A History of the Crusades

by Jonathan Riley-Smith

  Although in most cases the inhabitants of the cities built upon an infrastructure existing from before the conquest, some new foundations also occurred. In Acre, the new suburb of Montmusard was formally laid out and walled by 1212, increasing the size of the city by half as much again. The walled faubourg attached to the Templars’ Chastel Pèlerin was probably built and occupied between the 1220s and 1265, when it was sacked by Baybars. We also find Frankish ‘new towns’, which although primarily agricultural had burgess courts and specialist tradesmen among their inhabitants, indicating that they were in effect towns in the making. At al-Qubaiba (Parva Mahumeria), al-Bira (Magna Mahumeria), and al-Zib (Casal Imbert), the settlements had regular plans, with houses laid out end-on to a main street and with burgage plots running back from them. At al-Shaubak (Montreal) in Transjordan and Mi‘iliya (Castrum Regis) in Galilee, however, the settlements were set within the encircling walls of a royal castle.

  In the countryside a range of secular building types is represented in the archaeological record. Functionally they may be categorized as follows: castles, held by major lords or military orders; small castles or semi-fortified manor houses—the equivalent of the French ‘maison forte’, or the English ‘moated manorhouse’—held by lesser lords, knights, or sergeants; estate centres or court buildings (curiae ), occupied by estate officials, stewards, or village headmen; and the ordinary village houses of Franks and indigenous inhabitants. To relate these categories to the surviving buildings, however, is not easy, since many of them are ruinous and undocumented.

  Few village houses survive, though some have been partially excavated. The more solidly built structures in the ‘new town’ of al-Qubaiba have an urban character, with workshops on the ground floors, and domestic accommodation above. A handful of hall-houses are known, good examples being those at Khirbat al-Burj, Kidna, and Bait ‘Itab. The latter was originally a free-standing two-storey building, 13.3 by 29 m., with a door defended by a slit-machicolation and a stair within the wall leading up to the hall on the first floor. In a secondary phase, it was incorporated into a courtyard building, consisting of four ranges set around a central courtyard, with an entrance on the south. The hall was now approached directly from the courtyard by means of an external staircase. In 1161, Bait ‘Itab was sold to the Holy Sepulchre by the knight John Gothman in order to pay his ransom from the Muslims. It seems likely therefore that the hall had formed the centre of his lordship.

  A number of other such courtyard buildings are known. Some of them also probably represented the centres of lordships. But one, established on the village lands of Aqua Bella, west of Jerusalem, appears to have been an ecclesiastical building, quite possibly an infirmary belonging to the Hospitallers, who owned the village in the 1160s. Another, which developed around a tower at al-Ram (Rama, Ramatha), north of Jerusalem, may be identified as the courthouse of the Holy Sepulchre’s steward, at which the inhabitants of the ‘new town’ were obliged to pay their rents. The general form of a building is therefore not always a reliable indicator of a particular function, especially when little survives.

  Castles representing the centres of lordships would have had broadly similar functions to some hall-houses and courtyard buildings; the principal difference lay in their degree of defensibility. Indeed some castles seem to have developed from unfortified or semi-fortified structures. In those of St Elias (al-Taiyiba) and Belmont (Suba), for example, north-east and west of Jerusalem respectively, an original inner ward, consisting of a courtyard building with minimal provision for active defence, was later surrounded by a polygonal outer enceinte with a sloping talus, following the contours of the site.

  More obviously defensible structures were towers, of which over seventy-five have been documented in the kingdom of Jerusalem alone, some apparently isolated, some surrounded by an enclosure wall; others developed in time into fully fledged castles, as at Tripoli, Latrun, Mirabel (Majdal Yaba), and Beaufort (Qal‘at al-Shaqif Arnun). Many towers, however, also seem to have had a domestic purpose. This is particularly obvious in the case of the larger ones, such as the bishop’s tower at Bethlehem, the stewards’ towers at al-Ram and al-Bira, and those in the castles of ‘Ibillin, Qal‘at Jiddin, Qaqun, Madd al-Dair, Burj al-Ahmar, and ‘Umm al-Taiyiba. Indeed, not only is the general layout of these towers similar to that of a hall-house, comprising a living area above a vaulted basement and below a flat terrace roof, but analysis of their internal areas shows that they were often of comparable size. Smaller towers (i.e. below 60–70 m.2 internally) may have served a broader range of functions, for example as refuges and lookout posts. But even a relatively small tower like that at Jaba‘, which was sold to the abbey of St Mary of Mount Sion by the knight Amalric of Franclieu (X oruit 1171–9), had a solar chamber on its first floor.

  Other castles appear to have been conceived from the start with military rather than domestic considerations in mind. Examples include the four-towered castles which William of Tyre describes being built to encircle Ascalon in the 1130s and 1140s: Blanchegarde (Tall al-Safi), Ibelin (Yibna), Bait Jibrin, and possibly Gaza. In 1136 Bait Jibrin was granted to the Hospitallers. Its garrison would therefore presumably have consisted of a group of knights living in community, with a dormitory, refectory, kitchens, chapel, and other claustral buildings set around the central courtyard. A similar type of plan is found in the Hospitallers’ later castle of Belvoir, built from 1168 onwards, where the four-towered inner ward had a fifth tower containing a bent entrance added to it, and an outer ward containing service buildings and accommodation for the lay members of the garrison. However, such castles were not peculiar to the military orders, for Blanchegarde and Ibelin were granted to secular owners, and Darum (Dair al-Balah) and Mi‘iliya (Castrum Regis), both of which existed by 1160, were royal castles. It may be assumed that these would have contained a hall, chambers, chapel, and kitchen for the lord or castellan. The castles of Montfort (Qal‘at Qurain) and Jiddin (Judyn), which the Teutonic Order built in Galilee in the early thirteenth century to a typical Rhineland castle plan, with a principal tower and adjoining accommodation block enclosed by a high curtain wall, also demonstrate that in castle planning the military orders were accustomed to adapting secular castle types to their own needs.

  During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a number of advances were made in the art of fortification in the Latin East. They included the development of more sophisticated gateways, defended by elaborate combinations of gates, portcullises, and murder-holes, often, as at Belvoir, Tyre, Sahyun, Tortosa, Jerusalem, and Caesarea, with an indirect or bent approach. Curtain walls were constructed with rows of arrow-slits at different levels, and with projecting machicolations at the wall-head to prevent attackers approaching their base. The most significant advances, however, concerned the proliferation of outworks, designed to keep the enemy and his siege towers and stone-hurling artillery at a safe distance from the main walls. Similar developments were also taking place in western Europe, though they lagged behind the East, where the Franks had already encountered ‘concentric’ planning when they first laid siege to places such as Jerusalem (1099), Acre (1103), Tyre (1124), and Ascalon (1153). In castles, concentric planning occurs at Belvoir and Belmont before 1187, and at Darum by 1192. Some of the more spectacular concentric-plan castles, however, achieved their final form only in the thirteenth century. They include Hospitaller Crac des Chevaliers and Margat, and Templar Chastel Pèlerin and Tortosa, the latter of which were never taken by assault.

  Remains of other structures from the period of Latin occupation may still be found in the countryside; they include horizontal water-mills and dams, cisterns, bridges, roads, stables, kitchens, and industrial installations producing sugar, salt, olive-oil, wine, iron, glass, and lime.

  Cilician Armenia (1100/2–1375)

  Cilicia was settled by increasing numbers of displaced Armenians from the mid-eleventh century onwards, under the aegis of the Byzantine emperor. In January 1199, the Rubenid Baron Leo u
nited his dynasty with the rival pro-Byzantine Het‘umids and had himself crowned king. Although the kingdom lasted until 1375, culturally it remained very mixed. A former Byzantine province already partly settled by Turks, from 1097 Cilicia’s southern and eastern coastal areas were also colonized by Franks; and from the 1190s onwards, the Venetians, the Genoese, and the military orders were also granted concessions. Although King Het‘um I was able to reach an accommodation with the Mongols in the 1240s, it was the Mamluks of Egypt who were to represent the greatest threat, and who were finally to extinguish the kingdom in 1375.

  The turbulent history and cultural diversity of Cilician Armenia is reflected in its architecture. The structures that have left the most obvious imprint on the landscape are the fortresses. However, the dating and cultural attribution of these have only recently been put on a sound footing, thanks to the work of Robert Edwards. Among the features that distinguish Armenian work are: irregular planning, following contours of the site, often with a succession of baileys, one below the other; the rounding of external angles and use of rounded or horseshoe-shaped towers; the splaying of the base of the wall; the lack of keeps or donjons; battlements with rounded-topped merlons, divided into sections by interposed towers; a lack of ditches; gates having an indirect approach to them, and wingdoors with a draw-bar, preceded by a slit-machicolation; gatehouses containing either a bent entrance or two gates separated by a vaulted passage with murder holes; embrasured or casemated loopholes with stirrup bases and rounded heads cut from a single stone; and a preference for pointed arches and vaults. Most castles also contain a chapel and a cistern.

  Although it has often been assumed that most of the Cilician castles date to the period after Leo I was crowned king, it now appears that a good number date from the preceding period when the rival Het‘umids and Rubenids were establishing themselves in the region. Many castles contain work of various periods. At Anavarza, for example, the castle predates the First Crusade, whose participants added to it by constructing a donjon on part of the site; the final Armenian phase is represented by modifications subsequently made to it, which are dated by an inscription to 1187–8. The island castle of Korykos was a Byzantine work of the early twelfth century, which Leo I and Het‘um I repaired. Other castles, such as Baghras and Silifke, appear to be essentially Frankish works.

  In addition to the larger castles, which served both as baronial or royal residences and as garrison posts, a number of other fortified structures are recorded. They include watch posts, consisting of small enclosures sited to survey roads and to allow their garrisons to communicate with neighbouring inhabited centres by fire signal or messenger; and estate houses, similar in function to the hall-houses and towers belonging to minor lords or fief holders that are found in Frankish Palestine and Syria.

  One such, Belen Keslik Kalesi, is a two-storey building, measuring overall 18 by 8.5 m., with a ground-floor entrance in the centre of one of the longer sides, defended by slit machicolations. A stair in the corner of the barrel-vaulted basement led up to the main living area, which was lit by slit-windows. At Gösne and at two sites called Sinap, one near Lampron and the other near Çandir, the estate houses have rounded turrets or buttresses clasping the corners.

  For reasons of security, Armenian society in Cilicia appears to have been based principally on castles, many of them sited high in the Taurus mountains. Settlement on the coast or in the plain was limited, and except for Sis (destroyed by the Mamluks in 1266), Tarsus, Adana, and Misis, which are mentioned as having churches, urban settlement was unusual. Indeed, the only urban church to survive, that of St Paul (or the Virgin) in Tarsus, is western in character, built so it seems during the first decades of the twelfth century. It has three barrel-vaulted aisles, supported on colonnades.

  Most of the surviving Armenian churches and chapels are in castles. One of the most significant is the church which T‘oros I built for his ancestors in the south bailey at Anavarza in IIII. Unfortunately this has become badly ruined since it was recorded by Gertrude Bell in 1905. It was built in smooth ashlar with a poured rubble concrete core. The plan was rectangular, with three barrel-vaulted aisles terminating in inscribed semi-circular apses. The arcades were of three bays, carried on plain rectangular piers with moulded imposts. Originally the interior was decorated with frescos. Both the west and the south door had a lintel and relieving arch, composed largely of antique spolia. The west front also had windows lighting the aisles and an oculus in the gable; the quoins were enhanced by decorative pilaster strips, and below the cornice ran an inscription recording the builder. In a secondary period an apsed room was added to the north side of the church.

  At Çandir, the church of the constable Smbat was dedicated in 1251. Its general plan is similar to that of the church of T‘oros I, but it is less well preserved. Its vaulting has fallen, but may have taken the form of a domed hall rather than a barrel-vaulted hall. The side apses are separated from the aisles and nave to form small barrel-vaulted rooms with the appearance of sacristies. This church also had an apsed side chapel or narthex added on to its south side.

  Chapels form a more numerous class of ecclesiastical building. Mostly they consist of a single-celled barrel-vaulted nave, with semi-circular apse, either inscribed or rounded externally. Sometimes, as at Maran, Çem, Meydan, and Mancilik, they form part of the defensive circuit.

  Cyprus 1191–1571

  Cyprus, where Frankish dominion lasted for almost four centuries, has the most extensive architectural development of any of the areas settled by Latins, from the early Gothic cathedral of St Sophia in Nicosia to the Renaissance façade of the Palazzo del Provveditore (1552) in Famagusta. While Nicosia was the centre of royal and ecclesiastical administration, from 1291 Famagusta on the east coast assumed Acre’s role as the principal western commercial centre in the Levant; despite the robbing of stone from its buildings to construct Port Said in the mid-nineteenth century, its circuit of town walls still encloses the most exceptional group of Latin churches to survive anywhere in the East outside Jerusalem itself.

  The commencement of work on the cathedral church of St Sophia in Nicosia is credited to Archbishop Eustorge of Montaigu (1217–49), though there is some evidence to suggest that construction had begun earlier. It was not until 1319, however, that the nave and narthex were completed by his successor Giovanni del Conte, and 1326 that the building was finally consecrated. The form is that of a thirteenth-century French cathedral, with the difference that the roofs above the vaulting are not of timber but are terraced according to the custom of the Levant; furthermore, the western towers were never completed. The building has a nave and aisles of five bays terminating in a rounded choir with ambulatory. The nave piers are cylindrical, while the vaulting of the ambulatory is carried on four reused antique columns. Five subsidiary chapels were attached to the church, including a Lady chapel (1270) in the south transept, a chapel of St Nicholas in the north transept, and a chapel of St Thomas Aquinas also on the south, the latter being decorated by the late fifteenth century with painted ‘legends of the holy doctor’.

  The cathedral church of St Nicholas in Famagusta was begun around 1300, and an inscription west of the south door records a resumption of work on it on the instructions of Bishop Baldwin Lambert in 1311. To judge from the uniformity of its confident French Gothic style the main structure seems to have been completed within the first half of the century. The first sight of its west front, with its three large doorways with gabled canopies, its wheel-headed six-light window, and its once prominent bell-towers, is reminiscent of Reims (1220s–1230s); indeed, the allusion may have been intentional, since it was here that the Lusignan kings of Cyprus were crowned king of Jerusalem. As with most Latin buildings in the East, however, western influences were not restricted to a single source, and the detailing of the interior has more in common with the rayonnant architecture of St Urbain in Troyes, begun in 1262.

  Of the eighty churches that Nicosia was said to have had in 1567,
only half a dozen or so remain. They include the early fourteenth-century Benedictine abbey of Our Lady of Tyre (now the Armenian church of the Virgin Mary) and the late fourteenth-century flamboyant Gothic church of St Catherine (now the Haidar Pasha mosque). A decline in building standards is discernible in the early sixteenth-century north façade of the Orthodox metropolitan church of St Nicholas (now known as the Bedestan), located south of the parvis of St Sophia; while the interior represents a blending of Greek and western late Gothic and Renaissance styles, the builders’ attempt to imitate the main west door of the cathedral appears flat and lifeless.

  While in the two main cities western styles predominated, even in the churches of the Orthodox, Nestorians, and Armenians, a more Byzantine style prevailed in the countryside. Some country churches, however, had chapels added to them for the use of Latin immigrants: as at the family chapel of the Gibelets at Kiti and the monastery church of St John Lampadistes at Kalapanayiotis. A small chapel built on a royal estate at Pyrga in 1421 not only has the distinction of having the name of the mason, Basoges, inscribed over the south door, but is decorated inside with paintings, including one representing the Crucifixion with kneeling figures of King Janus and his wife Charlotte of Bourbon. In other buildings, such as the Greek church at Morphou, which combines a dome with Gothic vaulting and foliage ornament, a Franco-Byzantine style may be discerned.