Why Build Castles?
Following the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, the Crusaders faced a crisis of human resources. It is estimated that of the 150,000 Crusaders who embarked on the journey, only 40,000 reached Jerusalem. Many of these returned home after the city was captured because they believed they had fulfilled their religious duty of liberating the Holy Land. It was to overcome this lack of manpower that the Crusader nobles began constructing their network of coastal fortifications and hinterland castles. The virtue of these great strongholds was demonstrated clearly during the rampaging campaign of Salah ad-Din in 1180 when the hopelessly outnumbered Crusader forces retreated to Krak des Chevaliers and the Muslims, who did not have the resources or the time to conduct a siege, had no option but to reluctantly pass on by. Of course, once the army had moved away from the castle walls, the Crusaders sallied forth again and recaptured the local area on which they then levied taxes.
Krak des Chevaliers sometimes boasted a garrison of more than 2000 but such was the ingenuity of its design and the quality of its construction that it could be defended by a fraction of that number. Even when the Muslims managed to control the surrounding lands, the castle itself remained impregnable - in the words of the Arab historian Ibn al-Athir, Krak was ‘a bone stuck in the very throat of the Muslims’.
The pattern of castle ownership, like the style of castle construction, changed markedly during the 200 year period of the Crusades. Initially, individual nobles attempted to create small, self-ruled estates in the Holy Land similar to those of Western Europe. But as the tide turned in favour of the Muslims, the survival of independent foreign states and eventually of the whole Crusading movement became increasingly precarious. As the plight of the Crusaders became ever more desperate, the defensive capacities of the great castles became even more important.