Crusader castles on the holy land. In the footsteps of the Crusaders on the Holy Land. Krak de Montreal - royal fortress of Shobak

Even today, it is enough to look at Europe and we will notice fortified feudal castles, sometimes in ruins, and sometimes in complete preservation or in a state of reconstruction, carried out by groups of enthusiasts and youth. Great Britain, France, Spain, and Switzerland are especially rich in castles. There are about 600 castles in France (and there were over 600 of them!): some of them - like the Pierrefonds castle (north of Paris) or the O'Konigsbourg castle (in Alsace) - have been completely restored, while others - such as the castle Mein-sur-Ièvre near Bourges or the Montlhéry Tower - only ruins remain. In turn, Spain has preserved over 2000 castles, of which 250 are completely intact and intact.

All these castles (and the armor of medieval knights!) are strictly individual and unlike one another: each country has generated its own style, which is characteristic only of its buildings. They also differ from each other by the status of their lords: a king, a prince, or a simple small baron, like that Picardy feudal lord named Robert de Clary, who owned a fief measuring only six hectares. They also differ in the choice of place of construction, whether they are in the mountains (Tarasp or Sion castles in Switzerland), on the seashore (for example, Caernarvon Castle in Wales), along river banks (Marienburg Castle in Poland) or in an open field (Sals Castle in the province of Roussillon). Even whether they were in a humid or temperate climate favoring forest growth, as is the case at Koussi, or on the edge of a rocky desert, like the Krak des Chevaliers in Syria, influenced their architecture and appearance.

Castle of the Crusader Knights - the legendary Krak des Chevaliers.

However, in any case, fortified feudal castles delight us with their amazing power, regardless of whether they are in good condition or badly destroyed by the inexorable time of eight or nine centuries of their existence. And that unceremonious landowner who wanted to remove the pile of rubble piled up in the middle of his field knows well how much work it cost him, but the technology now is not at all what it was then, and... how much work then did it cost to deliver all these stones to him ?!

Again, although all the castles look different, the real difference between them existed, first of all, because of their purpose. A castle is one thing - a dwelling for a lord, and quite another - a castle belonging to some spiritual knightly order or the same king, who wished to consolidate his power by building it. These are the different scale of construction, and sometimes the speed with which these castles were erected, and - perhaps the most important thing for the defense of the castle from the enemy, whoever he may be - is the garrison contained in it.

Well, for local residents who lived in villages near the castle, it was both a refuge, a guarantor of security, and a source of income. In addition, it was the castle that, in the then gray and ordinary life, was the source of all the most interesting news, and, therefore, gossip and gossip. Although we know of numerous peasant uprisings that took place in the Middle Ages, there are many other examples from which it is clear that in many cases both the peasants who lived around the castles and their lords who lived inside the castle walls seemed to form one whole and even , happened, and acted together!

Yes, but how were these stone strongholds built, which even today amaze us with their size and strength of the walls? Is it really possible that this could not have happened without space aliens, to whom some people so stubbornly today attribute authorship? Egyptian pyramids? Of course not! Everything was much simpler and more complicated. For example, a feudal lord could not involve his serfs in the construction of a castle. Even if he really wanted it. Corvee - that is, labor service in favor of the owner or owners of the castle was unchanged and limited by local customs: peasants could, for example, be forced to clean out the castle moat or drag logs from the forest for construction, but nothing more.

It turns out that castles were built by free people who had the right to move freely around the country, and there were a lot of them. Yes, yes, these were free people, artisans who had to be paid regularly for their work, and the rural corvee remained only a kind of help for the feudal lord, but nothing more. After all, it is clear that working with stone required real experts in their craft, and where would the peasants get them from? Well, if the feudal lord wanted the work to go quickly, then in addition to masons he also had to hire general workers, of whom a lot were also required! For example, it is known that the construction of Beaumaris Castle in England was carried out very quickly - from 1278 to 1280, but the labor of 400 masons and another 1000 laborers was used. Well, if the lord could no longer pay, there was always work for the stone craftsmen: somewhere nearby there could be a cathedral, a church, a city under construction, so their labor was always needed at that time!

Despite the Roman heritage in masonry, most fortresses built from the 6th to the 10th centuries were made of wood. And only later does stone begin to be used - at first in the form of small stones, but gradually larger and more regular in shape. This is the so-called rubble stone, from which most European castles are built, although, for example, in Livonia, almost all castles were built from brick. The vertical surfaces of the walls were made completely smooth to prevent the enemy from finding any clues during the assault. Starting from the 11th century, they will increasingly turn to brick: it is less expensive and provides greater strength to buildings during shelling. However, very often the builders had to be content with what was nearby the construction site, because a team of oxen with a load weighing two and a half tons was not able to cover more than 15 kilometers of road in a day.

Castle of Coucy in France.

Whatever you say, some of the castles built in that distant time simply amaze the imagination. For example, the castle of Coucy in France was so large that the entrance to it was guarded by a cylindrical tower (donjon) 54 meters high and 31 meters wide. In addition, it was protected by three entire fortress walls, the last of which completely encircled the town of Kusi. When they decided to blow up the castle in 1652, the use of gunpowder only succeeded in slightly covering the walls with cracks! Forty years later, an earthquake widened these cracks in the masonry, but the tower stood. IN late XIX century, some restoration work was undertaken. But in 1917, for some reason, the German army needed to destroy it to the ground, and this required 28 tons of the most modern explosives! That's how big and strong this castle was, although the Cusi family did not belong to the highest nobility. “Neither a king, nor a prince, nor a duke, nor a count - keep in mind: I am Ser Cusi” - such was the motto of this arrogant family!

The well-preserved citadel and donjon of Chateau-Gaillard seem to hang over the river valley.

It took the English king Richard the Lionheart only a year, from 1196 to 1197, to build the Chateau-Gaillard fortress, of which he was later very proud. The castle was built according to a typically Norman design: a mound surrounded by a moat, rising on the edge of a hill, on the very bank of the Seine River. The first bastion guarded the gate, and two high fortress walls protected the donjon. The castle was supposed to serve as a support for the English possessions in Normandy, and that is why the French king Philip Augustus began to besiege it in 1203. At first glance, it seemed impregnable, but the king of France began by plundering the surrounding area and forcing the local residents (over a thousand people) to take refuge behind its walls. Soon famine began there, and the defenders had to drive them away.

Donjon of the Chateau-Gaillard castle.

Then Philip Augustus ordered to fill up the ditches, make tunnels and mine the towers. The first bastion fell, and the besieged took refuge in the central part. But one night the French penetrated there, into the very heart of the castle, and they made their way there through... a latrine, which turned out to have an opening that was too wide! They lowered the drawbridge, panic began, and as a result his garrison surrendered without even having time to hide in the donjon.

Donjon of Kolossi Castle in Cyprus, built in 1210 by King Guy de Louisignan ()

As for the castles of the Crusaders, in the Holy Land, which in Europe was also called Outremer or “Lower Lands” (and they were called that because they were depicted at the bottom of European maps of that time, and, going to the East, the Crusaders seemed to move “from top to bottom” "), they appeared almost as soon as the knights got there. They captured many castles and fortresses and then rebuilt them, and among them is the Krak des Chevaliers castle or “Castle of the Knights,” which is so interesting in all respects that it needs to be told in more detail.

Reconstruction appearance Krak des Chevaliers castle 1914.

The crusaders first captured it back in 1099, but quickly abandoned it as they rushed to Jerusalem. The fortress was recaptured from the Muslims again in 1109, and in 1142 it was transferred to the Hospitallers. They strengthened the walls, rebuilt the barracks, the chapel, the kitchen with a mill, and even... a multi-seat latrine, also made of stone. The Muslims launched many attacks in an attempt to retake the "hill fort", but were unsuccessful each time.

Plan of the Krak des Chevaliers castle.

As a result of the earthquake of 1170, the castle was damaged, and its construction style changed significantly. The rigor and simplicity of the Romanesque style was replaced by sophisticated Gothic. In addition, at the end of the 12th – beginning of the 13th centuries in Krak not only the chapel and individual towers destroyed by the earthquake were rebuilt, but they were also surrounded by a powerful outer wall.

Berkil.

Between the inclined buttress in the western part of the fortress and its outer wall, a berkil was made - a deep reservoir that served not only as a water storage, but also as additional protection from enemies. The size of the castle premises is amazing. For example, it has a gallery - a 60-meter hall built by Muslims and used by them only as a stable.

Gate to the castle.

Grain, olive oil, wine and provisions for horses were stored in the castle's storerooms. In addition, the knights had numerous herds of cows, sheep and goats. The well inside the castle supplied the knights with water, in addition, water also came into it through an aqueduct from a natural spring.

Aqueduct.

One of the earliest buildings of the castle - a chapel in the Romanesque style - was painted according to the Byzantine canon, although the inscriptions on the frescoes were in Latin. On the walls hung banners and trophies of war, fallen knights... and even the harness of their horses. After the castle was taken by Muslims, a mosque was built here.

Chapel.

Surviving paintings.

“And a verse of the Koran sounded from the minbar...” When the Muslims captured Krak, they immediately converted the chapel into a mosque and built a minbar in it.

By the beginning of the 13th century, the Krak fortress had become such a powerful fortification that two thousand people could survive a siege within five years.

Its security is also indicated by the fact that it was the last refuge of the crusaders in the East. Saladin himself, who more than once turned his gaze to the high walls of Krak, did not dare to storm it for a long time, believing that an attack on this fortress would be tantamount to sending soldiers to certain death. Therefore, he limited himself to destroying crops near the castle walls and appropriating the crusaders’ cattle, which were grazing nearby, which caused them great losses. The Egyptian Sultan Baybars, who recaptured all their fortifications from the Europeans, like Saladin, was also aware that taking Krak by storm or by starvation was almost impossible: powerful walls, thanks to which a relatively small garrison could defend it, as well as huge food supplies created for him simply an unprecedented “margin of stability.” However, the Sultan nevertheless decided to storm the eastern part of his fortifications and, although he suffered big losses, still managed to break into the space between the outer and inner walls. But taking possession of the entire citadel of the castle turned out to be very difficult. On March 29, 1271, after a successful mine, the Sultan’s soldiers found themselves in the very heart of the “nest of the Hospitallers.” However, the small garrison did not surrender even after this, but took refuge from them in the most fortified place - the southern redoubt, where the main food supplies were stored.

Everything was stored in these dungeons...

And they are simply scary. After all, there is such a thickness of stones above your head.

Now, in order to lure them out of this hiding place, cunning was needed. A letter was prepared allegedly from the Grand Master of the Order with an order to surrender the fortress. On April 8, he was taken to the garrison, and its defenders had no choice but to carry out the will of the “second father.” Now the descendants of the soldiers of the Sultan’s army adhere to a different version. According to them, the Arabs, allegedly disguised as Christian priests, came to the walls of the castle with pleas to protect them from Muslim soldiers. And when, supposedly, the gullible Hospitallers opened the gates to “fellow believers,” they pulled out weapons hidden under their clothes. Be that as it may, Krak was still taken. However, the Muslims saved the lives of all the surviving knights. After the Mongol invasion, the fortress fell into disrepair and was then completely abandoned. There, like in many other forgotten fortresses, a small settlement was located.

South tower of the castle.

"Hall of Knights". In 1927, restoration work began at the castle, so today visitors see the Castle of the Knights in almost all of its former grandeur and splendor.

The order castles built in Europe also differed from all others both in their size and in the fact that instead of an ordinary chapel, they built a relatively large church that could accommodate all the brother knights who spent time in it in prayer. The largest room was also allocated for the refectory in the order's castles, since several hundred people (knights and sergeants of the order) were supposed to eat there at the same time, which never happened in those castles that belonged to one feudal lord.

They usually tried to place battle towers in order castles in its corners and built them specifically so that they rose one floor above the walls, which made it possible to fire from them not only the area around, but also the walls themselves. The design of the loopholes was such that it provided the shooters with both a significant field of fire and reliable protection from enemy shots. The height of the castle walls was comparable to the height of a modern three- to four-story house, and the thickness could be four or more meters. Some large castles had several rows of walls, and the approaches to the outer walls were usually protected by moats and palisades. The fallen brother knights were buried in the crypt under the church floor, and the tombstones were decorated with their full-length sculptural images of stone - effigies. The spacious church inside the castle served the knights for joint prayers and meetings. Donjon, “fortress within a fortress,” is the largest and high tower in the castle - was the last and most reliable stronghold for its defenders. For wine cellars The knights and, in particular, the Templars did not spare space, since they consumed wine not only during table meals, but also as medicine. The decoration of the refectory of the order's castles was distinguished by asceticism and consisted of wooden tables and benches with the very minimum of decorations, since everything connected with bodily pleasures in spiritual knightly orders was considered sinful and was prohibited. The living quarters of the brother knights were also not distinguished by great luxury, as, indeed, were the separate chambers of the commander of the castle garrison. It was assumed that the knights should spend all their free time from war in military exercises, as well as fasting and praying.

Southeast tower of the Krak des Chevaliers castle.

Along the entire top of the wall there was usually a covered battle passage with embrasures for firing at the enemy. Very often it was made so that it protruded slightly outward, and then holes were also made in its floor to throw stones down through them and pour boiling water or hot resin. The spiral staircases in the castle towers also had a defensive value. They tried to twist them so that the attackers had the wall on their right, which made it impossible to swing the sword.

West Tower.

Western tower and aqueduct.

West side of the inner wall.

The Crusaders in the Holy Land used a variety of objects as fortifications, including ancient Roman amphitheaters, basilicas and even cave monasteries! One of them was the Ain Habis monastery, which consisted of several caves dug by Byzantine monks right in the middle of a steep cliff in the valley of the Yarmouk River. For a long time, no one knew where these monks made their secluded refuge, until the crusaders came to the valley. They did not have time to build a strong fortress here, and they turned a cave monastery into it, connecting all its halls with wooden stairs and balustrades. Relying on him, they began to control the route from Damascus to Egypt and Arabia, which, of course, did not please the ruler of Damascus. In 1152, the Muslims attacked this mountain fortress, but were unable to take it and retreated, after which the king of Jerusalem sent a large garrison here.

In 1182, Saladin decided to capture Ain Habis at any cost, for which he sent a selected detachment of soldiers to storm it, with them being specialists in mining, who had proven themselves well during the sieges of other castles built by the crusaders. The soldiers captured the lower gallery of the monastery, after which a secret passage was dug up from one of its interior rooms, through which they burst inside, and where the Europeans did not expect them at all. As a result, the fortress fell only five days after the start of the siege!

But the crusaders decided to take back the monastery and began to besiege it not only from below, but also from above. To deprive the defenders of water, they began to throw large stones, which destroyed the reservoir that fed the monastery with water, after which the Muslims surrendered.

Plan of the assault on the cave monastery of Ain Habis.

That is, the crusaders were not only good warriors in terms of sword and spear skills, but they also understood architecture and hired smart engineers to build their castles. In a word, trusting in Christ, they did not shy away from the achievements of the then military science and technology!

“The Crusader castles were exactly the lure that Syria hooked me on from the very beginning. I remembered how, back in school, I read the adventures of the brave King Richard the Lionheart and other noble knights who went on long-term crusades and built impregnable citadels far from home. And then it suddenly became clear that all this was not a fairy tale! Despite the wars and destruction, the gloomy citadels of the soldiers of the cross have been preserved and still stand windswept on the rocky hills of distant Syria...

BANIYAS, SYRIA: Crusader castles - Markab. Photo: Dmitry Vozdvizhensky.

I couldn’t resist going on a trip to see the castles of the Crusaders. But I didn’t have time for all the locks. Therefore, among the many, I chose three that seemed the most attractive to me. Of course, Krak des Chevaliers, that's what's going on today civil war in Syria was recognized by everyone as the best preserved. In addition, there is the black and gray Markab almost on the very coast of the Mediterranean Sea and the grandiose castle of Salahaddin, to which I went first ... "

Center the map

Movement

By bike

While passing through

Visiting the Site for curious travelers is Dmitry Vozdvizhensky, my colleague, journalist, photographer, experienced traveler. With this article we will continue the series of materials under the general title “Syria before the war”, we will talk about what this country was like just recently, and about what kind of Syria we have irretrievably lost.

Ali Bita is not a hereditary aristocrat and not the heir of a millionaire. But from his birth he lived in a huge medieval castle - Salahaddin Castle. Before the war, it was a place of pilgrimage for tourists. And once upon a time these were simply useless ruins. So the ancestors of Ali Bit - simple Bedouins - settled here.

At the beginning of the 20th century it was the territory of Turkey. The Turks did not pay any attention to the castle, which was called Son - there were enough other, more pressing concerns.

LATAKIA, SYRIA: Crusader castles - Son, Salahaddin castle. Photo: Dmitry Vozdvizhensky.

And therefore local population I enjoyed using the buildings that were built by the brave crusaders more than eight hundred years ago. Now the castle is known throughout the world as one of the masterpieces of serf architecture. The Bedouins, of course, had long been resettled to new places, and Ali Bit, who spent his entire childhood here, decided to stay among his native ruins forever and worked as a caretaker.

Ali Bita, castle keeper: “My family lived here for a long time, and I was born and raised here. I got so used to these stones that I decided to stay among them. I’ve been working as a caretaker for several decades now and I know every corner here.”

LATAKIA, SYRIA: Crusader castles - Son, Salahaddin castle. Fortress moat. Photo: Dmitry Vozdvizhensky.

Son Castle turned into Salahaddin Castle in 1957, the Syrian authorities named it in honor of the great Arab conqueror who managed to clear the Middle East of European knights. The capture of this impregnable fortress is considered one of the key moments of that distant military campaign. The assault lasted only a few days.

This sounds incredible. The powerful walls of the castle were surrounded by a huge moat. In the monolithic mountain, the crusaders dug a ditch as much as 30 meters deep. This is the height of a ten-story building. Moreover, they dug the ditch, naturally, without explosives or excavators, only with picks and shovels. It took a hundred years, but these are already details. Time itself passed much more slowly back then.

LATAKIA, SYRIA: Crusader castles - the citadel of the castle of Son, the castle of Salahaddin. Photo: Dmitry Vozdvizhensky.

On top of the moat was crowned a powerful donjon - a free-standing and most invulnerable tower. In the castle of Son, the knights felt absolutely safe. Only a complete madman could attack the fortress head-on. But Salahaddin did not do this. He surrounded the castle, and then without much difficulty captured the lower courtyard, making a hole in the walls with catapults. The Crusaders believed that his loss would not complicate the defense. But they miscalculated. As a result, Salahaddin allowed them to leave by paying a ransom: 10 dinars for men, 5 for women and 2 dinars for children.

LATAKIA, SYRIA: Crusader castles - Son, Salahaddin castle. Photo: Dmitry Vozdvizhensky.

Ali Bita hospitably gave us tea. He said that he felt like a real master, just like Robert de Son, who built these phantasmagoric fortifications, or Salahaddin, who took them almost without a fight.

Ali was sure that it was its cyclopean size that destroyed the castle. It was the largest of all the Crusader castles: the area was more than five hectares. The knights could not strengthen it entirely as reliably as on the side of the donjon. And in order to defend such long walls, a lot of soldiers were needed. But the crusaders didn’t have them.

Salahaddin perfectly understood this serf mathematics and, most likely, that is why he did not even try to storm the smallest of the knight’s castles - Krak des Chevaliers...

Dream, Salahaddin Castle

The famous adventurer Lawrence of Arabia called it the most delightful of all the castles in the world. Traveling to Syria and not visiting here is the same as visiting Moscow and not looking at the Kremlin.

The bad tourist is the one who doesn’t dream of chipping a pebble from ancient building: castle, pyramid or temple. Doing this is strictly prohibited, as it is a historical monument after all. But there is a special type of travelers to whom this rule does not apply. Such tourists are called archaeologists and they do their job solely for the sake of science. The people who were enthusiastically dismantling the roof of the medieval donjon turned out to be Syrian and German archaeologists. Their enthusiasm is understandable: the last serious studies of the castle were carried out under the French, in the mid-thirties. And since then, scientists have accumulated many questions about this stronghold.