Download PDF | Denys Pringle, Secular Buildings in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: An Archaeological Gazetteer, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
176 Pages
PREFACE
In January 1988, the Council of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem determined to continue the School's tradition of research into the medieval buildings of Palestine, already established by such projects as the architectural survey of medieval Muslim buildings in Jerusalem (see Burgoyne 1976; Burgoyne and Richards 1987) and of the church buildings of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Pringle 1982; 1993), by forming a Committee for Medieval and Ottoman Architecture. The Committee’s remit has been to promote and coordinate the field survey and publication of the principal surviving medieval buildings of the area. One of its first tasks has therefore been to commission the compilation of lists of buildings that might be worthy of further investigation. The gazetteer of secular buildings in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem published here is compiled within these general terms of reference. However, it is hoped that as well as serving as a guide to future workers in the field, it may also be of value to historians, archaeologists and historical geographers concerned with the building history and topography of the Crusader Kingdom.
I am grateful to Cambridge University Press for agreeing to publish the Gazetteer as a companion volume to The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus (3 vols., 1993-). Indeed, it is in many ways a by-product of that larger, more comprehensive project. Among the many institutions that have contributed directly or indirectly to the additional field work and archive and library research on which the Gazetteer is based I would also like to mention, in addition to the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem itself: the British Academy, for sponsorship of the Burj al-Ahmar excavation and survey project (1983), the Belmont Castle excavations (1986-8), and the Medieval and Ottoman Architectural Survey (1988-); the Royal Archaeological Institute, for sponsorship of a survey of Crusader castles in 1989; the Israel Antiquities Authority, for the granting of survey permits and of access to the archives of the former Palestine Department of Antiquities (1918-48), housed in the Palestine Archaeological (Rockefeller) Museum, Jerusalem; the Palestine National Authority, for permission to survey a sugar mill in the territory of Jericho (1995); the Department of Antiquities of Jordan; and the Palestine Exploration Fund, for access to their archive collection.
Among those who havé assisted me with information about secular buildings, often unpublished, I would also like to thank especially Dr Adrian Boas, Dr Ronnie Ellenblum, Dr Rafael Frankel, Dr John France, Dr Shimon Gibson, Mr Richard Harper, Dr Adam Johns, Mr Andrew Petersen and Ms Brigitte Porée.
Credits for illustrations will be found in the lists of figures and plates. However, particular mention should here be made of the assistance in surveying and drawing monuments in the field that I have received from the architects Peter E. Leach (who also drew the maps) and Matthew Pease.
RDP. Edinburgh, March 1996
INTRODUCTION
The Scope of the Gazetteer
The Gazetteer represents an attempt to list all the secular buildings (including industrial sites) known by their surviving remains to have existed within the boundaries of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at any time between 1099 and 1291. Each entry consists of a site number and name (with Crusader, Arabic and Hebrew alternatives), a reference to the Palestine (or Israel) Grid, a very brief description of the nature of the surviving or recorded structural remains, and a list of sources. Since the Gazetteer is intended to be archaeologically rather than historically based, references to medieval primary sources are usually omitted unless they provide evidence for dating or important descriptive information about the structures concerned. In compensation for this limitation, it may be noted that in many cases the secondary sources quoted will themselves provide a means of entry into the primary sources; a fairly comprehensive survey of the primary sources relating to castle-building may also be found in the volumes by Paul Deschamps (1934; 1939a). Unlike Churches, however, no attempt has been made to include in the Gazetteer a full list of buildings that are known only from documentary sources and of which no archaeological traces remain. mee tes excludes all religious buildings, since BA a listed and described in detail in Churches Su. :. a buildings of medieval and Ottoman . being a 2 ae by another gazetteer, which is oa oe 5 Dy Andrew Petersen. Among the variBie ae. Bee constructed in Palestine at the aa ngdom of Jerusalem, however, may be Roted in particular: a mosque built in ‘Ajj ane 167.159), between N b pate es a Sate ret Tbn‘Abd Bren; ablus and al-Bira, by Abii’l-Majd (PA)y. lin Ramadan 572 4/June-July ap 1176-7 ~™ teport by S. A. S. Husseini .eini, 3 Jan. 1935; squeeze
nos. 561-2; photo no. 9447; cf. Palestine 1948: 101);anda mosque at Bait Hanun (Grid ref. 106.105), built by the amir Shams al-Din Sungur in 1239 (Sukenik 1946). Muslim cemeteries dating from the Frankish period have been excavated at Kh. Tall ad-Durur (no. 89), Tall Mubarak (Grid ref. 1434.2155: Stern 1978: 4-9, pl. 46.15; 1994: 31-3, fig. 7; Tombs 1985: 17-18), Tall Dair “Alla (no. 81), Tall Qiri (Grid ref. 1610.2278: Ben-Tor and Portugali 1987: 5, 7-8), Kh. Tall al-Far‘a (no. R4), Tall al-Hasi (no. R5) and Tantura (no. 218). Remains of possible Samaritan synagogues at ‘Ain Sarin (Grid. ref. 176.178: Palestine 1948: 89; Kedar 1989: 85, 89-90) and Nablus (see Churches, 11, q.v.) require further investigation.
Field surveys conducted on either side of the Jordan in recent years have begun to document archaeologically, from such evidence as pottery scatters and other surface remains, some hundreds of sites that were evidently occupied or used in the twelfth and. thirteenth centuries. Such sites are only included in the Gazetteer if the surviving remains include (or seem likely to include) structures datable to either of those centuries or if they point to industrial activities being undertaken at the site (e.g. sugar production, iron smelting, glass production). The same criteria also apply to archaeological strata devoid of structures that have been identified during excavation.
Where structures do survive, of course, the ethnic identity of the builders is still not always certain. Depending on its location, for instance, a village house identified archaeologically could have been constructed by an indigenous Muslim, Jewish, Samaritan or Christian family, or even by Latin settlers. The justification for inclusion in the Gazetteer is therefore that the area in which the site lay was under nominal Frankish control at the time when the structure was erected. On this basis a number of structures identified as belong-ing to the ‘Ayyubid period’ have been included. However, the Ayyubid—Mamluk castles of ‘Ajlun, or Qal‘at ar-Rabad (Johns 1931; Bowen 1981), Subaiba (Ellenblum 1989; Amitai 1989; cf. Deschamps 1939a: 144-74), as-Salt (Meistermann 1909: 315; Duncan 1928; de Vaux 1938: 400-1; Johns 1937: 29; Franciscan Fathers 1977: 73; Gavin 1985: fig. 3), Mount Tabor (Battista and Bagatti 1976; see also Churches, 11, q.v.) and Jazirat Fara‘un (no. Rg) must be excluded, as they were not Frankish constructions, despite being built on the edges of the Kingdom in areas that had once been under Frankish control. The Damascene castle at Jarash (Grid ref. 235-188), remains of which could at one time still be seen enclosing the temple of Artemis (Harding 1967: 98), must also be excluded, since it represents an example of Crusader deconstruction, rather than construction, carried out by Baldwin II’s men in 1121 (William of Tyre, x11, 16); the same applies to the twelfth-century stone-robbing of a Byzantine building identified at Tall al-Akhdar (Grid ref. 1387.2058: Porath 198ga).
Many of the structures included in the Gazetteer are identified as belonging to the Frankish period purely on the basis of their form or their method of construction. In some cases the attribution is not entirely certain and needs to be checked by additional field work and analysis. Ashlar bearing a diagonal dressing and masonry marks may almost always be safely attributed to the Crusader period, though the possibility of reuse has always to be borne in mind. Diagonal tooling and certain types of masonry mark, however, are also found, though not together, on buildings of the Ayyubid period. Rusticated or bossed masonry with smoothly drafted edges is also a characteristic of Crusader buildings, though here again masonry of a broadly similar type was used from the Iron Age to the Mamluk period. Pointed barrel-vaults or groin-vaults, particularly those with transverse arches of ashlar and with smooth fine white plaster applied to the interior surfaces, will often be Frankish, but may also be Ayyubid or Mamluk. Very little is known of the buildings constructed in Palestine in the two centuries immediately preceding the Crusaders’ capture of Jerusalem in 1099. There is therefore every possibility that some of the structures attributed to the Crusaders may in fact belong to the periods of Fatimid or Seljuk control; indeed a number of the sites identified as ‘Crusading’ by the Survey of Western Palestine (and included on that basis in the Atlas of Israel’s map of Crusader Palestine) have on further investigation turned out to be Byzantine. (On masonry and construc-
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tion methods, see Deschamps 1934; Kalayan 1968; Pringle 1981a; Burgoyne and Richards 1987: 88-100; Ellenblum 1992.)
None the less, it is abundantly clear from the study of church buildings and castles, which are often datable through documentary references, that the period of Crusader control in the twelfth century resulted in the construction of buildings, both religious and secular, being undertaken west of the Jordan on a scale unknown since Byzantine and Umayyad times. In contrast, the interest of Mamluk builders seems to have been focussed mainly on the major cities such as Jerusalem and Gaza, fortresses such as Qal‘at Subaiba, ‘Ajlun and Karak, and on the network of roads, bridges and khans that assured communications between them and the more important centres of Syria and Egypt. Except in especially favoured areas, such as the sugarproducing region of the Jordan valley and the Ghawr dependent on Karak and in the Jaulan, economic investment in the countryside, and hence building works other than those on a purely village scale, seem to have declined significantly in the areas reconquered from the Crusaders by the Ayyubids and Mamluks in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. When doubt exists over the dating of medieval buildings surviving in villages west of the Jordan, the balance of probabilities will therefore often favour a Crusader attribution, though in some cases, such as the later additions to the Crusader curia at al-Bira, an Ayyubid one may also be possible.
Because of the uncertainty that so often surrounds the precise dating of architecturally undistinguished non-religious medieval buildings in Palestine, the main Gazetteer is followed by a supplementary one, divided into three parts. The first part contains a list of ‘possibles’ (designated by numbers prefixed by the letter P): these include sites where there is some evidence to suggest that there may be building remains of the Crusader period, but where further archaeological research is needed to provide conclusive proof. The second part lists ‘rejects’ (designated by the prefix R): these are sites where the identification of Frankish buildings has been suggested at some time in the past, but has since been shown to be erroneous. The Supplementary Gazetteer concludes with a list of ‘don't knows’: these comprise those ‘Crusader antiquities sites’ that are shown on the Crusader-period map in the Aflas of Israel, but whose identification it has proved impossible to confirm or deny.
Itshould be stressed that the boundaries between the ‘definites/probables’ in the main Gazetteer and the possibles’, ‘rejects’ and ‘don’t knows’ in the Supplementary Gazetteer should not be regarded as fixed, and that certain sites may be expected to migrate from one category to another as archaeological research continues.
Towns and Cities
There is no easy definition of what constituted an urban as opposed to a rural settlement in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (see Prawer 1977; 1980; RileySmith 1973: 62-98; Benvenisti 1970: 25-8; Pringle 1995a: 69-71). Legally the position is confused by the fact that virtually all Franks who were not clerics or knights were classed as burgesses. Burgess tenure therefore existed in settlements that in terms of their size and economy were no different from villages, while a variety of feudal tenures also existed in the larger cities. The existence of a cathedral church provides no convenient sign of urban status, since the choice of sees was largely, though not entirely, dictated by Byzantine precedent. From the economic point of view, it might be expected that a greater proportion of atown or city’s population would have been engaged in economic activities not directly connected with the land; but even here the distinction is blurred, for the inhabitants of a small settlement like al-Bira, numbering some 500-750, included specialist craftsmen, and the agricultural exploitation of the city territories of Acre and Jerusalem by their Frankish inhabitants is well attested.
The size of a settlement’s population should have obvious implications for determining its status, but in practice absolute numbers are rarely known. Where a sufficient number of Franks were living, however, there is usually evidence for the existence of a court of burgesses, presided over by a viscount. Some forty such settlements are listed in table 1 (see also fig. 1). To them may be added a further eight ‘new towns’ established during the Crusader period, which although small and agricultural in character were soSally, economically and institutionally towns in the making (Pringle 1995a: 71). The physical size and
Eton a settlements, however, varied enormousPies a a ysical aspects of Crusader towns and 7 In oa a 7 ao 00) Metin walle i. ee is there evidence for a circuit ( BE feubour 4 e table 2). In all but two of these cases ‘a § added to the castle of ‘Atlit from c.1225
Beads and the Montmusard suburb of Acre which Pec. by 1212), the walls already existed before eK er conquest and were merely strengthenedor rebuilt by the Franks. Indeed, most of the documentary evidence for the Frankish construction of town walls dates from after the Third Crusade, when much of it was paid for by Western Crusading leaders. Where remains of Frankish town walls do survive in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, they never stand to their full height. Often they are strengthened with projecting rectangular towers, though a rounded one also occurs at ‘Atlit, and rounded and triangular ones at Ascalon.
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