1.
Beaumaris Castle
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Beaumaris Castle, located in the town of the same name on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales, was built as part of Edward Is campaign to conquer the north of Wales after 1282. Plans were probably first made to construct the castle in 1284, a substantial workforce was employed in the initial years under the direction of James of St George. Edwards invasion of Scotland soon diverted funding from the project, however, when work finally ceased around 1330 a total of £15,000 had been spent, a huge sum for the period, but the castle remained incomplete. Beaumaris Castle was taken by Welsh forces in 1403 during the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr, following the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, the castle was held by forces loyal to Charles I, holding out until 1646 when it surrendered to the Parliamentary armies. In the 21st century the castle is managed by Cadw as a tourist attraction. Historian Arnold Taylor described Beaumaris Castle as Britains most perfect example of symmetrical concentric planning, the inner ward was designed to contain ranges of domestic buildings and accommodation able to support two major households. The south gate could be reached by ship, allowing the castle to be supplied by sea. UNESCO considers Beaumaris to be one of the finest examples of late 13th century and early 14th century military architecture in Europe, Edward invaded with a huge army, pushing north from Carmarthen and westwards from Montgomery and Chester. Edward decided to permanently colonise North Wales and provisions for its governance were set out in the Statute of Rhuddlan, Wales was divided into counties and shires, emulating how England was governed, with three new shires created in the north-west, Caernarfon, Merioneth and Anglesey. Llanfaes was the wealthiest borough in Wales and largest in terms of population, the huge cost of the building the other castles, however, meant that the Llanfaes project had to be postponed. In 1294 Madog ap Llywelyn rebelled against English rule, the revolt was bloody and amongst the casualties was Roger de Pulesdon, the sheriff of Anglesey. Edward suppressed the rebellion over the winter and once Anglesey was reoccupied in April 1295 he immediately began to progress the delayed plans to fortify the area. The chosen site was called Beaumaris, meaning marsh, whose name derives from the Norman-French Beau Mareys. The deportation of the local Welsh opened the way for the construction of a prosperous English town, work began in the summer of 1295, overseen by Master James of St George. James had been appointed the master of the works in Wales, reflecting the responsibility he had in their construction. From 1295 onwards, Beaumaris became his responsibility and more frequently he was given the title magister operacionum de Bello Marisco. A huge amount of work was undertaken in the first summer and this consumed around £270 a week in wages and the project rapidly fell into arrears, forcing officials to issue leather tokens instead of paying the workforce with normal coinage. The centre of the castle was filled with temporary huts to house the workforce over the winter, all this takes no account of the garrison
2.
Belvoir Fortress
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Belvoir Fortress is a Crusader fortress in northern Israel, on a hill 20 kilometres south of the Sea of Galilee. Gilbert of Assailly, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, began construction of the castle in 1168, the restored fortress is located in Belvoir National Park. It is the best-preserved Crusader fortress in Israel, the Knights Hospitaller purchased the site from Velos, a French nobleman, in 1168. Standing 500 metres above the Jordan River Valley, the plateau commanded the route from Gilead into the Kingdom of Jerusalem, to the north is the Sea of Galilee and west are hills. The site of Belvoir Castle dominated the area, and in the words of Abu Shama the castle is, set admidst the stars like an eagles nest. As soon as the Knights Hospitaller purchased the land they began construction of Belvoir Castle, while Gilbert of Assailly was Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller the order gained around thirteen new castles, among which Belvoir was the most important. The fortress of Belvoir served as an obstacle to the Muslim goal of invading the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem from the east. It withstood an attack by Muslim forces in 1180, during the campaign of 1182, the Battle of Belvoir Castle was fought nearby between King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Saladin. Following Saladins victory over the Crusaders at the battle of the Horns of Hattin, the siege lasted a year and a half, until the defenders surrendered on 5 January 1189. An Arab governor occupied it until 1219 when the Ayyubid ruler in Damascus had slighted, in 1241 Belvoir was ceded to the Franks, who controlled it until 1263. In modern times it became an Arab village, Kawkab al-Hawa, the Arab buildings on the site were demolished by the Israeli authorities between 1963 and 1968. The Hebrew name, Kochav Hayarden, meaning Star of the Jordan, preserves the name of Kochava – a Jewish village which existed nearby during the Roman, after the end of the Second World War, the study of Crusader castles experienced a lull. Syria, for instance, declared independence in 1946 and had money to spare for archaeology. In Israel, the study of Crusader castles developed under Joshua Prawer and its most significant discovery was made at Belvoir. Between 1963 and 1968 the Israel Department of Antiquities carried out excavations at the castle, before the investigations, it had been assumed that Belvoir was a simple castle, with just a single enclosure. Excavations in the 1960s demonstrated the complex nature of military architecture in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Belvoirs design bore similarities to that of a Roman castra, the enclosure was rectangular with towers at the corners. Belvoir is an example of the concentric castle plan, which was widely used in later crusader castles
3.
Castle
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A castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble. Usage of the term has varied over time and has applied to structures as diverse as hill forts. Over the approximately 900 years that castles were built, they took on a great many forms with different features, although some, such as curtain walls. A European innovation, castles originated in the 9th and 10th centuries, after the fall of the Carolingian Empire resulted in its territory being divided among individual lords and princes. Although their military origins are often emphasised in castle studies, the structures served as centres of administration. Many castles were built from earth and timber, but had their defences replaced later by stone. Early castles often exploited natural defences, lacking features such as towers and arrowslits, in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, a scientific approach to castle defence emerged. This led to the proliferation of towers, with an emphasis on flanking fire, many new castles were polygonal or relied on concentric defence – several stages of defence within each other that could all function at the same time to maximise the castles firepower. These changes in defence have been attributed to a mixture of castle technology from the Crusades, such as concentric fortification, not all the elements of castle architecture were military in nature, so that devices such as moats evolved from their original purpose of defence into symbols of power. Some grand castles had long winding approaches intended to impress and dominate their landscape, while castles continued to be built well into the 16th century, new techniques to deal with improved cannon fire made them uncomfortable and undesirable places to live. As a result, true castles went into decline and were replaced by artillery forts with no role in civil administration, and country houses that were indefensible. From the 18th century onwards, there was a renewed interest in castles with the construction of castles, part of a romantic revival of Gothic architecture. The word castle is derived from the Latin word castellum, which is a diminutive of the word castrum, meaning fortified place. The Old English castel, Old French castel or chastel, French château, Spanish castillo, Italian castello, the word castle was introduced into English shortly before the Norman Conquest to denote this type of building, which was then new to England. In its simplest terms, the definition of a castle accepted amongst academics is a fortified residence. Feudalism was the link between a lord and his vassal where, in return for service and the expectation of loyalty. Castles served a range of purposes, the most important of which were military, administrative, as well as defensive structures, castles were also offensive tools which could be used as a base of operations in enemy territory
4.
Curtain wall (fortification)
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A curtain wall is a defensive wall between two towers of a castle, fortress, or town. In medieval castles, the area surrounded by a curtain wall, the outermost walls with their integrated bastions and wall towers together make up the enceinte or main defensive line enclosing the site. In earlier designs of castle and town, the walls were often built to a considerable height and were fronted by a ditch or moat to make assault difficult. Evidence for curtain walls or a series of walls surrounding a town or fortress can be found in the sources from Assyria. Some notable examples are ancient Lachish and Buhen, enceinte Curry, Anne, Hughes, Michael, eds. The Popular Encyclopedia, or, Conversations Lexicon, I, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London, Blackie & Son, p.444
5.
Concentric objects
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In geometry, two or more objects are said to be concentric, coaxal, or coaxial when they share the same center or axis. Circles, regular polygons and regular polyhedra, and spheres may be concentric to one another, in the Euclidean plane, two circles that are concentric necessarily have different radii from each other. However, circles in three-dimensional space may be concentric, and have the radius as each other. For example, two different meridians of a terrestrial globe are concentric with each other and with the globe of the earth, more generally, every two great circles on a sphere are concentric with each other and with the sphere. The circumcircle and the incircle of a regular n-gon, and the regular n-gon itself, are concentric, for the circumradius-to-inradius ratio for various n, see Bicentric polygon#Regular polygons. The region of the plane between two circles is an annulus, and analogously the region of space between two concentric spheres is a spherical shell. For a given point c in the plane, the set of all circles having c as their forms a pencil of circles. Each two circles in the pencil are concentric, and have different radii, every point in the plane, except for the shared center, belongs to exactly one of the circles in the pencil. Every two disjoint circles, and every hyperbolic pencil of circles, may be transformed into a set of circles by a Möbius transformation. The ripples formed by dropping an object into still water naturally form an expanding system of concentric circles. Evenly spaced circles on the used in target archery or similar sports provide another familiar example of concentric circles. Coaxial cable is a type of cable in which the combined neutral. Johannes Keplers Mysterium Cosmographicum envisioned a system formed by concentric regular polyhedra. Concentric circles are found in diopter sights, a type of mechanic sights commonly found on target rifles. They usually feature a disk with a small-diametre hole near the shooters eye. When these sights are aligned, the point of impact will be in the middle of the front sight circle. Centered cube number Homoeoid Focaloid Circular symmetry Magic circle Geometry, Concentric circles demonstration With interactive animation
6.
Krak des Chevaliers
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The site was first inhabited in the 11th century by a settlement of Kurdish troops garrisoned there by the Mirdasids, as a result it was known as Hisn al-Akrad, meaning the Castle of the Kurds. In 1142 it was given by Raymond II, Count of Tripoli and it remained in their possession until it fell in 1271. It became known as Crac de lOspital, the name Krak des Chevaliers was coined in the 19th century, the Hospitallers began rebuilding the castle in the 1140s and were finished by 1170 when an earthquake damaged the castle. The order controlled a number of castles along the border of the County of Tripoli, Krak des Chevaliers was among the most important, and acted as a center of administration as well as a military base. After a second phase of building was undertaken in the 13th century and this phase created the outer wall and gave the castle its current appearance. The first half of the century has been described as Krak des Chevaliers golden age, at its peak, Krak des Chevaliers housed a garrison of around 2,000. Such a large garrison allowed the Hospitallers to exact tribute from a wide area, renewed interest in Crusader castles in the 19th century led to the investigation of Krak des Chevaliers, and architectural plans were drawn up. In the late 19th or early 20th century a settlement had created within the castle. The 500 inhabitants were moved in 1933 and the castle was given over to the French state, when Syria declared independence in 1946, it assumed control. Today, a village called al-Husn exists around the castle and has a population of nearly 9,000, Krak des Chevaliers is located approximately 40 kilometres west of the city of Homs, close to the border of Lebanon, and is administratively part of the Homs Governorate. Since 2006, the castles of Krak des Chevaliers and Qalat Salah El-Din have been recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. It was partially damaged in the Syrian civil war from shelling, the extent of the damage is unknown. The modern Arabic word for a castle is Kalaa, but Krak des Chavaliers is known as a Hosn and this derives from the name of an earlier fortification on the same site called Ḥoṣn al-Akrād, meaning fort of the Kurds. It was called by the Franks Le Crat and then by a confusion with karak, Crat was probably the Frankish version of Akrād, the word for Kurds. After the Knights Hospitaller took control of the castle, it known as Crac de lOspital. The castle sits atop a 650-metre-high hill east of Tartus, Syria, on the other side of the gap,27 kilometres away, was the 12th-century Gibelacar Castle. The route through the strategically important Homs Gap connects the cities of Tripoli, to the north of the castle lies the Jebel Ansariyah, and to the south Lebanon. The surrounding area is fertile, benefiting from streams and abundant rainfall, compared to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the other Crusader states had less land suitable for farming, however, the limestone peaks of Tripoli were well-suited to defensive sites
7.
Margat
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Margat, also known as Marqab from the Arabic Qalaat al-Marqab is a castle near Baniyas, Syria, which was a Crusader fortress and one of the major strongholds of the Knights Hospitaller. It is located around 2 kilometres from the Mediterranean coast and approximately 6 kilometres south of Baniyas, the castle remained in a poor state of preservation until 2007 when some reconstruction and renovation began. Margat is located on a formed by an extinct volcano about 360 metres above sea level on the road between Tripoli and Latakia, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. When the Principality was defeated at the Battle of Harran in 1104, a few years later it was captured by Tancred, Prince of Galilee, regent of Antioch, and became part of the Principality. In the 1170s it was controlled by Reynald II Mazoir of Antioch as a vassal of the count of Tripoli, the fortress was so large that it had its own household officials and a number of rear-vassals. Reynauds son Bertrand sold it to the Hospitallers in 1186 as it was too expensive for the Mazoir family to maintain, after some rebuilding and expansion by the Hospitallers it became their headquarters in Syria. Under Hospitaller control, its fourteen towers were thought to be impregnable, in 1188, Saladin marched on Margat having left Krak des Chevaliers in search of easier prey. According to Abul-Fida, Recognising that Maqab was impregnable and that he had no hope of capturing it and it was one of the few remaining territories left in Christian hands after Saladins conquests. By the beginning of the 13th century the Hospitallers controlled the land and roads and made a large profit from travellers. Isaac Comnenus of Cyprus was imprisoned there after Richard I of England captured Cyprus from him during the Third Crusade, the bishop of nearby Valenia also used Margat as his headquarters after around 1240. Margat was second in size and power only to the other Hospitaller fortress to the south, to punish the Hospitallers, Qalawun clandestinely raised an army in Damascus and besieged Margat on 17 April 1285. After a 38-day siege during which sappers and miners managed to dig several tunnels underneath the fortresss walls, the defenders panicked and on discovering the numerous tunnels around the fortress, surrendered to the Mamluk commander Fakhr al-Din Mukri on 23 May, with Qalwun entering Margat two days later. The siege was witnessed by eleven-year-old Abul Fida and his father, Qalawun allowed the Hospitallers to leave with everything they could carry. Rather than destroy Margat as he did with other fortresses, he repaired its defences, marqat, known as Marqab by the Muslims, became a district of the Mamluk province of Tripoli with maintenance of the area financed by the sultan. Intrepid traveller Ibn Battuta visited the fortress and noted that a suburb was built outside of it for foreigners, the district governor based at the Marqab fortress held the military rank of Emir of 20 Mamluks. He was charged with defending the coast, particularly from threats from the island of Cyprus, during the Burji Mamluk period, Margat was well known in the region for containing an imperial prison with many high-profile inmates. The 15th-century Muslim historian Khalil al-Zahiri noted that Marqab fortress was among the most important sites of Tripoli province, Marqab was clearly impregnable and controls a territory containing numerous villages. During the Ottoman era, Margat became the center of a kaza of the same name
8.
Spur castle
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A spur castle is a type of medieval fortification that uses its location as a defensive feature. The name refers to the location on a spur projecting from a hill, ideally, a spur castle would be defended on three sides by steep hillsides, with the only vulnerable side the one where the spur joins the next hill. Depending on the topography, a spur castle may depend mostly on its inaccessible location, or combine it with defensive features such as walls. A typical feature is a neck ditch cutting off the spur from the rest of the hill, when the spur is long and narrow, the term ridge castle is sometimes used as well. A long spur castle is sometimes, but not always, subdivided into a lower ward, spur and hilltop castles were introduced by the Franks in order to hinder the deployment of the increasing use of the counterweight trebuchet. In the case of spur castles, heavy siege machinery could only be deployed on the uphill side enabling defensive works, the crusader castle Krak des Chevaliers lies on the spur of a hill only accessible from the south. At the same time, it has strong concentric castle defences on all sides, in the castle at Saône, the defences are concentrated on the vulnerable side of the spur, most notably a deep ditch. The lower bailey at Saône has weaker walls and towers, the Alcázar of Segovia in Spain is located on a narrow spur with deep drops all around except from the east where it is approached on level ground. Stirling Castle in Scotland is located on a spur with drops on three sides and a gentle slope providing access from the south-east. Château de Chinon in France was used by the counts of Anjou in the 12th century, in 1205, it was captured by the French king and was the largest castle in the Loire valley. Crusader Castles in the Holy Land
9.
Bailey (castle)
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An outer bailey or outer ward is the defended outer enclosure of a castle. It protects the inner bailey and usually contains those buildings used for the management of the castle or the supply of its occupants. In many cases there was also a brewery, a bakehouse, an outer bailey was often called a base court in England. Depending on topography it could also be referred to as a bailey or lower ward. Chepstow Castle has lower, middle and upper baileys, the domestic buildings of the continental schloss, often a stately home or palace, may also be referred to as an outer ward. These frequently contained a house or a cavalier house, buildings that were not common in medieval castles. Large castles often have more than one bailey, examples include Monschau, at some larger castles, markets were held in the outer bailey. Outer baileys were usually enclosed and protected by a wall and separated from the actual living area of the castle - the inner ward and keep - by a moat, a wall. In lowland castles, the bailey is usually arranged in a half-moon shape around the main castle. Rudelsburg Castle in Saxony-Anhalt is one of the cases of a hill castle where both baileys are at the same level. This explains why the castle chapel was found in the bailey. Ward Inner bailey Motte and bailey Horst Wolfgang Böhme, Reinhard Friedrich, Barbara Schock-Werner, reclam, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-15-010547-1, page 255-256. Friedrich-Wilhelm Krahe, Castles and tower houses of the German Middle Ages, volume 1 Thorbecke, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-7995-0104-5, page 53-55. Reprint of the edition of 1912, weltbild, Augsburg 1994, ISBN 3-89350-554-7, pp. 10–11
10.
Keep
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A keep is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. The Anglo-Normans and French rulers began to stone keeps during the 10th and 11th centuries, these included Norman keeps, with a square or rectangular design. Stone keeps carried considerable political as well as military importance and could take up to a decade to build, during the 12th century, new designs began to be introduced – in France, quatrefoil-shaped keeps were introduced, while in England polygonal towers were built. In Spain, keeps were increasingly incorporated into both Christian and Islamic castles, although in Germany tall towers called Bergfriede were preferred to keeps in the western fashion, in the second half of the 14th century, there was a resurgence in the building of keeps. In France, the keep at Vincennes began a fashion for tall, heavily machicolated designs, meanwhile, tower keeps in England became popular amongst the most wealthy nobles, these large keeps, each uniquely designed, formed part of the grandest castles built during the period. By the 16th century, however, keeps were slowly falling out of fashion as fortifications, many were destroyed in civil wars between the 17th and 18th centuries, or incorporated into gardens as an alternative to follies. During the 19th century, keeps became fashionable once again and in England, despite further damage to many French and Spanish keeps during the wars of the 20th century, keeps now form an important part of the tourist and heritage industry in Europe. Since the 16th century, the English word keep has commonly referred to large towers in castles. The word originates from around 1375 to 1376, coming from the Middle English term kype, meaning basket or cask, the term came to be used for other shell keeps by the 15th century. By the 17th century, the word keep lost its reference to baskets or casks. Early on, the use of the keep became associated with the idea of a tower in a castle that would serve both as a fortified, high-status private residence and a refuge of last resort. By the 19th century, Victorian historians incorrectly concluded that the etymology of the keep and tenazza were linked. As a result of evolution in meaning, the use of the term keep in historical analysis today can be problematic. Contemporary medieval writers used various terms for the buildings we would today call keeps, in Latin, they are variously described as turris, turris castri or magna turris – a tower, a castle tower, or a great tower. The 12th-century French came to them a donjon, from the Latin dominarium lordship, linking the keep. Similarly, medieval Spanish writers called the buildings torre del homenaje, in England, donjon turned into dungeon, which initially referred to a keep, rather than to a place of imprisonment. This ambiguity over terminology has made historical analysis of the use of keeps problematic, while the term remains in common academic use, some academics prefer to use the term donjon, and most modern historians warn against using the term keep simplistically. The fortifications that we would today call keeps certainly did not necessarily part of a unified medieval style
