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One of the best known of crusader castles was called the Krak (sometimes spelled Krak) des Chevaliers, located high on solid rock northeast of the city of Tripoli (in modern-day Lebanon). At around the time of the Third Crusade, the Muslim general Saladin tried to capture the castle, but it was so impenetrable that he failed, and the castle remained in Christian hands until 1271.
In the thirteenth century the city walls of Acre, Tyre, Tripoli, and Antioch continued to be the main strength of a shrunken kingdom, but complex fortresses such as Marqab, Athlit, and Arsuf were also necessary. From the great concentric castle of Krak des Chevaliers, close to Homs, the Hospitallers extracted tribute from nearby Muslim powers. But in the end each of these fortresses fell after a month of siege by the increasingly efficient Egyptian armies of the Mamluk sultans.
Nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholars were deeply impressed by crusader castles, especially Krak des Chevaliers, and it was presumed that the crusaders had copied Islamic and Byzantine models, whose features were then passed on to the West. Many writers dismissed this idea, notably the student T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence ofArabia), but it has persisted to this day.
In fact, most crusader castles were constructed along familiar western lines of a tower within an enclosure. It seems likely that fortification techniques in both the Islamic world and Europe were fundamentally learned from the Romans – Roman walls were a feature of some European and almost all.
The end of the Crusader states
With Baybars, more formally known as Rukn al-Din Baybars Bunduqdari, in control of Egypt, the Crusaders were doomed. In 1265 he marched on Caesarea (the old Roman capital of Palestine), captured the city, and destroyed it. He then took the cities of Haifa and Arsuf (in present-day Israel). In 1266 he marched on the Crusader castle at Safed (often spelled Saphet), one of the last strongholds of the Knights Templars, near the Sea of Galilee. The Templars surrendered when they were told that they could escape safely to Acre, but the treacherous Baybars had them all beheaded. The Mamluks then marched on Toron, on the coast, while another Mamluk force moved on Cilicia (a region of Turkey). Along the way the Mamluks killed every Christian they encountered.
By this time all that remained of the Christian kingdoms on the Levant (the countries on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean) were Acre, Jaffa, Antioch, Tripoli, and a few other small towns. Baybars moved on Acre in 1267, but the town was heavily fortified, so he agreed to a truce. It was at this point that Louis IX in France tried to mount an Eighth Crusade to rescue the city. Meanwhile, the Venetian merchants in the city were selling supplies to Baybars, including timber and iron from Europe that he could use to build siege engines.
Not to be outdone, the Genoese merchants were selling slaves to Baybars. With Acre under a truce, Baybars marched on Jaffa in 1268. After a siege that lasted just twelve hours, he entered the city and destroyed it. He then turned to Antioch, the richest of the Crusader states, where his forces looted the city and butchered every Christian he found. Equipped with massive siege machines, he then took a major Crusader castle, the Krak des Chevaliers, that had resisted siege attempts since the Third Crusade.
