Muslim Fortresses in the Levant: Between Crusaders and Mongols (81 page)

Although fortifications were still being constructed in the fourteenth century most of the important strongholds were conquered and rebuilt during the first three decades of the Mamluk sultanate. Thus once the Crusader kingdom fell and the Īlkhānid state had signed a peace treaty with the Mamluks, the post of
amir jāndār
may have lost much of its significance.

Inland fortresses

One of the finest examples of Mamluk fortifications is that at
. The fotress is situated on a long narrow spur at the foot of Mount Hermon, six km west of the Druze town of Majdal Shams. Although most of the fortress was built by the previous Ayyubid regime, the first fifteen years of Mamluk construction, beginning in 1260, represent the state of the art in Mamluk military architecture.
⁶⁰

The literary sources as well as the inscriptions and archaeological remains give a clear picture and absolute dating of the work conducted on the site. This in many ways provides a key to Mamluk military architecture during its formative decades.

, a short history

The execution of the last Ayyubid ruler of the fortress,
, was ordered by Qutuz (r. 657/1259–658/1260), due to his collaboration with the Mongol commander Kitbugha. This had led to the capitulation of the Muslim garrison at
in the spring of 1260. He also made the grave error of joining the Mongol force at the battle of
(3 September 1260).
⁶¹

The Mongols, who took
, had no intentions of retaining the fortress. They pillaged and destroyed as much of the site as they could. However, it seems that Ibn Shaddād exaggerated when he described the extent of the Mongol destruction.
⁶²
His account consists of one short sentence: “the Mongols ruined (
akhrabahā
,
)
and they did not leave any remains [of the fortress].”
⁶³

was not alone in the treatment it received at the hands of the Mongol forces. But, unlike the Franks, who lacked manpower and funds, and were not able to restore the damage wrought to their coastal fortresses, the Mamluks dealt with the destruction left by the Mongols within a relatively short time.

The military importance of the fortress underwent considerable mutations in the political and military shifts that took place after 1228–30, when it was first built. The Ayyubid ruler of Damascus erected the fortress in haste, apparently expecting his capital to be attacked by a Crusader-Frankish force that joined the army of the Ayyubid sultan in Cairo. By the end of 1260 the entire political and military balance had changed. The Mamluks had just defeated the Mongols at the battle of
, the border had moved further east, and
was no longer a frontier fortress as it had been during most of the Ayyubid period. Nevertheless the fortress attracted a great deal of attention, mainly due to its owner’s high rank in the Mamluk sultan’s court.