Syria's Crusader Castles

Contemporary Review, Jan, 2000 by Habeeb Salloum

On the beaches of North America or western Europe, when children build their sandcastles, little do they know that they are instinctively copying the citadel of Crac des Chevaliers (Fortress of the Knights) -- a paragon of castles. Like others, during my youthful years, I have erected countless citadels in the sand, but had never dreamed I was building a prototype of one of the mightiest and best preserved castles in the world.

In later years, I read about Crac des Chevaliers by travellers who described it as the most gigantic and beautiful citadel from the Middle Ages and this had made me yearn to walk its ramparts. Today my dream was about to come true and we were on our way to visit the archetype of sandcastles.

As we drove upwards through the town of al-Husn, our small auto and even the town itself were dwarfed by the huge overshadowing fortress. After we stopped our auto near the citadel's eastern entrance, I was amazed to see the massive walls towering above us and marvelled of how men, before the invention of gunpowder, could have breached its defences.

With steep sloping cliffs on three sides, Crac des Chevaliers, known in Arabic as Qalat al-Husn (the Bastion of al-Husn), lies some 37 miles west of Homs and 40 miles from the seaport of Tartous. A masterpiece of military architecture, it covers 3,588 square yards and from its walls loom 13 huge towers. Strategically perched atop a stone mountain 2,132 feet above sea level, it was built to control the 'Horns Gap' which divides the rugged Alawi Mountains to the north from the higher Lebanese range to the south.

For thousands of years, the pass was Syria's pathway to the Mediterranean. When the Crusaders came they found that this corridor was crucial to their control of the coast. Hence, they made Crac des Chevaliers their most important stronghold in the Levant. From its ramparts and towers, they could see and control all movements from the coast to inland cities.

The bastion one sees today was built by the Arabs in the eleventh century on the site of previous fortifications. After its capture by the Crusaders, it was extended and strengthened by the Hospitallers. They controlled the castle for 127 years before it was recaptured in A.D. 1271, through a military ruse, by the Arabs under the Mameluk Sultan Baybars.

The construction of defence strongholds was not an invention of the Crusaders. When these religious warriors arrived in the Middle East, they found that fortifications in Syria were much more advanced than those in their homelands. In subsequent centuries, they not only learned Arab techniques of castle building, but transferred this knowledge to Europe. R. C. Smail in his book The Crusaders writes: 'Crusader castles have also often been regarded as a kind of intermediary through which the advanced principles of the science of fortification, long developed and applied in the Byzantine and Muslim East, was transmitted to the more primitive European West.

Crac des Chevaliers is the best preserved evidence of military fortifications from the Middle Ages. Although it has most of the features common to other Crusader fortresses, its setting and the majesty of its cloud-reaching walls and towers -- the eyes of the castle -- give it regal appearance and an aura of grandeur with which few other structures in the world can compare. Historians have stated that its completeness, setting, size and sheer magnificence make it the finest citadel on earth. One of the most admired castles, it is a symbol of the topmost defence creation by medieval man.