• 1 On this aspect: ELLENBLUM, Ronnie – Crusader Castles and Modern Histories. Cambridge, GB; New York: (...)
• 2 In general, if the ambivalent character of the brothers of the Temple and the Hospital intrigued Mu (...)
• 3 Finally, on the peregrinations of the central archives of the Templars, whose tormented destiny was (...)
• 4 See the exemplary case of the Crac des Chevaliers studied in parallel by several research teams, no (...)
• 5 See, for example, the case of Manosque discussed in the same publication.
• 6 This issue is discussed in SHOTTEN-HALLEL, Vardit; SASS, Eytan; PERELIS GROSSOWICZ, Lydia – “The Ho (...)

1Belvoir, an iconic representation of the “Crusader castle” 1is, above all, one of the emblematic fortifications of the Order of the Hospital, along with Margat and the Crac des Chevaliers. However, it is hard to imagine what such a construction could represent for this military order: knowledge of the site, and even more so of its occupants, is blurred by the disparity of the written documentation. Mentions of Kawkab al-Hawa in Arab chronicles are, of course, relatively numerous but, being all to the glory of the power of the Ayyūbids, they don't give much details about the Christian occupation of the fortification2. The Latin narratives, on the other hand, are more likely to be written by travelers, and tend to take an overhanging position, often merely emphasizing the beauty of the site and the strength of its strategic position. Consequently, there is not much left beside the diplomatic documentation relating to the Hospital to give a chronological reference on the occupation of the site by the Latins. Unfortunately, after the many trials and tribulations of the central archives of the Order, only scattered acts remain, which are more likely to shed some light on the estate managed from the castle rather than on the castle itself3. Hypotheses of identification of the spaces can therefore only be based on archaeological analysis, supported by comparisons, as is the case for most of the fortifications of the Latin states4. In fact, contrary to what the archives of the Western commanderies sometimes reveal5, charters provide no topographical or chronological indications likely to provide information on the construction of the castle, the organization of life within, or how it protected itself. We won’t try either to grasp what such a monument would represent in terms of “identity” for a religious order as the Hospital6. It is well known that the living quarters of the Military Orders had to adapt to the specific propositum vitae of the brothers and that the castle of Belvoir, like any other Hospitaller fortified domus, was part monastery but, mostly, a military compound.

• 7 For example, in the general overview book of FULTON, Michael S. – Siege Warfare during the Crusades(...)
• 8 Of the written sources relating to the siege of Saladin in 1187, the most comprehensive statement i (...)

2This article is not a historiographical essay on a building that is still regarded by historians and archaeologists as “the most symmetrical concentric castle”7. Nor will it be a question of setting this fortress in the context of the fortified architecture of its time, nor of revisiting the question of the various sieges that it faced: there is, indeed, a comprehensive bibliography on these issues8. The circumstances surrounding the establishment of this castle in this part of Eastern Galilee are discussed by Hervé Barbet in this same dossier. Our aim will therefore be more modest: situating Belvoir’s involvement within the military activity of the Hospital in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and, more particularly, the Latin occupation of Galilee. The chronological articulation will necessarily be dictated by the two phases of the Hospitallers' presence in Belvoir, first between 1168 and 1189, then between 1241 and 1266.

• 9 On the militarization begun in the central years of the eleventh century: RILEY-SMITH, Jonathan – T (...)
• 10 RILEY-SMITH, Jonathan – The Knights of Saint John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c. 1050-1310, pp. 69-70 (...)
• 11 BURGTORF, Jochen – “Die Herrschaft der Johanniter in Margat im Heiligen Land”. In CZAJA, Roman; SAR (...)

3Approved in 1113 as a religious institution with a charitable vocation, the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem was fairly quickly turned into a military order, inspired by the Temple9. The changeover from a charitable institution to a true Military Order really took place under the magisterium of Gilbert of Assailly (1162-1170). With the encouragement of the sovereigns of the Latin States, the mission assigned to the religious order evolved and, in particular, led the brothers to receive guardianship of fortifications. Before 1160, the Hospitallers held fewer than a dozen fortified places within the Latin States – some, such as Bayt Jibrin (1136) and Crac des Chevaliers (1142-1144), had been acquired early. Then, under the magisterium of Gilbert of Assailly, a dozen additional fortifications were acquired and seigneurial rights were obtained over half a dozen other sites10. The castle of Belvoir was purchased in this context between 1165 and 1168, as was the castle of Margat. Acquired in 1186, the latter was to become one of the major fortifications of the Order11. The Hospitallers therefore had, from that time on, a sufficiently solid financial base to assume the costs of their military orientation.

• 12 On the establishing of the Hospitaller estate, see above all: DORSO, Simon – “Change or continuity? (...)
• 13 RILEY-SMITH, Jonathan – The Knights of Saint John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c. 1050-1310, pp. 60-63 (...)
• 14 JEAN DE WÜRZBOURG – “Descriptio terrae sanctae”. In Peregrinatores tres: Saewulf, John of Würzburg, (...)
• 15 “In cuius vicino [Bethsan] monte precelso hospitarii fortissimum et amplissimum castrum constituunt (...)
• 16 GROUSSET, René – Histoire des Croisades et du royaume Franc de Jérusalem. Paris: Plon, 1935, t. II, (...)
• 17 FULTON, Michael S. – Siege Warfare during the Crusades, pp. 79-80.
• 18 “Kawkeb, capital of the Hospitallers, dwelling place of the ungodly, residence of their chief, stor (...)
• 19 “terra illa que vocatur Guidimtesta in qua concedimus vobis ut faciatis castellam quodam cui imponi (...)
• 20 BARROCA, Mário – “Os castelos das Ordens Militares em Portugal (séc. XII a XIV)”. In FERNANDES, Isa (...)

4The acquisition of the Belvoir estate, which Hervé Barbé is discussing here, came at a time when the Hospital is said to have been going through a difficult financial situation12. The Order, engaged in the Egyptian campaigns of King Amalric I of Jerusalem, seemed heavily in debt in 1168 and 1169. Furthermore, the bellicose policy of Gilbert of Assailly had been contested from within the convent, which had led to his resignation in 1170, which in turn caused an institutional crisis for four years13. In spite of this, the Hospitallers remained involved in the defense of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the 1170s, the pilgrim John of Würzburg noticed the significant expenditures of the Order “which maintains, in its castles, many men educated in the arts of war, for the defense of the Christian lands against the incursions of the Saracens” 14. As for Belvoir, the pilgrim Theoderic had noted that the construction was ideally placed to defend the Kingdom of Jerusalem against Nūr al-Dīn, the emir of Aleppo15. The castle defended a land within reach of enemy raids. Already before Saladin's great offensives, this sector had twice been the scene of raids and clashes between Latins and Muslims, in the summer of 1182 and two years later16. In practice, as has been noted, the castle's garrison could only have watched from afar as Saladin’s army passed by on its way to the plain of Hattin in 118717. In the 1180s however, Belvoir appeared to be one of the Order’s most significant fortifications. Besides, the chronicler Abū Shāma refers to this site as the headquarters of the Hospitallers18, which is erroneous, but reflects the importance the fortress had acquired in the eyes of Muslim observers. It is possible that the monument quickly acquired a certain prestige as far as the West, if we are to understand in this sense the founding diploma of Belver, the first castle owned by the Hospitallers in the Kingdom of Portugal. In fact, the name "Belver" was imposed by the king Sancho I himself when, in 1194, he ceded territory on the border of the River Tagus to the Hospitallers in order to erect a castle19. Although the royal charter does not go as far, Portuguese historiography does admit that the name of this fortification, whose architecture shows influences from the Latin East, is an explicit reference to the Belvoir of the Holy Land20.

• 21 PRINGLE, Denys – “The role of castellans in the Latin East”. In FERNANDES, Isabel Cristina (ed.) – (...)
• 22 Fratre Oldino, Bellivideri castellano (1173, Jerusalem); frater Alebaudus, castellanus Belviderii ( (...)
• 23 BURGTORF, Jochen – “Die Herrschaft der Johanniter in Margat im Heiligen Land”, p. 40; DESCHAMPS, Pa (...)
• 24 BARBER, Malcolm – The Crusader States. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012, p. 229.
• 25 RILEY-SMITH, Jonathan – The Knights Hospitaller in the Levant, c.1070-1309, pp. 82-83.
• 26 Despite a recent article by Alan Forey, the question of mercenaries employed in the armies of Milit (...)
• 27 RICHARD, Jean – “Bédouins”. In JOSSERAND, Philippe; BÉRIOU, Nicole (eds.) – Prier et combattre. Dic (...)
• 28 “…centum tentoria Beduinorum apud Bellum Videre, libere et quiete, jure perpetuo habenda et posside (...)

5The most important castles of the Hospitaller Order were placed under the command of a castellan (castellanus), according to common usage in the feudal organization of the Holy Land21. Thus, the names of three “castellani” attested to Belvoir between 1173 and 1185 have been preserved22. However, nothing is known about the garrison that defended this castle. By ways of comparison, in addition to the garrison itself, Margat is said to have housed about a thousand-armed people, while the Crac des Chevaliers housed some two thousand combatants in peacetime. These estimates, however, date from the beginning of the thirteenth century23. At the time of Belvoir's first occupation, the proportions would be much more modest. In the second half of the twelfth century, the small hospital fortification of Belmont, near Jerusalem, was held by a dozen knights and nearly 330 other men24. The number of troops present at Belvoir could be situated between these different estimates. It is thought, however, that the fighting brothers of the Hospital were probably never more than two or three hundred on the scale of the whole Latin East25. The Hospitallers themselves were, in any case, in the minority and would therefore have been unable to hold fortifications of this magnitude without resorting to vassals and mercenaries26. The indigenous population could eventually be called to the service of the Hospitallers. It is the case of the Bedouins, some of which offered their help to the Frankish armies and the Military Orders27. In 1180, King Baldwin IV offered the Hospitallers the rights he held over a population of about one hundred Bedouin tents stationed near Belvoir28.

• 29 An inscription simply bearing the signature “Villelm(us)” could be linked to a mason involved in th (...)
• 30 On the Assailly mandate as Master: DELAVILLE LE ROULX, Joseph – Les Hospitaliers en Terre Sainte et (...)
• 31 Cartulaire général de l'ordre des Hospitaliers, t. I, n.º 307 and 310 ([1163-1169]), n.º 377 ([9 Ap (...)
• 32 In 1143, the Prior of Saint-Gilles, Aimon, was present in Jerusalem (Cartulaire général de l'ordre (...)
• 33 DESCHAMPS, Paul – Les châteaux croisés en Terre Sainte, vol. 1., pp. 198-199.
• 34 JACOBY, Zehava – “The Workshop of the Temple Area in Jerusalem in the Twelfth Century: its Origins, (...)

6As mentioned earlier, due to their profile and because they contain gaps, the written documents don’t shed much light on the architectural organization of the castle itself. One space in particular was at the core of the interrogations of our research program: the chapel, such as it could be reconstructed from the lapidary deposit abandoned by Meir Ben Dov. Apart from the few texts quoting Belvoir, the challenge will be to widen the focus in order to see if other written sources would at least help to clarify the chronology of this construction presented here by Anne Flammin and Florian Renucci. The quality of the construction and the decoration suggests that it was the work of a prestigious commissioner, perhaps influential enough to have encouraged the arrival at Belvoir of craftsmen trained overseas29. To imagine an initiative of Master Gilbert of Assailly would, for example, be a seductive hypothesis. But, apart from the fact that we would have to imagine a well-advanced construction site if not completed by 1170, neither the origin nor the networks of relations of this Grand Master are really known30. In the state of reflection, we simply note two elements. On the one hand, this high officer was well enough introduced to obtain, on several occasions, from King Louis VII to come to the aid of the Hospitallers31. On the other hand, within the Order of the Hospital, relations between the Latin East and the rear bases in the West, and especially Mediterranean France, seemed to be quite regular already in the last third of the twelfth century32. It is therefore by no means impossible that officers of the Order, who were accustomed to traveling from one shore of the Mediterranean to the other, took sculptors and lapicides to Palestine, and why not to Belvoir. In his time, on the basis of comparisons that would probably have to be taken up again, Paul Deschamps thought that the "architect" of the chapel of the Crac des Chevaliers could be Provençal33. In the same way, let us recall the activity in Jerusalem in the 1160s of a sculptors' workshop that seems to have worked in the cloister of the Templar house as well as in the Hospitaller church, and whose work has been compared with certain Provençal works34.

• 35 Arab chronicles tell with some accuracy of the siege of Belvoir by Saladin's army (BILLER, Thomas – (...)
• 36 The priors of the chapels of Crac and Margat enjoyed a recognized position within the Hospitaller h (...)

7However, the Latins evacuated Belvoir as early as January 1189, following a siege that lasted nearly eighteen months35. The fate of the chapel after the capture of the castle is still uncertain: was it entirely demolished? Or was the building refurbished for another use? In any case, whatever its sponsor and its architectural qualities, the chapel at Belvoir did not have the longevity that could have made it one of the great centers of sacrality in the Holy Land, like the chapels at Crac des Chevaliers and Margat36.

• 37 PRAWER, Joshua – Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, t. II, p. 292-295; RICHARD, Jean – Histoir (...)
• 38 BURGTORF, Jochen – The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars, pp. 74-90; BRONSTEIN, Judith – (...)
• 39 PRAWER, Joshua – Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, t. II, pp. 285-287. This treaty ratified a (...)
• 40 “… the castle of Benaer, the castle of Amabel, Amoat, Alau, and the castle of Hybilis with its outb (...)
• 41 BILLER, Thomas – “Die Johanniterburg Belvoir am Jordan. Zum frühen Burgenbau der Ritterorden im Hei (...)
• 42 “Et tant plus que il vos donra par la conoissance de quatre prodes homes… tant d’avoir come costero (...)
• 43 PRAWER, Joshua – Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, t. II, pp. 154-156 and 176-179.

8Galilee was marked by a reinvestment of the Latin presence as early as 1241 with the restoration of the citadel of Tiberias and the return of the monks of Mount Tabor to their monastery37. By this time, the organization of the Hospital on the scale of the Holy Land had evolved. The loss of Jerusalem had led to the relocation of the headquarters to Acre, where the brothers had built a huge complex, while the defenses of the main castles of Margat and Crac had been reinforced38. It was probably the treaty signed between Earl Richard of Cornwall and the Sultan of Egypt al-Sālih ‘Ayyūb, in the spring of 1241, that returned the territory of Belvoir to the Hospitallers39. Matthew Paris transcribes a letter in which Richard of Cornwall gives an account of his crusade and lists the places given back to the Christians, including Belvoir (under the spelling “Benaer”)40. As Hervé Barbé recalled, the fortification had been dismantled for the first time around 1212 by order of Sultan al-‘Ādil b. Ayyūb (1193-1218)41. But the castle seems to have been targeted by destruction twice again. The first phase of destruction was ordered by the Emir of Damascus, al-Mu'azzam 'Isā, when the army of the Fifth Crusade laid siege to Damietta, until negotiations initiated by Sultan al-Kāmil (1218-1238) suspended work in the summer of 1219. Against the evacuation of the Nile Delta by the crusaders, the Sultan of Egypt proposed the restitution of Latin possessions west of river Jordan. The intransigence of Pelage, legate of the Apostolic See, and of the Military Orders, however, doomed these talks to failure. Even though the ruler of Cairo had offered, in addition to compensation, to raise the fortifications of Kawkab and three other major places (Jerusalem, Tibnīn and Safed)42. In the fall of 1227, when dissension broke out among the heirs of Sultan al-'Ādil and Emperor Frederick II arrived in the Holy Land, al-Mû'azzam completed the dismantling of the castles of Galilee (Kawkab, Tibnīn, and Safed)43. Such a policy, on the part of al-Mu'azzam, was both directed against his brother al-Kāmil and against Frederick II's crusaders, all of whom coveted his possessions in Palestine.

• 44 DORSO, Simon – “Templiers et Hospitaliers dans la Galilée du XIII^e siècle: stratégies d’implantatio (...)

9One wonders, in this case, in what state the Hospitallers recovered the castle, if at all. In fact, no written source formally attests that the brothers reoccupied the place from the 1240s onwards. However, unlike the Mameluks, the Ayyūbids still authorized the Latins to fortify the places retroceded by the treaties. Sultan al-Kāmil even offered to finance the restoration of Kawkab in 1219, although, as we have just recalled, the negotiations failed. Actually, according to Simon Dorso, both the Hospital and the Temple expressed a relative lack of interest in their former fortifications in Galilee. This lack of interest is explained both by the poor unity of the participants in the Fifth Crusade and by the fact that the Latins focused more on the defense of the coastline44.

• 45 PRAWER, Joshua – Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, t. II, p. 287.
• 46 DORSO, Simon – “Templiers et Hospitaliers dans la Galilée du XIII^e siècle: stratégies d’implantatio (...)
• 47 BRONSTEIN, Judith – The Hospitallers and the Holy Land. Financing the Latin East, 1187-1274, pp. 81 (...)
• 48 This is a global weighing of the seven years (1283-1290) covered by the accounts (CARRAZ, Damien –  (...)

10Later, the treaty of Jaffa of 1229 also authorized the Latins to fortify in the recovered territories, and Richard of Cornwall obtained confirmation of this principle in 1241. However, Joshua Prawer rightly noted that “to draw borders on the map of Palestine is one thing, to occupy and control the territories thus recovered is another. The Franks needed a stronger central power, financial means to raise the fortifications, and European immigration to populate the new territories”45. Yet none of these conditions were really met. In addition, the Hospitallers would have remained on the sidelines of the negotiations with the Sultan al-Kāmil, unlike the Templars, who were more concerned with defending their interests in Galilee46. On the other hand, one would have to consider the financial capacities of the Hospital of St. John. If Judith Bronstein notes a drop in the Order's investments in the West from the central decades of the thirteenth century47, it seems that its capacity to support the Subsidium Terrae sanctae was not in any way affected at that time. To take just one example, in the 1280s, in a context that was much more difficult for the Holy Land, if not for Hospitallers finances, the Manosque commandery, in Provence, was still able to devote almost 40% of its income to the contribution (responsiones) sent to the East48.

• 49 Jonathan Riley-Smith similarly believes that the Order probably did not restore its castles of Beth (...)
• 50 DEMURGER, Alain – Les Templiers. Une chevalerie chrétienne au Moyen Âge. Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2005, (...)
• 51 Independently of the interpretation presented here by Anne Flammin and Florian Renucci, let us reca (...)

11Even if we qualify the material difficulties that the Order would already have had to face, we can legitimately wonder about the importance of the building campaign undertaken by the Hospitallers at Belvoir in the central years of the thirteenth century49. In this period, the defense of the Latin states was essentially based on the Military Orders, which alone could maintain themselves in the main strongholds. In the logic of a defensive strategy in the face of the rising power of the Mameluks, Alain Demurger clearly showed how the Templars had literally “encircled” themselves in some enormous fortresses50. If the same was true for the Hospitallers, it is not clear that, in the Kingdom of Jerusalem where Templar fortifications were much more present, Belvoir was then among the priorities of the Order51. The Hospitallers were also the first to be able to defend themselves against the Mameluks.

• 52 “castrum Belveir, quod fuit hospitale sancti Iohannis” (BURCHARD DE MONT-SION – “Descriptio Terrae (...)
• 53 DELAVILLE LE ROULX, Joseph – Inventaire des pièces de Terre Sainte de l’ordre de l'Hôpital. Paris: (...)
• 54 “nos, le desus nomé maistre et le covent dou Temple, … quitons et renuncions à vos frere Hugue Reve (...)
• 55 RILEY-SMITH, Jonathan – The Knights of Saint John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c. 1050-1310, p. 425.
• 56 Cartulaire général de l'ordre des Hospitaliers, vol. II, n.º 2726 (1 April 1255); RILEY-SMITH, Jona (...)
• 57 Cartulaire général de l'ordre des Hospitaliers, t. II, n.º 2747 ([30 June-2 July] 1255). On these n (...)
• 58 Cartulaire général de l'ordre des Hospitaliers, vol. II, n.º 2934 (24 October 1259). The same Jocel (...)
• 59 PRAWER, Joshua – Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, t. II, pp. 441-455.

12However, the traveler Burchard of Mount Sion, who visited Galilee in 1283, had of course heard that Belvoir – then lost for twenty years – had belonged to the Hospitallers52. While we know nothing about the realities of the Hospitallers' reinvestment in the castle, it is attested that they had retained land from their former lordship. Proof of this can be found in an agreement of 1259 concerning the tithes to be taken from the territory covered by the castle53. In addition, as was frequently the case in the Latin East, certain Hospitallers’ possessions and those of the Templar Order, also present in this sector of the Lower Galilee, may have been intertwined. In 1262, at the end of a well-established negotiation procedure, the Knights Templar thus ceded to the Hospitaliers the rights they had over the casal of La Fève54. In the central years of the thirteenth century, the Hospital of St. John therefore sought to consolidate its presence in eastern Galilee, in particular by acquiring a series of properties and rights around Nazareth55. The charters that have been preserved especially highlight the interest of the Hospitallers in the position of Mount Tabor. The monastery of Mount Tabor and its possessions, then severely tested by the Muslim raids at the time of the Fifth Crusade, were given to the Order of St. John by Pope Alexander IV in April 125556. In the summer of that same year, Brother Jocelin de Tournel was charged, on behalf of Master Guillaume de Châteauneuf, to take possession of nine casalia located “between Mount Tabor and the Sea of Tiberias”57. The Order thus considerably increased its possessions in eastern Galilee, while a castellanus responsible for collecting taxes in the villages around Mount Thabor and Nazareth is attested in 125958. The Hospitallers had pledged to fortify the site and establish a strong garrison there, but they clearly did not have the means to undertake a real construction campaign. In fact, the place easily fell into the hands of the Mameluks during the first campaign that Sultan Baybars undertook in Palestine in 126359.

• 60 AL-MAQRĪZĪ – Histoire des sultans mamlouks de l‘Égypte. T. I, vol. 2. Trad. É. Quatremère. Paris: P (...)
• 61 “…in Acconense civitate multas et immensas et irrationabiles expensas nos oportuit facere annis plu (...)

13It is assumed that Belvoir was definitively taken away from the Christians during one of the campaigns of Sultan Baybars, between 1263 and 1266, even if no source formally testifies to any siege. It should be noted, for example, that the polygraph al-Maqrīzī (d. 1442), which devotes long developments to the campaigns of Baybars – and in particular to the capture of Safed – does not mention Kawkab anywhere60. In the spring of 1268, the Master of the Hospital Hugues Revel sent a detailed report on the situation in the Holy Land to the Prior of Saint-Gilles, Feraud de Barras. He listed the fortifications that had just been lost as a result of the campaign of Sultan Baybars. Belvoir is not mentioned, which suggests that the castle was no longer in the hands of the Hospitallers at that time61. It can be assumed that the loss of the castle occurred as early as 1263, during the campaign that the Mamluk sultan led against Nazareth and Mount Tabor. If the castle was actually abandoned at that time, it is conceivable that it was made without glory because Christian resistance would have been reported in Latin and Arabic chronicles.