The Finest Crusader Castle - Crac de Chevaliers

Crac (also Krak) de Chevaliers is arguably the most famous and most iconic of all remaining crusader castles. It is a World Heritage Site and one of the most impressive medieval castles still visible today, despite recent damage in the Syrian civil war. It seemed the fitting end to my short series on crusader castles.

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Crac de Chevaliers is located in what is now Syria near the Lebanese border. It sits at an elevation of 650 meters or 2,100 feet, atop a hill in the so-called “Homs Gap.” The latter is the most accessible route between the crusader city of Tripoli and the then important Muslim city of Homs, just 54 miles away. It dominates a fertile valley with abundant rainfall (for the region), which gave it double importance as a bulkwark against invasion and a defensive structure to protect the local farmers.

The first fortification on this site was constructed in 1131 by the Kurdish Emir of Homs  as a defense against the Shiite Fatamids. It was known as Hosn al-Akrad, the Castle of the Kurds. During the first crusade, Raymond of Toulouse’s foragers came under attack from the garrison of fortress. The next day Raymond’s main force drove the attacks off and briefly occupied the castle itself before continuing south toward Jerusalem.

The crusaders did not attempt to establish their own fortification here until 1110, when Tancred, Prince of Galilee, took control of the site. Although we know a castle of some sort was constructed at this time, nothing remains of it. The castle passed at from Tancred to the Count of Tripoli at an unrecorded date.

 Copyright Stephan Reinsch

In 1144, the Count of Tripoli, recognizing his vulnerability to Saracen attack and the limits of his own purse, made the strategic decision to what we would now call “out-source” a large part of the defense of his county to the Knights Hospitallers. He transferred to them four castles on the borders of his county, Felicium, Castellum Bochee, Lacum, and Crac de Cheveliers. The Hospitallers were in a far better position to construct, maintain and man these castles because they could draw on immense resources donated to them from across Christendom as opposed to being dependent on the revenues of a single, vulnerable county in the Holy Land.

The Hospitallers made Crac de Chevaliers their principle base for the defense of the north of the crusader states, and construction began at once on a much more extensive castle. Unfortunately, serious earthquakes in 1157 and again in 1170 badly damaged these early structures. Nevertheless, they were each time able to rebuild successfully. By 1187, when disaster struct at the Battle of Hattin, the Hospitallers had a castle so strong that Salah ad-Din by-passed it altogether, making no attempt to even besiege it. Yet this castle was not yet the castle as we see it today.

 Copyright Stephan Reinsch

The Hospitallers continued to expand Crac de Chevalier’s defenses and its interior throughout the 13^th century. At its height it a garrison of 2,000 men including 60 knights, and one of the towers was designed as the residence of the Hospitaller Master. It had a aqueduct filled reservoir. Particularly impressive are the chapel and the Hall of the Knights. Both are beautiful examples of crusader architecture. In addition, fragments of wall paintings highlight the degree to which its interior was decorated and the high quality of the workmanship.

Copyright: Stephan Reinsch                                                     Copyright: CC BY-SA 3.0

 Hall of the Knights. Copyright: CC by 3.0 DE

Yet it was less the beautiful finishing of the interior than the power of the defenses and harmonious and effective lay-out of the castle that has impressed tourists, archeaologists and historians alike. Even Thomas Edward Lawrence (more famous as “Lawrence of Arabia”) who was highly critical of crusader castles generally loved Crac de Cheveliers. He claimed it was the “most wholly admirable castle in the world.”[i] Hugh Nigel Kennedy, the modern British medieval historian, concluded that Crac was "the most elaborate and developed anywhere in the Latin east ... the whole structure is a brilliantly designed and superbly built fighting machine.”[ii]

Plan of Crac des Chevaliers from Guillaume Rey Étude sur les monuments de l'architecture militaire des croisés en Syrie et dans l'île de Chypre (1871). North is on the right.

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Crak represented the incorporated the very best military architecture of its day. On the one hand it made the most use of the natural topography by being sited atop a hill. But it added man-made defenses to those given it by nature to an extraordinary extent. These included two complete and concentric walls reinforced by towers that provided overlapping fields of fire to any salient of the wall. The use of round towers is particularly noteworthy as they were a comparatively new “invention,” first employed by Richard the Lionheart in his innovative castle Chateau Galliard, which was built between 1196 and 1198. The entire castle was surrounded by a moat up to 27 meters wide.

The outer wall was 16 meters high and 6.5 meters thick. There were two firing levels inside the wall as well as on the top, giving a total of three levels from which defenders could hurl missiles at attackers.  The outer wall was situated somewhat higher up the hill and was over 30 meters high and 12 meters thick. Defenders on this wall could shoot over their own colleagues to reach the enemy. The distance between the two walls was furthermore small enough so that should any enemy manage to breach the outer wall, they would come under fire from remaining defenders on both the inner and outer walls simultaneously. Interior walkways enabled the reinforcement of any sector under attack.

After the failure of Louis IX’s ill-fated Seventh Crusade and the rise of the Mamlukes, the situation around Crac began to deteriorate. The resurgent Saracens made frequent raids that caused the bulk of the peasants to abandon their land, leaving the countryside around the castle largely deserted. In 1270, the Mamluke Sultan Baybars brought a large force to reduce Crac but abandoned the siege on receiving word that King Louis IX was again on his way to attack Egypt. However, Louis died while still in Tunis, and in March 1271 Baybars returned. The Hospitallers had too few defenders for the dimensions of their great castle. The siege began March 3 and by March 29 the Mamlukes had succeeded in undermining the corner tower in the southwest and breaching the outer wall.  The garrison retreated into the inner ward and a lull of ten days followed, after which the Sultan conveyed a letter to the garrison allegedly from the Hospitaller Master authorizing the surrender of the garrison at their discretion. Understanding that no relief was on the way, the garrison negotiated a surrender of the Hospitaller’s proudest castle and abandoned it without a real fight. The letter was a forgery. 

Discover the crusader states in Dr. Schrader's novels set in the Holy Land during the crusader period:

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Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.

She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.

She is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at: http://crusaderkingdoms.com

---

[i] T.E. Lawrence quoted in Boas, Adrian. Crusader Archaeology. Routledge, 1999, p. 112.

[ii] Kennedy, Hugh. Crusader Castles.  Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 153

St. Hilarion - The Stronghold of the Lusignans

In writing about Medieval Cyprus it is impossible to overlook the most powerful and dramatic of all the medieval fortresses: St. Hilarion. It is the setting of several key episodes in the history of 12th and 13th century Cyprus. Below is a brief history.

The castle stands 700 meters (2275 feet) above sea level on the narrow ridge of the Kyrenia range just slightly southwest of the port of Kyrenia.  It was built by the Byzantine governor of the island after the Comnenus emperors re-established full control over Cyprus in the late 10th. Constructed between 1102 and 1110, it was called Didymos by the Byzantines for the twin mountain peaks between which the upper castle sits.  The crusaders, however, preferred to call it the castle of "Dieu d'Amour" (the God of Love) and the locals continued to refer to it as St. Hilarion because the saint of that name had built a monastery, been buried and venerated here long before the castle was built. 

  Remnants of the Castle Church

The castle boasts three lines of defense and was never taken by assault. It was, however, frequently besieged. 

 View from the upper to the lower ward.

In July/August 1228, after Emperor Friedrich II accused John d'Ibelin of malfeasance and attempted to seize his fief without trial, Ibelin secured control of St. Hilarion, had it well provisioned and moved his supporters' dependents there in preparation for a confrontation.  Ibelin was persuaded to turn the castle over to the King of Cyprus in exchange for the release of his two hostage sons -- or vice versa, depending on how one interprets the negotiations.

When Friedrich II left the Holy Land for the West, he turned St. Hilarion over to his appointed baillies with orders for them to prevent the Ibelins from setting foot on the island. Within two months, however, the Ibelins had pulled together a sufficient army to challenge this (illegal) order head on. They landed on the south coast and routed the imperial forces at the Battle of Nicosia on July 14, 1229.  The surviving leaders of the imperial supporters fled to the three mountain castles, Kantara, Buffavento and St. Hilarion. A siege began almost that lasted nearly a year. Shortly after Easter in 1230, the Imperial forces surrendered to the Ibelins.

Just two years later, in May 1232, fortunes were reversed. The Imperial forces were on the offensive. With the Lord of Beirut, all his sons and the bulk of his knights struggling to relieve a besieged Beirut, the Imperial forces seized control of Cyprus.  The supporters of the Ibelins were forced to seek refuge in St. Hilarion and Buffavento, where they were soon subjected to a siege. Six weeks later, after defeating the Imperial forces at the Battle of Argidi on June 15, 1232, the Ibelins were able to lift the siege of St. Hilarion and rescue their women and children. 

A long period of peace followed this episode, and St. Hilarion was strengthened and embellished by the Lusignan kings to turn it into an idyllic summer residence high above the heat of the coast. In 1348, King Hugh IV retreated to the castle to escape not an enemy but the plague. During the later Genoese invasion, St. Hilarion was an important royal base of operations, the key to disrupting Genoese internal lines of communication.

After that, it lost relevance and fell into disrepair and finally ruin from the 16th century onwards.

St. Hilarion is the setting of important historical events described in "Rebels against Tyranny."

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Crusader Castles

One of the most impressive and visible legacies of the crusader kingdoms are the castles erected by Latin rulers in their territories.  Yet, T.E. Lawrence, famous as “Lawrence of Arabia,” disparaged the crusader castles as irrelevant and ineffective because these fortifications ultimately proved incapable of preventing the fall of the crusader kingdoms. 

 

This is too facile a judgment. In fact, the crusader castles enabled numerically small fighting forces to withstand repeated invasions by numerically vastly superior armies. Christian defeats in the first hundred years of the crusader kingdoms occurred almost exclusively in the open field, where Muslim leaders could bring their larger forces to bear, e.g. the Field of Blood (1119), Hattin, (1187). By contrast, when the crusaders retreated into their fortified cities or castles, forcing the Saracens to besiege them, they usually survived to fight another day. Yet even the strongest walls require defenders and when a castle like Krak de Cheveliers, built to be defended by 2,000 fighting men, had a garrison of only a few hundred, it became indefensible. Outremer was not lost because its castles were irrelevant or ineffective, but because its castles could not be used as intended due to inadequate and dwindling manpower.

It is also important to remember, that crusader castles were not merely border fortresses designed for the defense of the realm against external enemies. They were also administrative and economic centers, symbols of royal/baronial power, residences, and places of refuge.  As in Western Europe, castles came in different sizes and designs, each reflective of the original and evolving purposes of the castle and the wealth and power of respective patrons.

Adrian Boas, in his excellent work Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East, identified no less than five basic types of crusader castles. The simplest form of castle was a simple tower. Similar castles were already known in the West and became popular in, for example, Scotland. In the crusader kingdoms, such castles were usually square with a windowless cellar/undercroft used for storage, wells and or kitchens, over which were built two floors topped by a crenolated fighting platform on the roof.  Access from the outside was usually only at first floor level by means of an exterior stair that ended several yards away from the door; the gap was bridged by a wooden draw-bridge that could be closed from the interior to cover and so reinforce the door. Each floor had two or more barrel or cross-vaulted chambers, which might have been further partitioned by wooden walls or roofs/floors. Out-buildings containing workshops, storerooms, stables and the like were located around the foot of the tower but were not themselves defensible. A splendid, although late, example of a crusader tower castle is the Hospitaller castle at Kolossi on Cyprus.

A second type of crusader castle, the castrum or enclosure castle, had their roots in Roman military architecture and evolved from Roman forts via Byzantium into crusader castles consisting of a defensible perimeter with reinforcing towers at the corners. The concept was similar to creating a ring of wagons behind which pioneers in the “wild west” defended themselves from attack by Indians or outlaws. The Muslims had also adapted this type of defensive structure, and on their arrival in the Holy Land the Franks took over a number of existing castles of this type. In addition, they built a number of castles following this design for themselves, notably Coliath in the County of Tripoli, Blanchegarde, and Gaza in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. These castles had large vaulted chambers with massive walls roughly three meters thick running between the corner towers. These housed the various activities necessary to castle life from kitchens and stables to forges, bakeries and bath-houses. The upper story of the enclosing buildings generally held accommodations, eating halls and chapels for the garrison. The roofs of the buildings were the fighting platform facing out in all directions and reinforced by the corner towers that provided covering fire.

The third type of crusader castle was a combination of the previous types: a strong roughly rectangular complex built around a tower or keep.  The enclosing walls (with their vaulted chambers) and corner towers formed the first line of defense and the keep the second. A surviving example of this kind of castle is Gibelet (Jubayl) in the County of Tripoli, and based on William of Tyre’s descriptions the royal castle at Darum in the Kingdom of Jerusalem was of this time.

As the Franks became wealthier or the threat became more intense the Franks started building outer works to provide a line of defense in beyond (i.e. before) the castrum containing so many vital parts of the castle’s inner life. These outer works may have originally been intended to provide a modicum of protection to the towns that often grew up around castles, but they soon evolved into what became one of the most distinctive, indeed iconic, type of crusader castle: the concentric castle. These were generally the castles of the military orders, built with the huge resources available to them and were more purely devoted to military dominance rather than the castles of securlar lords or royal castles. These were the castles that inspired Edward I’s castles in Wales. In addition to Krak de Cheveliers, a famous example of this type of castle was Belvoir, overlooking the Jordan valley. Belvoir held out against Saladin a year and a half after the Battle of Hattin; Krak he never even tried to assault, deeming it too strong.

Boas distinguishes between hill top and spur castles, but both of these castles were essentially castles that took advantage of natural geographic features to strengthen the overall defensibility of the castle. The hill-top castles and mountain spur castles were built on the top of steep slopes either occupying an entire hill-top of the tip of a longer corniche. They were undoubtedly the most difficult to take by storm since, built on bedrock, they were hard to undermine, and built on steep escarpments they were almost impossible to assault. Kerak, the castle of Reynald de Chatillon, was a spur castle and it withstood two unsuccessful sieges by Saladin, falling only to disease or demoralization more than a year after the Battle of Hattin.

Other crusader castles of this type were Montfort (or as the Teutonic Knights called it, Starkenburg), Beaufort/Belfort, Margat, and Saone.

A variation on the theme of the spur castle was the use of the sea rather than sheer mountain sides to provide protection. The Templar castle of Atlit Castle (Castle Pilgrim) and the castle at Tyre were both built on peninsulas extending into the sea and only accessible on one side from the land.  These castles proved almost impossible to capture as again, mining was impossible from three sides and assaults from boats were very precarious and difficult to carry out. As a result, a much smaller defensive force could hold such castles since only one side was vulnerable to attack and only a light watch was needed on the other three sides. Tyre became the only city in the Kingdom of Jerusalem that successfully resisted Saladin after the Battle of Hattin and became the base from which the coastal plain was reconquered.

Dr. Schrader will be introducing four key crusader castles, Kerak, St. Hilarion, Kantara and Crak de Chevaliers in the coming months.

Castles play an important part in all her novels set in the crusader states. 
 

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Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.

She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.

She is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at: http://crusaderkingdoms.com

Crusader Castles

One of the most impressive and visible legacies of the crusader kingdoms were the castles erected by Latin rulers in their territories. Dr. Schrader provides a quick overview of the various kinds of castles found.

One of the best preserved crusader castles: Krak de Chevaliers

T.E. Lawrence, famous as “Lawrence of Arabia,” disparaged the crusader castles as irrelevant and ineffective because these fortifications ultimately proved incapable of preventing the fall of the crusader kingdoms. Yet this is too facile a judgment. In fact, the crusader castles enabled numerically small fighting forces to withstand repeated invasions by numerically vastly superior armies. Christian defeats in the first hundred years of the crusader kingdoms occurred almost exclusively in the open field, where Muslim leaders could bring their larger forces to bear, e.g. the Field of Blood (1119), Hattin, (1187). By contrast, when the crusaders retreated into their fortified cities or castles, forcing the Saracens to besiege them, they usually survived to fight another day. 

The Crusader Castle of Kantara, Cyprus

Yet even the strongest walls require defenders and when a castle like Krak de Cheveliers, built to be defended by 2,000 men, has a garrison of only a few hundred, it becomes indefensible. Outremer was not lost because its castles were irrelevant or ineffective, but because its castles could not be used as intended due to inadequate and dwindling manpower.

It is also important to remember, that crusader castles were not merely border fortresses designed for the defense of the realm against external enemies. They were also administrative and economic centers, symbols of royal/baronial power, residences, and places of refuge.  As in Western Europe, castles came in different shapes and sizes, each reflective of the original and evolving purposes of the castle and the wealth and power of respective patrons.

Interior of Hospitaller HQ at Acre

Adrian Boas, in his excellent work Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East, identified no less than five basic types of crusader castles. The simplest form of castle was a simple tower. Similar castles were already known in the West and became popular, for example, in Scotland. In the crusader kingdoms, such castles were usually square with a windowless cellar/undercroft used for storage, wells and or kitchens, over which were built two floors topped by a crenolated fighting platform on the roof.  Access from the outside was usually only at first floor level by means of an exterior stair that ended several yards away from the door; the gap was bridged by a wooden draw-bridge that could be closed from the interior to cover and so reinforce the door. Each floor had two or more barrel or cross-vaulted chambers, which might have been further partitioned by wooden walls or roofs/floors. Out-buildings containing workshops, storerooms, stables and the like were located around the foot of the tower but were not themselves defensible. A splendid, although late, example of a crusader tower castle is the Hospitaller castle at Kolossi on Cyprus.

Hospitaller Tower Castle at Kolossi, Cyprus

A second type of crusader castle, the castrum or enclosure castle, had their roots in Roman military architecture and evolved from Roman forts via Byzantium into crusader castles consisting of a defensible perimeter with reinforcing towers at the corners. The concept was similar to creating a ring of wagons behind which pioneers in the “wild west” defended themselves from attack by Indians or outlaws. The Muslims had also adapted this type of defensive structure, and on their arrival in the Holy Land the Franks took over a number of existing castles of this type. In addition, they built a number of castles following this design for themselves, notably Coliath in the County of Tripoli, Blanchegarde, and Gaza in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. These castles had large vaulted chambers with massive walls roughly three meters thick running between the corner towers. These housed the various activities necessary to castle life from kitchens and stables to forges, bakeries and bath-houses. The upper story of the enclosing buildings generally held accommodations, eating halls and chapels for the garrison. The roofs of the buildings were the fighting platform facing out in all directions and reinforced by the corner towers that provided covering fire.

Vaulted Chambers at Kolossi

The third type of crusader castle was a combination of the previous types: a strong roughly rectangular complex built around a tower or keep.  The enclosing walls (with their vaulted chambers) and corner towers formed the first line of defense and the keep the second. A surviving example of this kind of castle is Gibelet (Jubayl) in the County of Tripoli, and based on William of Tyre’s descriptions the royal castle at Darum in the Kingdom of Jerusalem was of this type.

As the Franks became wealthier or the threat became more intense the Franks started building outer works to provide a line of defense beyond (i.e. before) the castrum containing so many vital parts of the castle’s inner life. These outer works may have originally been intended to provide a modicum of protection to the towns that often grew up around castles, but they soon evolved into what became one of the most distinctive, indeed iconic, type of crusader castle: the concentric castle. These were generally the castles of the military orders, built with the huge resources available to them and were more purely devoted to military dominance rather than the castles of secular lords or royal castles. These were the castles that inspired Edward I’s castles in Wales. In addition to Krak de Cheveliers, a famous example of this type of castle was Belvoir, overlooking the Jordan valley. Belvoir held out against Saladin a year and a half after the Battle of Hattin; Krak he never even tried to assault, deeming it too strong.

Another view of Krak de Cheveliers

Boas distinguishes between hill top and spur castles, but both of these castles were essentially castles that took advantage of natural geographic features to strengthen the defenses of the castle. The hill-top castles and mountain spur castles were built on the top of steep slopes either occupying an entire hill-top of the tip of a longer corniche or ridge. They were undoubtedly the most difficult to take by storm since, built on bedrock, they were hard to undermine, and built on steep escarpments they were almost impossible to assault. Kerak, the castle of Reynald de Chatillon, was a spur castle and it withstood two unsuccessful sieges by Saladin, before finally falling to starvation more than a year after the Battle of Hattin.

Kerak 

Other crusader castles of this type were Montfort (or as the Teutonic Knights called it, Starkenburg), Beaufort/Belfort, Margat, and Saone.

The fosse at Margat, showing the pillar that supported the drawbridge.

A variation on the theme of the spur castle was the use of the sea rather than sheer mountain sides to provide protection. The Templar castle of Atlit Castle (Castle Pilgrim) and the castle at Tyre were both built on peninsulas extending into the sea and only accessible on one side from the land.  These castles proved almost impossible to capture as again, mining was impossible from three sides and assaults from boats were very precarious and difficult to carry out. As a result, a much smaller defensive force could hold such castles since only one side was vulnerable to attack and only a light watch was needed on the other three sides. Tyre became the only city in the Kingdom of Jerusalem that successfully resisted Saladin after the Battle of Hattin and became the base from which the coastal plain was reconquered.

Which seems a fitting place to end this brief description of crusader castles.

Dr Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.

She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.

She is the author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction, including a three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin.

Crusader castles play a role in my three part biography of Balian d'Ibelin:

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