Crusading - the Crac de Chevaliers

The next day we all travelled south to: The Crac des Chevaliers, which lies 65 kilometres west of the city of Homs which is an hour and a half south of Aleppo. It has its origins in the 11th century when, as home to a garrison of Kurdish soldiers, in the service of the Emir of Homs, it was known as the Castle of the Kurds (Hosn al-Akrad).

Tancred, a Prince of Antioch and Norman leader of the First Crusade occupied it in 1110 only to be besieged, unsuccessfully, five years later by Alp Arslan the Sultan of Aleppo.

The magnificent structure proudly stands high on the Jebel Ansarieh some 650 metres above the plain of Al-Bukeia with the Lebanon Mountains rising to the southwest.

Its strategic importance lay in the fact that it overlooked the Homs Gap, which gave access from the coast to the interior of Syria.

The castle, which dominates the landscape, became the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem.

One of the main difficulties the Crusaders were faced with, in their occupation of the Holy, was their lack of manpower which hampered their ability to defend large sections of territory won in the First Crusade.

In 1142, this shortage of men prompted Raymond, Count of Tripoli, a vassal state of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, to give control of the mighty Crac des Chevalier to the Knights Hospitaller, which was originally a monastic brotherhood caring for Latin pilgrims in the Holy Land, before developing into a military order.

After a major earthquake in 1170 the Hospitallers were forced to rebuild large sections of the castle while taking the opportunity to made significant improvements to the defensive walls

It had two concentric defensive walls, separated by a moat, surrounding a central keep. Its innovative design allowed the construction of a: “Triangular shaped gallery with ribbed vaults designed like a fortified barracks and flanked by five square towers. A chapel, financed by King Vladislas of Bohemia, was added in the northwest tower.

The castle is a UNESCO World Heritage Site

UNESCO said: “The castle is amongst the most extraordinary examples of castle architecture and symbolise the phase of the Crusades in the Holy Land.”

Further unsuccessful attacks were made by Nur ed Ein, Sultan of Damascus in 1153 and Saladin in 1188 before it finally fell to Baybars, Mamluk Sultan of Egypt and Syria in 1271.

The castle sits out on the end of a high spur, with a commanding view

Detail from a window edge, carved into the stone.

The outer walls. See the little family at the foot of the fortifications?

This is the inner fortification. The low wall on the right hand side of the photo is about 3m high; this is the inside of the top 3m of the outer fortification shown in the photo above. In the past the dirt in between wasn’t there, it was the moat!

This is what the whole lot would have looked like, with the steep slanting walls leading up out of the moat.

A view inside the second fortifications, where all where garrisoned.

View from the same height, but further around to the right.

Detail of windows to one of the halls

View along the gallery inside the outer fortifications. Defenders would run along here with fresh arrows (or whatever) for the guys looking down from the individual arrow slit windows.