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A trip to Homs would be meaningless if you do not visit the Krak des
chevaliers (Castle of the Knights). You will reach it by means of an
excellent highway and good roads by taxi (from Homs or Tell Kalakh) or
by minibus, which you can catch at the road station at Homs (Hama Road),
(take any bus in the direction of Kalaat AI-Husn). You go on the Tartous
highway, crossing first an industrial suburb of Homs where you will see
an oil refinery.
Then you cross a bare, monotonous countryside and drive up to the
threshold of Homs which at 600 m. separates the Djebel Ansariyeh from
Mount Lebanon to the south. This depression, allows the passage of
clouds, thus conditioning the fertility of this part of the Syrian
plateau where the growing of cereals and sugar beet extends more than
anywhere else at the foot of mountains stretching from the plains of
Aleppo to the Gulf of Aqaba.
The Krak des Chevaliers, the greatest castle in the world, was the
headquarter of the Hospitallers - the knights of St. John. It stands
2,300 ft. above sea level and commands the strategic valley between Homs
and Tripoli. The castle was never taken by storm, it surrendered to the
Mameluke Baybars in 1271.
Visiting the Krak des Chevaliers, you will discover why it is considered
to be a model of perfection in medieval fortification. A perfection in a
strictly functional sense, as the castle was not built to flatter the
tastes of its masters with noble architecture, but to guard the Homs gap
and the northern exit of the plain of the Bekaa and prevent the Moslems
access to the coast then held by the Franks. However, the efficiency of
the buildings, i.e. their perfect adaptation to the land configuration,
is found to enhance their beauty, equilibrium, and harmony. It is built
on a high hill, Mount Khalil, rising to 750 m., at. about 300 m. above
the Homs gap and the plain of the Bouqaya, where olive and fig trees are
cultivated as well as wheat.
To appreciate the majesty of this fortress, one must proceed beyond the
entrance up to an elevation dominating it at the south. From up there
you will grasp more easily the extraordinary image of power emanating
from this compound of glacis, barbicans, casemates, towers and bastions,
a fantastic accumulation of defensive organs, so concentrated that they
appear as a symbol of invulnerability. Such is the impression of force
one receives from the Krak that nowadays Arabs use a very revealing
pleonasm (Qalaat AI-Husn, the Castle of the Fortress) to describe it.
Moslem former chroniclers called it the Husn EI-Akrad, the Fortress of
the Kurds. The place was actually given to a Kurdish garrison by an Emir
of Aleppo in 1031. A castle was erected and was conquered in 1099 by the
Count of Toulouse, Raymond de Saint-Gilles, but taken by Tancrede in
1110. The Knights of the Hospital occupied it in 1142 when Atabeg Zeng',
the master of Aleppo, became very threatening. Many times destroyed by
earthquakes during which times the enemies of the Crusaders tried to
take advantage of the situation and conquer it, the Krak was
reconstructed in the early 13th century, and it owes its present general
appearance to these works. On April 8,1271, the Krak, under repeated
assaults lasting more than one month by an army under Ihe command of the
Mameluke Sultan Baybars, surrendered and to achieve this, Baybars
resorted to trickery. A forged letter was conveyed into the castle,
purporting to come from the grand commander at Tripoli. It instructed
the knights to surrender. They did and thus fell the greatest fortress
in history, that had held for 161 years. Before its fall, the Krak had
repelled many attacks from great Moslem commanders, such as Zengi,
Noureddin in 1163 and Saladin a generation later, who on inspecting its
formidable defense, withdrew without attempting a siege. It had only 300
knights at the time of its fall.
The garrison of the Krak, about 2,000 knights in normal times, had not
only a defensive, but also an offensive function. It had the charge or
repelling marauders who harassed this small plain of the Bouqaya where
settlers, recruited among the Christians of Syria provided its regular
supplies, but also that of intercepting Moslem armies marching to
Tripoli. From a top the hill where you can look at the fortress before
entering it, you will notice that nothing took place in the Homs gap
that was not seen by the defenders.
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