Location: 65 km West of Homs, Homs Governorate Map
Open: 9am-6pm summer
9am-4pm winter
Phone: 740-002
The Crac of the Knights (French pronunciation: /kʁak de
ʃəvaˈlje/; Arabic: حصن الفرسان), also Crac des Chevaliers,
Kurds») and previously Crac de l'Ospital, is a large medieval
mountain castle located in present-day Syria, which was the
headquarters of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of
Jerusalem in Syrian territory during the time of the Crusades.
It is one of the best preserved medieval castles in the world.
The place was first inhabited in the 11th century by a
settlement of Kurdish troops stationed there by the Mirdasids.
As a result, it was known as Hisn al-Akrad, meaning the "Castle
of the Kurds." In 1142 it was handed over by Raymond II, count
of Tripoli, to the Knights Hospitaller. It remained his until he
fell in 1271. It was known as Crac de l'Ospital; The name Krak
des Chevaliers was coined in the 19th century. According to the
restoring architect, Leopoldo Torres Balbás, with its double
walled enclosure it constitutes the prototype of the military
architecture of the 12th and 13th centuries, its only parallel
being the Alcazaba of Málaga that belongs to the Spanish Taifal
period, in the 11th century.
The Hospitallers began
rebuilding the castle in the 1140s and it was finished by 1170
when an earthquake damaged the castle. The order controlled a
series of castles along the border of the county of Tripoli, a
state founded after the First Crusade. The Crac de los
Caballeros was among the most important, and acted as an
administration center as well as a military base. After the
second phase of construction was undertaken in the 13th century,
the Crac de los Caballeros had become a concentric castle. This
phase created the outer wall and gave the castle its current
appearance. The first half of the century has been described as
the "golden age" of the Crac de los Caballeros. At its peak, it
housed a garrison of around two thousand knights. Such a large
garrison allowed the Hospitallers to obtain tribute from a wide
area. From the 1250s the fate of the Hospitallers worsened and
in 1271 the Mamluk sultan Baibars captured the Crac of the
Knights after a siege that lasted 36 days, supposedly thanks to
a forged letter from the Grand Master of the Hospitallers that
caused the knights to flee. they gave up.
Renewed
interest in Crusader castles in the 19th century led to
investigation of the Crac de los Caballeros, and architectural
plans were drawn up. In the late 19th or early 20th century, a
settlement had been created within the castle, causing damage to
its factory. The 500 inhabitants were moved in 1933 and the
castle was handed over to the French state, which carried out a
program of cleaning and restoration. When Syria declared its
independence in 1946, it assumed control of the place.
Currently, there is a town called al-Husn around the castle and
it has a population of about 9,000 people. The Crac de los
Caballeros is located approximately 40 km west of the city of
Homs, near the Lebanese border, and is administratively part of
the Homs Governorate.
It was included by UNESCO in the
World Heritage Site in 2006 along with Saladin Castle. It was
partially damaged in the Syrian civil war by bombing. On June
20, 2013, UNESCO included all Syrian sites on the list of World
Heritage in Danger to warn of the risks to which it was exposed
by the war. Syrian government forces recaptured it in 2014.
Since then, reconstruction and conservation work has been
undertaken. Both UNESCO and the Syrian government have issued
annual reports on the state of the site.
The modern Arabic word for a castle is Kalaa (Arabic: قلعة), but the Crac of the Knights is known as a "Hosn" (Arabic: حصن), or "fort". This derives from the name of an earlier fortification at the same location called Ḥoṣn al-Akrād (Arabic: حصن الأكراد), which meant "fort of the Kurds". It was called by the Franks in French: Le Crat and then by a confusion with karak (fortress), French: Le Crac. Crat was probably the Frankish version of Akrād, the word for the Kurds. After the Hospitallers took control of the castle, it became known as in French: Crac de l'Ospital; The French name: Crac des Chevaliers (alternatively written in French: Krak des Chevaliers) was introduced by Guillaume Rey in the 19th century.
The castle is located on top of a hill 650 meters above sea level. n.
m. east of Tartus, Syria, in the Hole of Homs. Across the hole, 27 km
away, was the 12th-century castle of Gibelacar (Hisn Ibn Akkar). The
route through the strategically important Hole of Homs connects the
cities of Tripoli and Homs. To the north of the castle is Jebel
Ansariyah, and to the south is Lebanon. The surrounding region is
fertile, benefiting from streams and abundant rainfall. Compared to the
kingdom of Jerusalem, the other Crusader states had less land suitable
for agriculture; However, the limestone peaks of Tripoli were suitable
for defensive sites.
Property of the county of Tripoli, given to
the knights in the 1140s, including the Crac de los Caballeros, the
cities of Rafanea and Montferrand, and the Bekaa plain separating Homs
and Tripoli. Homs was never under Crusader control, so the region around
Crac de los Caballeros was vulnerable to expeditions from the city.
While its proximity caused problems for the knights in relation to
defending their territory, it also meant that Homs was close enough for
them to sack. Because the castle dominated the plain, it became the most
important base for knights in the area.
According to the 13th-century Arab historian Ibn Shaddad, in 1031,
the Mirdasid emir of Aleppo and Homs, Shibl ad-Dawla Nasr, established a
settlement of Kurdish tribal men at the site of the castle, which was
then known as "Ḥiṣn al- Safḥ." Nasr restored Hisn al-Safh to help
reestablish Mirdasid access to the coast of Tripoli after they lost
nearby Hisn Ibn Akkar to the Fatimids in 1029. Because Nasr housed a
Kurdish garrison At the site, the castle became known as "Ḥiṣn al-Akrād"
(Castle of the Kurds). The castle was strategically located on a spur of
the Syrian desert, at the southern end of the Jibal al-Alawiyin mountain
range and dominated the road between Homs and Tripoli. When it came to
building castles, engineers often chose elevated locations, such as
hills and mountains, which provided natural obstacles.
From this
castle the route that linked the Syrian city of Homs (under Muslim rule)
with Tripoli (Lebanon), capital of the county of the same name, on the
Mediterranean coast, was protected. In addition to controlling the route
to the Mediterranean, the Knights Hospitaller exerted some influence
over Lake Homs to the east, where they could have controlled the fishing
industry and watched over the Muslim armies gathering in Syria.
It was captured by Raymond IV of Toulouse in January 1099 during the
First Crusade, on his journey to Jerusalem but was abandoned when the
crusaders continued their route towards Jerusalem. Raymond's forces were
attacked by the garrison of Hisn al-Akrad, the precursor of Crac, who
was ravaging Raymond's foragers. The next day Raymond marched towards
Jerusalem. Permanent occupation began in 1110 when Tancred of Galilee
assumed control of the site. The early castle was substantially
different from the existing remains, and no trace of this early castle
remains at the site.
The origins of the Knights Hospitaller are
unclear, but the order probably emerged around the 1070s in Jerusalem.
It began as a religious order that cared for the sick, and later cared
for pilgrims in the Holy Land. After the success of the First Crusade in
capturing Jerusalem in 1099, many crusaders donated their new property
in the Levant to St. John's Hospital. Among the first donations were in
the newly formed Kingdom of Jerusalem, but over time the order extended
its possessions to the Crusader states of the County of Tripoli and the
Principality of Antioch. There is evidence to suggest that in the 1130s
the order became militarized when Fulk, king of Jerusalem, granted the
newly built castle at Beth Gibelin to the order in 1136. A papal bull
from between 1139 and 1143 may indicate that The order hired people to
defend the pilgrims. There were other military orders, such as the
Knights Templar, which offered protection to pilgrims.
Between
1142 and 1144, Raymond II, Earl of Tripoli, gave the Knights Hospitaller
property in the county. According to historian Jonathan Riley-Smith, the
Hospitallers effectively established a "palatinate" within Tripoli. The
property included castles with the that the Hospitallers were expected
to defend Tripoli. Along with the Crac of the Knights, the Hospitallers
received four other castles along the state's borders that allowed the
order to dominate the area. The order's agreement with Raymond II stated
that if he did not accompany the order's knights on campaign, the spoils
belonged entirely to the order, and if he was present it was divided
equally between the count and the order. Raymond II could not make peace
with the Muslims without the permission of the Hospitallers. The
Hospitallers made Crac de los Caballeros an administrative center for
their new property, undertaking work on the castle that would turn it
into one of the most elaborate Crusader fortifications. in the Levant.
After acquiring the site in 1142, they began building a new castle
to replace the old Kurdish fortification. This work lasted until 1170,
when an earthquake damaged the castle. An Arab source mentions that the
earthquake destroyed the castle chapel, which was replaced by the
current chapel. The knights built an imposing fortress, the largest in
the Holy Land, which withstood at least twelve assaults by the Muslims.
In 1163, the fortress was unsuccessfully besieged by Nur al-Din at
the Battle of al-Buqaia near the Crac of the Knights. After this
victory, the Hospitallers became a virtually independent force on the
border of the county of Tripoli. Drought conditions between 1175 and
1180 prompted the crusaders to sign a two-year truce with the Muslims,
but without Tripoli being included in its terms. During the 1180s,
Christian and Muslim attacks on each other's territory became more
frequent.
In 1180, Saladin entered the county of Tripoli,
plundering the area. Unwilling to engage him in an open field battle,
the crusaders retreated to the relative safety of their fortifications.
Without capturing the castles, Saladin could not secure control of the
area, and once he retreated, the Hospitallers were able to revitalize
their damaged lands. The Battle of Hattin in 1187 was a disastrous
defeat for the Crusaders: Guy de Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, was
captured, as was the True Cross, a relic discovered during the First
Crusade. Saladin then ordered the execution of the captured Knights
Templar and Hospitaller, such was the importance of the two orders in
defending the Crusader states. After the battle, the Hospitaller castles
of Belmont, Belvoir and Bethgibelin fell into the hands of Muslim
armies. After these losses, the order turned its attention to its
castles in Tripoli.
It was besieged, also unsuccessfully, by
Saladin in May 1188. Upon seeing the castle, he decided that it was too
well defended and instead marched to the hospitable castle of Margat,
which he also failed to capture.
In 1202 an earthquake affected
part of the fortifications, so a profound restructuring was undertaken
shortly after. The work of the 13th century was the last period of
construction in the Crac de los Caballeros and gave it its current
appearance. A closed stone circuit was built between 1142 and 1170; The
previous structure became the inner enclosure of the castle. If there
was a walled circuit around the inner courtyard prior to the current
outer walls, no trace of it has been discovered.
The first half
of the 13th century has been characterized as the "golden age" of the
Crac de los Caballeros. While other Crusader fortresses became
threatened, the Crac de los Caballeros and its garrison of some two
thousand soldiers dominated the entire region around it. It was
effectively the center of a principality that remained in Crusader hands
until 1271 and was the only continental region of respectable size to
remain consistently under Crusader control during this period. Crusaders
passing through the area often stopped at the castle, and possibly made
donations to it.
Godfrey of Joinville, uncle of the famous
chronicler of the crusades Jean de Joinville, died in the Crac des
Chevaliers in 1203 or 1204 and was buried in the castle chapel.
The main contemporary accounts in relation to the Crac of the Knights
are of Muslim origin and tend to emphasize Muslim success while ignoring
the setbacks and defeats against the crusaders although they suggest
that the Knights Hospitaller forced them to pay tribute to the Order.
the settlements of Hama and Homs. The situation lasted while Saladin's
successors quarreled among themselves. The proximity of Crac de los
Caballeros to Muslim territories allowed it to assume an offensive role,
acting as a base from which to attack neighboring areas. By 1203 the
garrison was making raids on Montferrand (which was under Muslim
control) and Hama, and in 1207 and 1208 the castle's soldiers took part
in an attack on Homs.
In 1217-1218, during the Fifth Crusade,
King Andrew II of Hungary visited and proclaimed the castle to be the
"key to the Christian lands." He was so impressed with the castle that
he provided an annual income of 60 marks to the Master and 40 to the
brothers; He strengthened the outer walls and financed the guard troops.
The Crac of the Knights functioned as a base for expeditions to Hama
in 1230 and 1233 after the amir refused to pay tribute. The first was
not successful, but the expedition of 1233 was a true display of
strength that demonstrated the importance of the Crac de los Caballeros.
In the decade of the 1250s, the conditions of the hospitalers of the
Crac de los Caballeros worsened. A Muslim army of approximately 10,000
men plundered the countryside around the castle in 1252 after which the
order's finances declined sharply. In 1268 Master Hugh Revel complained
that the area, once home to 10,000 people, was now deserted and that the
Order's property in the kingdom of Jerusalem produced little income. He
also noted that by then there were only 300 brothers of the Order in the
east. On the Muslim side, in 1260 Baibars became sultan of Egypt, after
overthrowing the then ruler, Qutuz, and proceeded to unite Egypt and
Syria. As a result, Muslim settlements that had previously paid tribute
to the Hospitallers in the Crac de los Caballeros no longer felt
intimidated into doing so.
Baibars entered the region around Crac
de los Caballeros in 1270 and allowed his men to graze his animals in
the fields around the castle. When he learned of the Eighth Crusade, led
by King Louis IX of France, Baibars left for Cairo to avoid
confrontation.
After Louis died in 1272, and that crusade was
considered unsuccessful, Baibars returned to face the Crac de los
Caballeros. At that time the garrison of men was scarce, and sending aid
from the west was impossible.
Before marching on the castle, the
sultan captured minor castles in the area, including Chastel Blanc. On
March 3, Baibars' army arrived at Crac de los Caballeros. By the time
the sultan appeared on the scene, the castle may have already been
blockaded by Mamluk forces for several days. Of the three Arab accounts
that recount the siege , only one is contemporary, that of Ibn Shaddad,
although he was not present at the site. The peasants who lived in the
area had fled to the castle for safety and were kept in the outer
compound. As soon as Baibars arrived he erected manganas, powerful
assault weapons that he would later return on the castle. In a probable
reference to the walled suburb outside the castle entrance, Ibn Shaddad
documents that two days later the first line of defense fell to the
besiegers.
Rain interrupted the siege, but on March 21,
immediately south of Crac de los Caballeros, Baibar's forces captured a
triangular outer work, possibly defended by a wooden palisade. On March
29, Baibars' forces mined the southwest tower of the outer wall until it
collapsed. Baibars' army attacked through that gap. In the outer
enclosure they met the peasants who had taken refuge in the castle.
Although the outer enclosure had fallen, with a handful of defenders
killed in the process, the crusaders retreated to the more formidable
and imposing inner enclosure, which blocked the way to the attackers.
Baibars, not wanting to accept defeat or the possibility of a long
siege, resorted to cunning. After a respite of ten days, according to
Arab historians, he used a dove to send a false letter to the castle.
The message claimed to come from the Grand Master of the Hospitaller
Order and ordered the surrender of the troops, since it was not possible
to send them any help there. The order was obeyed and Baibars was able
to capture the fortress. Furthermore, he chivalrously granted the
garrison safe conduct to travel to Tripoli.
Baibars refortified
the fortress, focusing repairs mainly on the external enclosure. The
hospital chapel was converted into a mosque and two mihrabs were added
inside. Baibars used the Crac as a base in his campaign against Tripoli.
The Mamluks used the Knights' Crac in their attack on Saint John of
Acre in 1291. After the Franks were expelled from the Holy Land in 1291,
European familiarity with Crusader castles declined. It was not until
the 19th century that interest in these buildings was renewed, so there
was no detailed plan before 1837. Guillaume Rey was the first European
researcher to scientifically study the Crusader castles in the Holy
Land. In 1871 he published the work Etudes sur les monuments de
l'architecture militaire des Croisés en Syrie et dans l'ile de Chypre;
included plans and drawings of the main Crusader castles in Syria,
including the Crac de los Caballeros. In some extremes, his drawings
were imprecise, however for the Crac de los Caballeros he reflected
features that have since been lost.
Paul Deschamps visited the
castle in February 1927. Since Rey had visited it in the 19th century, a
village of 500 inhabitants had settled inside the castle. This renovated
room had damaged the place: the underground vaults were used to
accumulate garbage and in some places the battlements had been
destroyed. Deschamps and his colleague, architect François Anus,
attempted to clean up some of the waste; General Maurice Gamelin
assigned 60 Alawite soldiers to help. Deschamps left in March 1927, and
work resumed when he returned two years later. The culmination of
Deschamp's work on the castle was the publication of Les Châteaux des
Croisés en Terre Sainte I: le Crac des Chevaliers in 1934, with detailed
plans drawn up by Anus. This research has been highly praised, described
as "brilliant and exhaustive" by military historian D. J. Cathcart King
in 1949 and "perhaps the best account of the archeology and history of a
single medieval castle ever written" by historian Hugh Kennedy in 1994.
As early as 1929 it was suggested that the castle should be
controlled by the French. On November 16, 1933, the Crac des Chevaliers
was handed over to the control of the French state, and was cared for by
the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The locals were relocated and paid one
million francs as compensation. Over the next two years a clean-up and
restoration program was carried out by a force of 120 workers. Once
completed, the Crac des Knights was one of the main tourist attractions
in the French Levant. Pierre Coupel, who had undertaken similar work on
the Tower of Lions and the two castles in Sidon, supervised the works. A
Despite the restoration, no archaeological excavations were carried out.
The French Mandate of Syria, which had been established in 1920, ended
in 1946 with Syria's declaration of independence. The castle was made a
UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with the Saladin Citadel (Qal'at Salah
El-Din), in 2006, and is owned by the Syrian government.
Several
of the castle's former residents built their homes outside the fortress
and a village called al-Husn has since developed. Many of al-Husn's
approximately 9,000 Muslim residents benefit economically from the
tourism generated by the site. .
Until the second decade of the
21st century, the castle remained remarkably well preserved and was a
tourist attraction, but during the Syrian civil war, which began in
2011, it was the center of numerous combats, especially between 2012 and
2013. UNESCO expressed concern that the war could lead to damage to
important cultural sites such as the Crac de los Caballeros. Its walls
have suffered damage of varying degrees from attacks with mortars,
rockets and automatic weapons of different calibers. It was the subject
of bombings in August 2012 by the Syrian Arab Army, and the cross chapel
has been damaged.
Throughout 2013, the rebels have used the
castle as a military base to attack, causing the government to maintain
powerful bombing raids on the castle. These attacks have devastated the
site and left it in ruins. Damage was documented in July 2013 from an
airstrike during the siege of Homs, and again on August 18, 2013 it was
clearly damaged but still unknown. how far the destruction has gone. The
Syrian army recaptured al-Hosn castle and village from rebel forces on
March 20, 2014. Since then, both UNESCO and the Syrian government have
produced regular reports on the state of the site, calling for
reconstruction measures and conservation.
Writing in the early 20th century, T. E. Lawrence, popularly known as
Lawrence of Arabia, noted that Knights Crac was "perhaps the best
preserved and most admirable castle in the world," [a castle that] forms
a suitable commentary in any account. on the Crusader buildings of
Syria. Castles in Europe provided stately accommodation for their owners
and were administrative centers; In the Levant the need for defense
prevailed above all and was reflected in the design of castles. Kennedy
suggests that "The castle scientifically designed as a proper machine
surely reached its apogee in great buildings like the Margat and the
Crac des Chevaliers."
The Crac de los Caballeros can be
classified as both a spur castle due to the terrain on which it is
located, and after the expansion of the 13th century a fully developed
concentric castle. It was of a similar size and shape to Jacob's Ford, a
Crusader castle built in the late 1170s. Margat has also been cited as a
twin castle to Crac de los Caballeros. The main construction material
was limestone; The ashlar coating is so thin that the mortar is barely
noticeable. Outside the castle entrance there was a "walled suburb"
known as a burgus, of which no remains remain. To the south of the
external enclosure there was a triangular outer work and the crusaders
may have intended to build walls and towers around it. It is not known
how it was defended at the time of the siege of 1271, although it has
been suggested that it was surrounded by a wooden palisade. To the south
of the castle the spur on which it stands is connected to the
neighboring hill, so that the Siege engines could approach ground level.
The internal defenses are strongest at this point, with a cluster of
towers connected by thick walls.
The second phase of construction undertaken by the Hospitallers began
at the beginning of the 13th century and lasted for decades. The outer
walls were built in the largest construction carried out in the place,
giving Crac de los Caballeros its current appearance. With a height of 9
meters, the outer enclosure has towers that protrude markedly from the
wall. It is 3 m wide with seven towers 8-10 m wide. Create a concentric
fortress. While the towers of the inner enclosure have a square plan and
did not protrude from the wall, the towers of the 13th century were
round. This design was new and even contemporary Templar castles did not
have rounded towers. The technique was developed at Château Gaillard in
France by Richard the Lionheart between 1196 and 1198. The extension
towards the southeast is of lesser quality than the rest of the circuit
and was built on an unknown date. Probably around 1250 a back door was
added to the north wall.
Loopholes in the walls and towers are
distributed to minimize the amount of dead ground around the castle.
They crowned the walls with machicolations, offering defenders a way to
hurl projectiles at enemies at the foot of the wall. They were so tight
that the archers would have to hunch over inside them. The boxed
machicolations were unusual: those at Crac de los Caballeros were more
complex than those at Saône or Margat and there are no similar features
among the Crusader castles. However, they had similarities with Muslim
works, such as the contemporary defenses at the Citadel of Aleppo. It is
not clear which side imitated the other, as the date on which they were
added to the Crac de los Caballeros is unknown, but it provides evidence
of the diffusion of military ideas between Christian and Muslim armies.
These defenses were reached by a circular path. In the opinion of
historian Hugh Kennedy the defenses of the outer walls were "the most
elaborate and developed anywhere in the Latin Levant... the whole
structure is brilliantly designed and a superbly built fighting
machine."
The steep slopes of the spur were used for tactical
purposes. Although the cliff on which it was located provided an ideal
location, a fortification located at this point had two weak points: the
main gate and the southern flank, open to the plain. To protect this
exposed side, a masonry wall with three large towers was built, preceded
by an enormous masonry parapet that in some areas measured 25 meters
thick.
When the outer walls were built in the 13th century the
main entrance was improved. A vaulted corridor led uphill from the outer
gate on the northeast. The problem of the entrance was solved by having
access to it built in a zigzag pattern up the steep slope, so that a
potential invader would expose himself during his assault to the fire.
of the adversaries. Thus it was made an example of a curved entrance.
This type of entrance was a Byzantine innovation, but the Crac de los
Caballeros was a particularly complex example. It extended for 137
metres, and along its entire length there were "murder holes" that
allowed the defenders to bathe the soldiers. attackers into projectiles.
Anyone who went straight ahead rather than following the hairpin turn
would emerge in the area between the two circuits of castle walls. To
access the inner area, the passage had to be followed.
Between
the outer and inner doors, a narrow corridor between colossal walls and
defenses. The possibility of surrendering the fortress by siege was also
useless. The fortress had a 120-meter-long warehouse and additional
warehouses dug into the cliff below the fortress, where enough water and
food were stored to sustain a garrison of 2,000 men for a long time. It
is estimated that it could have withstood a five-year siege.
Between 1142 and 1170 the Knights Hospitaller carried out a building
program at the site. The castle was defended by a curtain studded with
square towers that project slightly. The main entrance was between the
two towers on the eastern side, and there was a postern in the northwest
tower. In the center was a courtyard surrounded by vaulted chambers. The
layout of the land determined the irregular shape of the castle. A site
with natural defenses was a typical location for Crusader castles, and
sloping slopes provided the Crac de los Caballeros with defenses on all
sides except one, where the castle's defenses were concentrated. This
construction phase was incorporated into the later construction of the
castle.
When the Crac de los Caballeros was remodeled in the 13th
century, new walls were built surrounding the inner courtyard. The
previous walls remained, with a narrow gap between them in the west and
south that was converted into a gallery from which the defenders could
fire projectiles. In this area, the walls were supported by sloping
glacis that provided additional protection against both siege weapons
and earthquakes. Four large round towers project vertically from the
glacis; They were used as a place of residence for the knights of the
garrison, around 60 at their peak. The southwest tower was designed to
house the quarters of the grand master of the Knights Hospitaller.
Although the defenses that in the past topped the walls of the inner
courtyards are no longer preserved in most places, it seems that they
did not extend throughout the entire circuit. The machicolations on the
southern face are absent. The area between the inner enclosure and the
outer walls was narrow and was not used for habitation. In the east,
where the defenses were weaker, there was an open cistern filled by an
aqueduct. It acted as both a moat and water supply for the castle.
At the northern end of the small patio there is a chapel and at the
southern end an esplanade. The esplanade is raised above the rest of the
patio; the vaulted area below would have provided storage and may have
acted as stables and shell shelter. Aligning the west of the courtyard
is the knights' hall. Although probably first built in the 12th century,
the interior dates back to the 13th century. The tracery and delicate
decoration is a sophisticated example of Gothic architecture, probably
dating from the 1230s.
The present chapel was probably built to replace the one destroyed by an earthquake in 1170. Only the eastern end of the original chapel, which housed the apse, and a small part of the south wall survive of the original chapel. The chapel Later it had a barrel vault and an uncomplicated apse; Its design would have been considered old-fashioned by contemporary standards in France, but it has similarities to the one built around 1186 at Margat. It was divided into three approximately equal compartments. A cornice runs through the chapel at the point where the vault ends and the wall begins. Oriented approximately east to west, it was 21.5 meters long and 8.5 meters wide with the main entrance from the west or a second smaller one on the north wall. When the castle was renovated at the beginning of the 12th century, the entrance was moved to the south wall. The chapel was lighted by windows above the cornice, one at the west end, one on each side of the east recess, and one on the south side of the central recess, and the apse at the east end had a large window. In 1935 a second chapel was discovered outside the main entrance to the castle, however it no longer exists.
Despite its predominantly military character, the fortress is one of
the few places where Crusader art has been preserved, in the form of
frescoes. Edward I of England, during the Ninth Crusade in 1272, saw the
fortress and used it as an example of his own castles in England and
Wales. According to T.E. Lawrence, the Crac de los Caballeros is "the
most admirable castle in the world."
In 1935, 1955, and 1978
medieval frescoes were discovered inside the Crac de los Caballeros
after deteriorating plaster and subsequent whitewashing. The frescoes
were painted inside and outside the main chapel and the chapel outside
the main entrance, which no longer exists. Writing in 1982, historian
Jaroslav Folda noted that at the time there had been little research
into cross frescoes that would provide a comparison with the fragmentary
remains at the Crac de los Caballeros. Those in the chapel were painted
on the masonry of the reconstruction of 1170–1202. Mold, smoke and
humidity have made it difficult to preserve the frescoes. The
fragmentary nature of the red and blue frescoes within the chapel means
that they are difficult to value. The one outside the chapel represented
the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple.