Muslim Fortresses in the Levant: Between Crusaders and Mongols (53 page)

The last
strongholds were captured by Baybars by 1273, though it is not quite clear whether the Mamluks ever used any of them for their own purposes. Ibn
, who passed through the district in 1326, says that the
were allowed to hold and maintain five of their fortresses and that Mamluk sultans occasionally still employed
assassins.
³²

To build or not to build

“One part [of the Muslim armies] uproots Frankish fortresses, and destroys [their] castles, while another part rebuilds what the Mongols destroyed in the east …”
³³

Mamluk means, however, were fairly restricted; because the core of their army was permanently quartered in Cairo, the number of fortresses the Sultanate could afford to rebuild, arm and man, was fairly limited. It seems Baybars carefully calculated the number of strongholds he could efficiently maintain, and was often forced to relinquish some fortresses for lack of sufficient forces to garrison them or provide them with reinforcement in times of siege. Many fortresses were simply deserted and never rebuilt during his reign.

To get an idea of the size of garrisons in the larger fortresses one can use the composition of the Frankish garrison at Safad. The entire force numbered 1,700 men. In times of war it rose to 2,200. Thee were 50 knights, 30 sergeants, 50 turcopols and 300 crossbowmen. The total number of fighting men was only 430. An additional 820 men were responsible for the daily running of the fortress, and we are told that there were also a further 400 slaves.
³⁴

If Karak and
al-Akrād were of similar size then they must have been garrisoned at the expense of the Mamluk army. The capacity of the sultan to allocate men from his own army or from the Mamluk armies stationed in Syria, for the sake of constituting garrisons was fairly limited.

Ibn Shaddād gives a list of twenty-two strongholds in the district of Aleppo that were destroyed and abandoned. It is more than likely that most of them were ruined during the first Mongol invasion. His account does not provide details as to who built or owned them. They may have belonged to local noble families that were not directly connected or affiliated to the central regime. The fortresses are all referred to as
(
), which does not offer further information about their size or structure since there seems to have been no differentiation in the terminology. Both
and
mean stronghold; neither refers to a specific type or size of fortification.
³⁵

The following is the list as it appears in Ibn Shaddād’s account: Sunayāb,
, Sarbak, Tall Ramāl,
, Bātrakh,
, Karmīth, Marāsīyā,
, Hāb, Basarfūth, Ārīnyā, Īnnab, Tall-Kashfahān, Zardanā, Āzramān,
, Salqin,