The Kingdom of Jerusalem was by far the largest and most prosperous of the Crusader states. At its apogee in the half-century before the disastrous defeat at Hattin in 1187, it comprised not only Palestine between the Jordan valley and the Mediterranean but also the lordship of Oultrejourdain to the east of the Dead Sea, which extended as far south as the Gulf of Aqaba, and much of the coast of modern Lebanon as far north as Beirut. The castles in this area are not as spectacular as Margat, Saone or Crac des Chevaliers in Syria, but they are still very interesting. In the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the twelfth century we can see the traces of real attempts at settlement of the land. In the modest towers of knightly families and the first enclosure fortifications of the military orders we see the hopes and aspirations of a generation who believed that the Holy Land would become a part of Latin Christendom as surely as the newly conquered lands of Sicily and Toledo.

royal and community castle building

Almost as soon as they set foot in the area which was to form the Crusader States, the Franks began to build fortifications, among the earliest of them being the three towers constructed outside Antioch when the Crusaders were besieging the city in the winter of 1097–8. The siege of Jerusalem in the summer of 1099 was much shorter than the blockade of Antioch and it seems that no substantial fortifications were built to assist it. When the city was captured, most of the army of the Crusade returned home to the west.