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The taking of Le Krak des Chevaliers in 1271

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

D. J. Cathcart King
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Extract

The great Syrian fortress of Le Krak des Chevaliers, the best known, as it is on the whole the finest and best preserved, of the Crusader castles, has recently been made the subject of a brilliant and exhaustive study by M. Paul Deschamps; taken in conjunction with earlier notices by Rey, Van Berchem, T. E. Lawrence and others, this has left archaeologists in an exceptionally favourable position with regard to their knowledge of this castle. A few objections on points of detail might be raised to Deschamps' conclusions, but it appears to me that there is only one important question on which further clarification of our existing knowledge is needed : the reconstruction of the siege and capture of the Krak by the great Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, Bybars, in April 1271. The accounts given by the Arab historians of the period are not perfectly clear, and the explanations offered by Van Berchem and Deschamps do not appear to be the best possible, in view of the evidence of the fabric itself. In order to obtain a sounder idea of what occurred in the siege, it will first be necessary to consider the buildings and their history in brief.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 23 , Issue 90 , June 1949 , pp. 83 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1949

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References

1 Le Crac des Chevaliers (Les Châteaux des Croisés en Terre Sainte) Paris, 1934.

2 Hence the curiously pleonastic modern Arabic name Qalaat el Hosn (Stronghold Castle).

3 Bull of Alexander iv, quoted Deschamps, p. 130.

4 Its position on the plan is marked by almost the only Mamluk work in the inner ward, the Muslim owners having closed the gap.

5 op. cit., p. 205.

6 Architecture Militaire des Croisés, p. 15.

7 The parapet will have been of two storeys, in the Eastern fashion; this must have given a reasonable command over the counterscarp.

8 Constable of Margat, 1250-4, and of the Krak presumably soon afterwards.

9 So that the fighting-stage in the basement would be closed when the portcullis was down, and that on the upper floor when it was up !

10 op. cit., p. 46.

11 Deschamps op. cit., p. 120; Rey, op. cit., p. 40.

12 The excerpts from these writers are taken from the French versions quoted at length by Rey (Arch. Mil., pp. 65-7), and Deschamps (Le Crac des Chevaliers, pp. 132-4).

13 The Moslem month of Rejeb.

14 This appears to be the corraci date, but Deschamps (p. 133) for some unaccountable reason takes the 15th for the date, on the apparent authority of Ibn Shaddad, though the latter in fact gives the 21st.

15 This expression, which occurs in Rey, I take to be a translation of the word quila.

16 p. 303.

17 Vide supra, note on this date.

18 The gate of the Citadel of Cairo is called Bab Quila.

19 Deschamps, p. 120; Rey, op. cit., p. 151.

20 I am indebted to Professor K. A. C. Creswell for this fact.

21 A very massive structure, its base being a solid cube of masonry of side approximately 50 feet.