Unknown Crusader Castles

By Kristian Molin

Hambledon Press, ISBN: 1 85285 261 5 (2001)

Introduction

In November 1095 Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade at Clermont in south central France. The popularity of his message turned out to be enormous, as tens of thousands of people joined the expedition to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims in order to cleanse their own souls and, hopefully, achieve salvation after death. Having suffered enormous hardships as it travelled from western Europe through the Balkans, across Asia Minor and into Syria, the First Crusade finally captured Jerusalem in July 1099. During this gruelling journey its participants passed through several different regions whose history was to become inexorably linked with that of the future crusader states. Stretching from the Adriatic to Constantinople and dominating most eastern Mediterranean islands, including Cyprus, the Byzantine empire viewed the arrival of this and future Crusades with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the empire's inhabitants were fellow Christians and therefore grateful for any aid they might receive against the Turkish threat to the east. On the other hand, they were of course Orthodox Greeks rather than Catholics, and were consequently separated from western Europe by profound differences in religion, culture and outlook, which often caused tension or even open warfare.

            After they crossed the Bosphorus the armies of the First Crusade entered an even more alien world as they gradually began to move into Muslim territories. During the period covered by this book, these lands can loosely be divided into the three key regions of Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt. Asia Minor had originally been Byzantine, but by the logos most of it had been lost for good because of a series of Turkish advances achieved in the course of the eleventh century. During the next two hundred years the most dominant people in the region were normally the Seljuk Turks. However, after the mid fourteenth century the various Turkish peoples of Asia Minor were eventually unified under the rule of the Ottomans, who subsequently expanded their power in such a spectacular fashion that by 1520 they had created an empire stretching from North Africa to the Balkans via Egypt, Syria, Turkey and northern Greece. But at the time of the First Crusade and for a long time thereafter no such unity existed. The Muslims who inhabited the other key regions of Syria and Egypt were sporadically at war both with the Turks of Asia Minor and with each other. Unlike western Europe, where urban growth was still extremely limited, these political struggles were largely centred around the most important cities of the Muslim world. Inland these included Aleppo, Damascus and Cairo, all of which had grown extremely rich because of their trade links with Asia or Africa. Through ports such as Alexandria, Acre and Tyre they also had economic connections with Italy and the Byzantine empire, which ensured that the eastern Mediterranean was far richer and far more sophisticated than any of the north European lands inhabited by most members of the First Crusade.

            The region also differed from the west in its cultural diversity. The Muslim peoples were not just divided geographically or politically, they varied considerably in terms of their ethnic background and according to whether they adhered to the Sunnite or to the Shiite faith. The eastern Mediterranean also had a notable population of Jews, plus several nonCatholic Christian groups, many of whom lived under Muslim rule. These included various Orthodox communities, as well as Maronites, Nestorians and Syrian Jacobites. The most important such group for the purposes of this book was the Armenians. They inhabited a large part of what is now south-eastern Turkey and northern Syria, and in particular the region to the north west of Antioch known as Cilicia. They had consequently lived under Byzantine rule until the Turkish incursions of the eleventh century. Although the Greek emperors continued to enjoy some sporadic authority over them during the next hundred years, their distance from Constantinople ensured that by the late twelfth century the Armenians had effectively become independent. This move toward independence was greatly aided by the local terrain, for Cilicia itself was surrounded by mountains to the north, east and west, and by the Mediterranean to the south. These barriers helped to protect the Armenians both from the Greeks and from the Seljuk Turks. Like the Byzantine Greeks, they enjoyed a love-hate relationship with the crusading newcomers, for they were fellow Christians yet they were non-Catholics with their own language, history and cultural identity.

            This was the world which the members of the First Crusade entered in 1099. Rather than feeling overawed by the rich and complex society they had encountered, those crusaders who chose to remain after the fall of Jerusalem wasted no time in consolidating the military gains they had made. Former Muslim territories in western Syria and Palestine were gradually conquered and turned into four new crusader states: the kingdom of Jerusalem, the principality of Antioch, and the counties of Tripoli and Edessa. The westerners who undertook these campaigns were mostly French, but others came from Italy, Germany and Spain. Former Muslim ports such as Acre now fell under Christian control and their lucrative Asiatic trade links came to be dominated by the Italian maritime cities of Venice, Genoa and Pisa. In the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries many crusader lands were also held by the Hospitallers, Templars and Teutonic Knights. These were Military Orders, groups of western knights who confronted the Muslims in battle yet followed an austere and celibate lifestyle under the protection of the pope. Like more traditional monastic orders, they grew wealthy on the donations of land or money made by their European patrons, and these resources enabled them to make a substantial contribution to the military activities of the crusader states.

            After these states had been established, their twelfth-century history was largely determined by the attitude taken towards them by the Muslim rulers of Aleppo, Damascus and Cairo. These three key cities were frequently at war, and at such times their rulers were prepared to negotiate peace treaties with the Latins, or even seek Christian aid against each other. Although its field army was relatively small, this enabled the kingdom of Jerusalem to prosper for most of the early twelfth century. However, in the north the rulers of Aleppo gradually proved to be more pugnacious toward Antioch and Edessa; and eventually in 1144 the latter city was recaptured by the Muslims. By the early 1150s the entire county of Edessa had disappeared, the failed Second Crusade (1148-49) doing nothing to prevent this. During this period Nur al-Din, the ruler of Aleppo, also managed to extend his rule to Damascus, threatening the security of Jerusalem itself. Worse was to come after Nur al-Din's death in 1174, for eventually his Syrian lands were annexed by Saladin, the ruler of Egypt. This meant that the Christians could no longer rely on the divisions amongst the Muslims to keep them safe, for Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo were now all controlled by one man. Saladin's empire eventually gave him such an overwhelming military superiority over the Latins that he was able to annihilate the crusader field army at the battle of Hattin in July 1187. Thereafter the entire kingdom of Jerusalem, including the holy city itself, was recaptured by the Muslims except for the heavily fortified port of Tyre. Although the county of Tripoli and the principality of Antioch did not suffer quite as badly, they too lost considerable amounts of land, including the corridor of coastal land which actually connected them, when Saladin launched another devastating campaign against them in 1188.

            Meanwhile, new crusader states had been set up in Greece after the Fourth Crusade (1202-4), a joint expedition involving Venetian naval forces and contingents of French and Italian knights. Its original purpose had been to build on the achievements of the Third Crusade and attack the Muslims of Egypt, but instead it ended up capturing Constantinople from the Greeks. This diversion was caused by numerous political and economic factors, such as the request for western aid by a Greek claimant to the imperial throne and the Venetian desire to augment its share of the lucrative trade passing through the Aegean. It also reflected the growing tension between the Greeks and the Latins, as there was often mutual distrust between these two peoples because of their differences in language, culture and religion. Both this expedition and Richard I's earlier conquest of Cyprus reflected a growing willingness in the west to direct crusades against people who were not necessarily Muslim but were nevertheless considered schismatic opponents of Catholicism.

            After the fall of Constantinople in 1204 some parts of the former Byzantine empire were carved up into a number of new western states, whilst others remained under Greek control. The period until 1380 witnessed a protracted struggle between Latin newcomers and Greeks trying to recreate the Byzantine empire. On the mainland this struggle generally favoured the Greeks, but by the late fourteenth century both sides found themselves being confronted by an even stronger opponent, the Ottoman Turks, who gradually swallowed up all Christian territories around the Aegean regardless of whether they were Greek or Latin. Meanwhile, the Muslim armies which had already driven the Franks out of the Holy Land in 1291 also conquered Cilician Armenia in 1375. This was also a period of crisis for the kingdom of Cyprus, for in 1374 it was invaded by Genoese forces hoping to use the island as a base from which to dominate local trade and to undermine the influence of their great rivals, the Venetians. This highly destructive episode marked the beginning of the end for Cyprus as a fully independent Frankish crusader state, for it resulted in the Genoese occupation of Famagusta until 1464, after which the entire island fell under Venetian control from 1489 onwards. Finally, in 1571, Cyprus was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, thereby destroying the last Christian domain in the eastern Mediterranean whose Frankish settlers could trace their ancestry back to the earliest crusader states created by the members of the First Crusade.

            This book is a study of the various military and non-military functions of fortifications occupied by Latin or Armenian Christians who settled in the Holy Land, Cyprus, Cilician Armenia and Greece between 1187 and c. 1380. The political and military upheavals of the period ensured that fortifications played a prominent role in its history. Yet the study of such structures still has a number of important gaps which this book aims to fill. There has been a tendency in the past for scholars to concentrate their efforts on castles in the Holy Land, and in particular famous and wellpreserved structures such as Crac des Chevaliers in Syria. Although this imbalance is being addressed by the work of scholars such as Denys Pringle, Ronnie Ellenblum and Adrian Boas, who in recent years have excavated, studied or recorded very many smaller crusader fortifications and domestic structures, their studies are still focused on the Holy Land itself, and especially on the kingdom of Jerusalem. A primary aim of this book is to shed more light on fortifications built or occupied by Latins and Armenians in the more obscure areas of Cyprus, Greece and Cilician Armenia.

            The second, and closely related aim is to make up for the lack of studies which deal with crusader fortifications from the thirteenth century onwards, even though this period, as we have seen, represented a massive expansion of crusading endeavour as Latins settled on Cyprus and in the former Byzantine territories around the Aegean. Within the Holy Land itself there has often been a tendency for historians to focus on the period between 1095 and the end of the Third Crusade in 1192. This is perhaps understandable, bearing in mind that some of the most famous military encounters of the middle ages, most notably the First Crusade and Richard Lionheart's struggles with Saladin, took place during this period. It may also reflect the nature of the sources, and in particular the fact that William of Tyre's well-known history of the Holy Land, which contains so many clear and accessible accounts of castles being built, besieged or destroyed, ended in 1184. Thus for example, R. C. Smail's famous work on crusader warfare dealt with the period from 1097 to 1193. In recent years scholars such as C. Marshall, whose book on warfare between 1192 and 1291 represents a continuation of Smail's work, have begun to address this shortfall. However, this book hopes to extend the work of Marshall and others by taking a further look at the Holy Land in the thirteenth century, and by including the post-1291 history of Cyprus, Greece and Armenia. Hence each chapter begins with a brief section on warfare in these regions, to show how the nature of local fighting influenced the appearance and functions of local fortifications.

            The third aim of this book is to provide an analytical rather than a purely descriptive study of fortifications in the eastern Mediterranean. Once again, this is something which is already being done in the Holy Land. Alongside purely archaeological or architectural works such as D. Pringle's recent survey of secular structures in the kingdom of Jerusalem, some scholars have also researched the ways in which castles were actually used by the Latins, and how they fitted into the wider military and political history of the Latin East. The earliest and most influential book of this kind was undoubtedly Smail's Crusading Warfare, but, as we have seen, this has now been complemented by Marshall's important study of the period after 1192. Other books to appear in recent years which have viewed castles in the same light include Hugh Kennedy's Crusader Castles (Cambridge, 1994), plus numerous publications by leading archaeologists such as Pringle's The Red Tower (London, 1986) and Ellenblum's Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1998).

            Beyond the Holy Land itself, the picture is very different. Studies already exist devoted to the visible remains of fortifications in Cyprus, Greece and Cilician Armenia, but apart from giving brief historical outlines of the sites they refer to, these works are largely devoted to listing and describing surviving structures. What these fortifications were actually used for, rather than what they looked like, is a topic which has barely been touched upon, and it is one of the principal aims of this book to make up for this silence. At times it will become apparent that this can be a difficult task, because some areas, most notably Frankish Greece and Cilician Armenia, are lacking both in reliable historical sources and in recent subsurface archaeological excavation. No studies exist for these areas which can compare with the very detailed research undertaken in the kingdom of Jerusalem, where a wealth of information from papal letters, contemporary chroniclers or surviving charters, combined with the meticulous investigations of leading archaeologists, has sometimes made it possible to recreate the history of certain crusader castles virtually year by year.

            Despite the limited scope for this type of research outside the Holy Land, a combination of archaeological and historical sources can shed much new light on the functions of local fortifications. For example, during the last thirty years the archaeologists Hansgerd Hellenkemper and Robert Edwards have produced comprehensive studies which list and describe virtually every single surviving stronghold in Cilician Armenia. Yet because there are very few traces of any urban fortifications left in this region, they have rejected the notion that the Armenians constructed defences of this kind, preferring instead to live in or near remote mountain castles. I hope to show that a closer scrutiny of the historical evidence actually indicates that the Armenians did dwell inside cities, whose older Byzantine ramparts they were happy to repair or rebuild. This would suggest that Edwards and Hellenkemper have relied too much on the archaeological evidence (or its absence) to draw their conclusions, without studying the written sources as well. While there are chapters in each of the parts of this book which deal with military architecture, it is my intention to do more than simply describe fortifications, and to look at a variety of sources in order to highlight the ways in which such structures were actually used to defend or conquer new land, to suppress hostile locals or to impose central authority over recalcitrant vassals. This is an approach which has not been used before with regard to Greece, Cyprus and Cilician Armenia, but in the Holy Land I hope to build on the research already carried out in this field by Smail, Marshall and others.

            The vast majority of research already carried out on crusader fortifications, as is already clear, has concentrated on the Holy Land, and in particular on the kingdom of Jerusalem (or Acre, as it is often known after 1187). This book nevertheless contains a chapter on that region, partly because it is the most famous and important area of crusading endeavour, and partly because it gives this research as a wide a scope as possible, so that comparisons can be made between the functions of fortifications in the Holy Land and those situated in other parts of the eastern Mediterranean. It is hoped that this will show how the famous castles built by the crusaders in the Holy Land were sometimes very different from, but sometimes very similar to, the many less well-known strongpoints constructed in Greece, Cyprus and Cilician Armenia.

            This book deals with the period from 1187 to 1380. From what has already been said it will be clear that much work has already been done on the Holy Land, particularly during the twelfth century, yet after 1187 the Latins acquired far more crusader territories around the eastern Mediterranean than they had held before the battle of Hattin. It was also a time when Cilician Armenia gained independence from Byzantine authority, being transformed into another Christian state which had to face the growing pressure applied by powerful Muslim neighbours. Many more Christian strongpoints were built or occupied during this period than the hundred years immediately after the First Crusade. The year 1380 seems a natural ending point for this book for a number of political, military and cultural reasons: Cilician Armenia fell in 1375, bringing its history as an independent state to a close. Cyprus was invaded by Genoa in 1374, and although the Genoese were only able to conquer a small part of the kingdom, this period signalled the end of the island's status as a prosperous crusader state, for its economy was in decline and its political life gradually came to be dominated by Italians rather than by the Frankish families who had originally settled there after 1192. In Greece, meanwhile, the tide had definitely turned in favour of the Ottoman Turks, for by the end of the fourteenth century they had already conquered most of the Byzantine empire and were beginning to penetrate the remaining Latin states in south-western Greece. Technologically speaking, 1380 also seems an appropriate date at which to stop, because by that point gunpowder was already known in Europe. Although it would be a long time before it revolutionised warfare in its entirety, this new discovery heralded the beginning of the end for the kind of medieval fortifications dealt with in this book. Hence both politically and technologically the late fourteenth century marked the end of an old era and the beginning of a new one.

We thank Hambledon Press and Kristian Molin for allowing us to republish the Introduction of this book.