I squeezed my way out of the tiny van. The last section of the cramped ride had been the worst, with the van straining in first gear up a seemingly never-ending hill. I was glad to escape the airless interior and stretch my legs. A cooling breeze blew up from the lowlands below, bringing the scent of dry herbs and the clonking of goat bells. And across the valley, ruddy in the evening sun, the most magnificent castle I had ever seen stood.

Of the two castles named in this inscription (Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Din) I have only visited the first. I’m not sure how much I can add to the understanding of this place. Lawrence of Arabia called Crac des Chavaliers “the finest castle in the world”. I have yet to see a castle to convince me otherwise.

First, the historical basics. It’s a great spot on a tongue of land protruding from the southern end of the Jebel Ansariyya hills. Below lies the traversable Homs Gap. And across that rises the Anti-Lebanon range. A perfect spot for a chokepoint. The Crusaders seized the area at the start of the 12th century during the First Crusade. Raymond II, Count of the Crusander County of Tripoli, granted the area to the Knights Hospitaller in 1142. They then spent the next 30 years perfecting the very embodiment of a classic medieval castle. It was known as ‘Crac de l’Ospital’, after this particular order of knights (it was only in the 19th century that it came to be known as belonging to ‘des Chevaliers’, or ‘the Knights’ in general). Using all the latest military known-how they built a castle designed to be impregnable; in the end they only held it until 1271. In that year they handed it over to the Mamluk Sultan Baibars after a siege lasting only 36 days. At that point it was the last remaining redoubt of the Crusaders in the Levant.

I stayed at a hotel where my room had a windowed bay overlooking the castle. It was a 30 minute walk round the ridge to the main entrance. The castle is accessed by steps and a ramp. It has a concentric design with a strong outer curtain wall protecting a yet stronger inner fortress with a steeply sloped glacis to defend against siege weaponry. The outer ward held stables and a bath house and a moat on its landward end. The inner ward held the keep, a courtyard, a chapel and the ‘Hall of the Knights’ with a rather lovely gothic loggia. It was big (it once housed a garrison of up to 2,000 men). Other tourists seemed to disappear into the vast expanse of pale limestone. 

So the castle didn’t just look the part, it was obviously functional too. Crac des Chevaliers is no fairytale Disneyland castle with needle-thin towers. Crac is low, menacing, immovable: an ironclad dreadnought rather than a splendid galleon. And so what if it only served its function for a century? Castles can only be links in a chain of control. If all the other links are broken a castle can only stand alone for a certain period of time.

(p.s. I can reassure Solivagant that by mid-2009 there was absolutely no evidence of a cable car in the vicinity!)

 

World Heritage-iness: 4

My Experience: 4

(Visited Aug 2009)