High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The first comites (counts) of Toulouse were the administrators of the city and its environs under the Merovingians. No succession of such royal appointees is known, though a few names survive to the present. With the Carolingians, the appointments (of both counts and duces, dukes) become more regular and better-known, though the office soon fell out of the orbit of the royal court and became hereditary. The hereditary Counts of Toulouse ruled the city of Toulouse and its surrounding county from the late 9th century until 1270. The counts and other family members were also at various times counts of Quercy, Rouergue, Albi, and Nîmes, and margraves of Gothia and Provence. Also, Raymond IV founded the Crusader state of Tripoli, and his descendants were counts there. As a successor state for the Visigothic Kingdom (418 721),Tolouse (along with Aquitania (Occitania) and Languedoc) inherited the Visigothic Law and Roman Law which had combinedto allow women more rights then their contemporaries would enjoy until the 20th century.