Muslim Fortresses in the Levant: Between Crusaders and Mongols (32 page)

The Franks, on the other hand, devoted a great deal of attention, time, labor, funds and thought to the building of their curtain walls. By the time the fortress of Vadum Iacob was being built (1178–9) the construction of walls had developed almost into a fine art.
¹⁶⁸
If there was a manual explaining what material to choose and the method of curtain wall building it was probably carefully studied and followed by the Vadum Iacob supervisor of the works. The masonry work is of extremely high quality although the local limestone is poor and tends to crumble and crack quite easily. The stones are large and of fairly even size. The high protruding bosses provide a fair protection from catapult stones. In addition, the stone courses of the outer wall are wider and larger than those of the inner wall. This provides an extra defense against bombardment from siege machines. The core itself is neatly constructed of similar sized stones. Although the stones are not dressed they were carefully selected, their shape and size being roughly uniform (
Figure 1.13
). They are laid in neat courses, using an extremely generous quantity of mortar. It is important to note that the core at Vadum Iacob is built out of hard basalt, which was probably the only way to compensate for the soft and porous qualities of the local limestone that was used to face the wall.

Figure 1.13
Core and stone facing of the curtain wall at Vadum Iacob

The wall at Vadum Iacob is 4.3m thick, which has no parallel in the four Ayyubid fortresses presented in this study. One explanation to this great width could be the fact that very few towers were planned along the circumference, thus the main protection was the width.
¹⁵⁹

The width at Vadum Iacob can perhaps also be seen as corresponding to fear, lack of confidence in your capabilities to defend and protect your fortress and acknowledgment of your enemy’s superiority in the field of siege warfare.

The width of the Ayyubid curtain wall at Mount Tabor is 2.9m. In
it measures 2.3m along the northern section of the fortress, which is built above the almost vertical cliff of
Govta; the southern wall is slightly wider and measures 2.7m. The additional 40cm is probably due to the relatively mild slope on that side that makes it much easier for an enemy to approach and attack.
illustrates a similar idea. The cutain wall’s thickness changes according to the topography. Where the cliffs provide sufficient protection the walls measure only 1.5m, while along the northern side where the gentle slope provides no defense the curtain wall measures 2.8m, almost double the thickness around the rest of the fortress.
¹⁷⁰
This change in width can be seen also at
. In this case the topography provides no protection whatsoever and one would expect a uniformly wide wall surrounding the whole fortress. The curtain wall built during the first phase measures 2.2m, but the northeastern section built during the second phase, measures approximately 3m.

The differences in width, quality of masonry, inner core and size of stones between the curtain walls of Crusader fortresses built in the second half of the twelfth century, and Ayyubid fortresses of the same period are remarkable (Tables
1.2
,
1.3
;
Figure 1.14
). The construction of the curtain wall is an important issue, for it appears that

Table 1.2
Width of curtain walls in Ayyubid fortresses dating from the late twelfth century to the first decades of the thirteenth century

Table 1.3
Widths of curtain walls in Crusader fortresses dating from the late twelfth century to the first decades of the thirteenth century
¹