Castles in Syria:
Areimah, Arwad, Burj al-Sabi, Burzey, Krak, Marqab, Mehelbeh, Safita, Saone, Tartus, Yahmur, Aleppo, Bosra, Damascus, Ibn Maan, Jaber, Najim, Rahba, Shaizar, Sukara, Abu Qbeis, Al Kahf, Maniqa, and Masyaf.

Castles in Jordan:
Ajlun, Kerak, Shobak,

Castles in Turkey:
Bakas, Bodrum,

Castles in Lebanon:
Beirut, Byblos, Tripoli, Baalbek,

Castles in Israel:
Belvoir, Caesarea,

Castles in Cyprus:
Famagusta, Buffavento, Gastria, Kantara, Kyrena, and St. Hilaron.

Castles in the Republic of Macedonia:
Skopje, Prelip, Ohrid, and Markovi Kule on Mt. Vodno.

Castles on the island of Sicily:
Seaside Norman Castle
This website is an outgrowth of over 25 years of fieldwork in the Middle East and Europe with an interest in Medieval architecture and artifacts.

Big News: We are currently excavating a Medieval castle in the Republic of Macedonia and you can participate if you have time and money. Check out this website - http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/macedonia/

By the way, elevation are given as approximate because we have found that the Garmin emap handheld GPS fairly accurate (up to 10 ft.) for longitude and latitude, but a little less reliable for elevation.

This website and is a resource of digital images, scanned slides, GPS coordinates, and chronological information from our research in the Middle East.

Professor David Hanlon (SLCC) has given permission to use a few of his fine art photographs taken at several sites in Syria. His beautiful prints are for sale! Be sure and visit his webpage at http://users.stlcc.edu/dhanlon/index.htm

IMPORTANT... web visitors are welcome to link to our site, but we do not want images or information copied without our expressed permission.

Eventually we will add short essays about each site. The perspective of this website is of two anthropological archaeologists with two decades of fieldwork at Medieval sites in Syria and Jordan.

A special note of thanks to many castle guards for permission to visit. Many thanks to the various professional archaeologists in the Directorate Generale des Antiquites et Musees in Damascus. The "carte blanc" provided by the National Museum made our work much easier.

Literally, a thousand thanks to our good friend Sagi Qorqmax of Latakia (Syria) for his help in relocating castles in western Syria. His knowledge and skills (historian, journalist, and guide) are invaluable.

Active construction of the website will be ongoing. Please return as more castles as added each year...

Castles on the Web

Offers an extensive database of links to all things Castle related

 

Created 18 February 2001
Updated 16 January 2009

Neathery and Michael Fuller, Archaeologists and Web Designs

Here are just a few references to Crusader Sites:


Boas, Adrian J. (1999)
Crusader Archaeology. Routledge, London,

Burns, Ross (1992)
Monuments of Syria: An Historical Guide. I. B. Tauris, London.

Folda, Faroslav (1995)
The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098-1187. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Lawrence. T. E. (1992 reprint of 1936)
Crusader Castles. Immel Publishing, London.

Hakim, Heidi and Haithem Jawish (ca. 1999),
Saladin: Le Vie de ce Grand Sultan. Private Printing, Damascus.

Hilenbrand, Carole (1999)
The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives. Routledge, London.

Itlas, Mustafa (1990)
El Husn Citadel [in Arabic]. Tlasdar, Damascus.

Jawish, Haithem (1999)
Krak des Chevaliers und die Kreuzfahrer. Private Printing, Damascus.

Lyons, Malcolm Cameron and D. E. P. Jackson (1982)
Saladin: The Politics of Holy War. Cambridge Paperback Library, Cambridge.

Muller-Wiener, Wolfgang (1966)
Castles of the Crusaders. McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York.

Omran, Hazar and George Dabboura (1994)
The Citadel of Damascus. Privately printed in Damascus.

Rihaoui, Abdulkader (1982)
The Krak of the Knights. Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums, Damascus.

Riley-Smith, Jonathan (1987)
The Crusades: A Short History. Yale University Press

Riley-Smith, Jonathan (1995)
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades. Oxford University Press.

Riley-Smith, Jonathan (1997)
The First Crusaders: 1095 - 1131. Cambridge University Press.

Rozenberg, Silvia (1999)
Knights of the Holy Land: The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Runciman, Steven (1954)
A History of the Crusades. Vols. 1 to 3. Cambridge University Press.

Saouaf, Soubhi (1972 and 1975)
Alep: son histoire, sa citadelle, ses monuments antiques et son musée. Georges & Mathilde Salem, Aleppo.

Sateh, Akram (1975)
Citadels and Castles in Syria. Privately printed, Aleppo.

Sha'ath, Shawqi (1993)
The Citadel of Aleppo. Fata el Arab Press, Damascus.

Smail, R. C. (1995 reprint of 1956 edition)
Crusading Warfare (1097-1193). Barnes and Noble Books, NY.

Tate, Georges (1991)
L'Orient des Croisades. Decouvertes Gallmard.

Castles on the Web

Offers an extensive database of links to all things Castle related



Archaeology of the Crusader Sites conference hosted in 2003

was attended by over 200 individuals and proved a very great success.