-Konnari and Chris Schabel, eds., A History of Limassol in Cyprus From Antiquity to the Ottoman Conquest (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015)
Michael J.K. Walsh, Tamás Kiss, Nicholas Coureas, eds., The Harbour of All This Sea and Realm: Crusader to Venetian Famagusta (Central European University Press, 2014)
Edbury, Coureas, Schabel, and Arbel are the really big names in this area, and they have lots of other articles and some other books (including book-length collections of articles) that might be helpful. But for a basic history I would definitely suggest Edbury’s 1993 book.