Krak des Chevaliers

34°45′25″N 36°17′40″E

Crac des Chevaliers and
Qal’at Salah El-Din

UNESCO World Heritage Site
Criteria	Cultural: ii, iv
Reference	1229
Inscription	2006 (30th Session)

Krak des Chevaliers, also transliterated Crac des Chevaliers, is a Crusader fortress in Syria and one of the most important preserved medieval military architectures in the world. In Arabic, the fortress is called Qal'at al-Ḥiṣn (Arabic: قلعة الحصن). It is located 65 km west of the city of Homs, close to the border of Lebanon, and administratively part of the Homs Governorate.

Krak des Chevaliers was the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller during the Crusades. It was expanded between 1150 and 1250 and eventually housed a garrison of 2000. The fortress has outer walls which are 100' thick, with seven guard towers 30' in diameter.

King Edward I of England, while on the Ninth Crusade in 1272, saw the fortress and used it as an example for his own castles in England and Wales. The fortress was described as “perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world” by T.E. Lawrence. This fortress was made a World Heritage Site, along with Qal’at Salah El-Din, in 2006 and is owned by the Syrian government. The fortress is one of the few sites where Crusader art (in the form of frescoes) has been preserved.

Location

The castle is located east of Tripoli in the Homs Gap, atop a 650-meter high hill along the only route from Antioch to Beirut and the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of many fortresses that were part of a defensive network along the border of the old Crusader states. The fortress controlled the road to the Mediterranean, and from this base, the Hospitallers could exert some influence over Lake Homs to the east, to control the fishing industry and watch for Muslim armies gathering in Syria.

Ancient history

The Middle East was always a meeting place for many different civilizations, notably the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Hebrews, the Romans, the Persians, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Kurds, the Ottomans, the Seljuk Turks, and the Franks. Such a smorgasbord of different cultures led to the creation of the unique architecture preserved in the Krak des Chevaliers.

Many conflicts were fought out between different nations in the general area surrounding the Crac, including the famous Battle of Kadesh. The Romans, and then the Byzantine Empire following the East-West Schism, constructed many different fortresses of Hellenic design to resist Persian military pressure in that area, which led to the architectural design used by the Islamic armies after their conquest of the area in 634 to 639.

Islamic conquest

Under the rule of the Umayyad dynasty, builders took advantage of the previous Byzantine structures and their barrage/aqueduct of the Orontes River to turn them into magnificient palaces with gardens in the middle of the desert. Construction continued under the new rule of the Abbasid empire in 750, although it steadily declined under army control, as the primarily Turkish forces did not make as much use of the fortifications.

Crusades

Gothic cloister by the fortress yard.

The original fortress at the location had been built in 1031 for the emir of Aleppo.

During the First Crusade in 1099, it was captured by Raymond IV of Toulouse, but then abandoned when the Crusaders continued their march towards Jerusalem. It was reoccupied again by Tancred, Prince of Galilee, in 1110. In 1144, it was given by Raymond II, count of Tripoli, to the Hospitallers, contemporaries of the Knights Templar.

The Hospitallers rebuilt it and expanded it into the largest Crusader fortress in the Holy Land, adding an outer wall three meters thick with seven guard towers 8-10 meters thick, to create a concentric castle. The Grand Master of the Hospitallers lived in one of the towers, and the fortress may have held about 50-60 Hospitallers plus up to 2,000 other foot soldiers. In the 12th century, the fortress had a moat covered by a drawbridge, leading to postern gates.

Between the inner and outer gates was a courtyard, leading to the inner buildings, which were rebuilt by the Hospitallers in a Gothic style. These buildings included a meeting hall, a chapel, a 120-meter long storage facility, and two stone vaulted stables which could have held up to a thousand horses. Other storage facilities were dug into the cliff below the fortress, and it is estimated that the Hospitallers could have withstood a siege for five years.

In 1163, the fortress was unsuccessfully besieged by Nur ad-Din, after which the Hospitallers became an essentially independent force on the Tripolitanian frontier. By 1170, the Hospitallers' modifications were complete. In the late 12th and early 13th century numerous earthquakes caused some damage and required further rebuilding.

Another failed siege was made by Saladin in 1188, during which the Castellan was captured, and taken by Saladin's men to the castle gates where he was told to order the gates opened. He reportedly spoke a dual message, first telling his men in Arabic, the language of his captors, to surrender the castle, but in French he told them to hold the castle to the last man.

In 1217, during the Fifth Crusade, the Hungarian king Andrew II strengthened the outer walls and financed the guarding troops.

In 1271, the fortress was recaptured by Baibars on April 8, 1271, after they had tricked the Hospitallers into believing the count of Tripoli had instructed them to surrender. Baibars refortified it and used it as a base against Tripoli. He also converted the Hospitaller chapel to a mosque.

The Mameluks later used it to attack Acre in 1291.

Gallery

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  Space between the inner and outer walls and plain at the foot of the fortress
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  Space between the inner and outer walls
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  Plan of Crac des Chevaliers (1871)
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  Plan showing construction 1170-1190