Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- A note on names
- Map
- 1 Prologue to the study of Crusader castles
- 2 Fortification in the west and east before the First Crusade
- 3 Castles of the twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem
- 4 Twelfth-century castles in the northern states (County of Tripoli, Principality of Antioch and County of Edessa)
- 5 Siege warfare in the Crusader lands
- 6 Nobles, Templars and Teutonic Knights in the thirteenth century
- 7 The Hospitallers in Tripoli and Antioch
- 8 Muslim castles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
- 9 Postscript: Crusader castles and the west
- Appendix De constructione castri Saphet (translation)
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Castles of the twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- A note on names
- Map
- 1 Prologue to the study of Crusader castles
- 2 Fortification in the west and east before the First Crusade
- 3 Castles of the twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem
- 4 Twelfth-century castles in the northern states (County of Tripoli, Principality of Antioch and County of Edessa)
- 5 Siege warfare in the Crusader lands
- 6 Nobles, Templars and Teutonic Knights in the thirteenth century
- 7 The Hospitallers in Tripoli and Antioch
- 8 Muslim castles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
- 9 Postscript: Crusader castles and the west
- Appendix De constructione castri Saphet (translation)
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
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.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Crusader Castles , pp. 21 - 61Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994