The Karak Castle and Town Documentation Project: Reconstructing the history of the castle and town of Crusader Karak
- 20 hours ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 8 hours ago
(This guest post is provided by Dr Micaela Sinibaldi.)
The Karak Castle and Town Documentation Project is an international project carried out in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. The castle and town structures of Karak, a site of major importance in the medieval Levant, are largely dated to the Crusader, as well as Ayyubid and Mamluk periods, but their study so far has been quite limited compared to their potential. This new project, now starting its third season, investigates all the structures of the castle and medieval town with an integrated method combining documentary, epigraphic, archival and archaeological sources, along with studies on architectural and geological studies, and includes components of training, community engagement and site management, for the purpose of sharing results with the broader community and of the site’s preservation. The complete recording of the structures by photogrammetry resulted in a full 3D model, as well as plans and sections, of the castle and town, as an important update to the old documentation. The project is currently focused on a detailed study of the structures with the discipline of Building Archaeology. In season 2025, the project started archaeological excavations in the castle chapel and identified the Crusader-period Karak town walls.
Karak castle is one of the most monumental and important castles in the Levant, and is best known for its Crusader-period phase (1142-1188), but includes important structures dated to the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods (1188-1516) as well as several pre-Crusader phases (including for the Nabataean, Byzantine and Early Islamic periods). Located in southern Jordan, in the centre of the Karak plateau (Ard al-Karak), the town and castle of Karak occupy a high position overlooking a rich agricultural territory, from which the Dead Sea and Jerusalem can be seen on a clear day, and stand beside the so-called King’s Highway (former Via Nova Traiana), which in the Islamic period represented the principal pilgrimage road leading from Damascus to Mecca and Medina. It is there that Pagan the Butler, lord of Transjordan, chose to move his principal seat north from Shawbak to Karak in 1142, as apart from its defensive site and location in an agriculturally prosperous area, it was also possible from here to maintain close communications with Jerusalem and the rest of the kingdom west of the Dead Sea and Wādī Araba, while also disrupting the passage of Muslim travellers and armies between Cairo and Damascus and levying taxes from Muslim pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Places. Following the battle of Ḥiṭṭīn (1187), the Franks surrendered Karak castle in 1188, but because of its exceptionally advantageous location, the later Ayyubid and Mamluk rulers kept control of the site, reusing the Crusader-period structures and adding new ones.
The Karak Castle and Town Documentation Project is carried out in cooperation with the Jordanian authorities and is currently part of the broader research project Frankish Settlement in the Lordship of Transjordan: Society, Economy and Landscape in the Crusader Period, funded by a research grant of the National Science Centre of Poland (Grant Opus 22, 2021/43/B/HS3/02530) hosted at the University of Warsaw. It involves an international team of experts, including Prof. Denys Pringle, Cardiff University, and is carried out in collaboration with Peter Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary. The main goal of the project is to advance our knowledge and understanding of the medieval history of the castle and town of this crucial site, as these have received so far little attention by archaeological research compared to their potential. As the documentary sources on the lordship of Transjordan are notoriously scarce compared to other areas of the Frankish territories, including for Karak, the expansion of the available archaeological data and their study in combination with all other available sources is a particularly crucial tool to significantly advance our knowledge of the site.
The castle’s extensive and complex structures necessarily need to be recorded and interpreted in detail before being able to plan well-targeted excavations campaigns. Following a report of damage assessment and a codification of the castle’s spaces, conducted in order to support the Department of Antiquities’ plans of site management aimed at the safety of visitors and site preservation, all of the castle’s structures have been documented by photogrammetry. This documentation was extended to the historical town walls, producing a complete 3D model and a series of site plans and sections, with the purpose of both updating the old castle plan by Paul Deschamps and providing a basis for the detailed study of the castle’s structures. The combined use of this documentation, in particular the 3D model, crucial for understanding the relationships among spaces, some of which are underground, archival photos and the aerial photos kindly provided upon request by APAAME, have created a complete and solid basis for the detailed, architectural study of the site with the discipline of Building Archaeology.
The use of Building Archaeology, also known with alternative names in different countries, such as for example Archaeology of Architecture in Italy, is a systematic approach whose application is necessary for complex and large monument in order to strategically plan archaeological excavation, conservation and site management, and it is crucial for reconstructing the long history of modifications of the structures. This is reflected in the still largely preserved architecture of Karak castle, which consists of a rich and precious archive of archaeological information preserved above the ground. The discipline consists in the application of the archaeological method to architecture, with the purpose of recording in detail the history of the activities preserved on it, and their sequence through time. When used in combination with data from documentary sources, history of architecture, epigraphy, excavation, archival materials, the phasing of the structures can offer an even greater insight into the history of a site, including associating a detailed chronology to specific parts of the building. The first results of the project have achieved a preliminary disentangling of the main phases of the castle’s history, including the Nabataean, Byzantine, Early Islamic, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods, and showed that a very significant part of the currently visible castle is indeed Crusader in chronology. A further aim of the discipline of Building Archaeology is the study of building techniques, aimed at better understanding the socio-economic context of the historical period analyzed, such as financial investment, local versus imported or specialized versus unspecialized workmanship, and architectural influences. For this reason, the detailed study of building techniques at the castle and town includes a study of the sources of materials, paralleled by a geological survey of the area of the castle and town, and an analysis of building mortars.
The detailed recording of the Karak town historical walls, planned with the awareness that in the medieval period the town was naturally connected to the castle, was specifically aimed at answering the question of the existence of the Karak town walls, which has so eluded scholars. Following a definition of the specific characteristics of building techniques of the now well-dated Crusader-period phases of the castle and their comparison to specific parts of the historical town walls, it was possible to identify the original Crusader-period town walls of Karak. This result has implications for understanding the system of fortification of the site of Karak, which can be combined with the information from the historical sources about the sieges at Karak castle, as well as of the relationship of the Franks with the local Christian population. Results are currently under publication. The project also included a preliminary study of the geology of the area and of the water sources at the castle and town.
Season 2025 has included also excavations at the castle as part of the collaboration with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities. The sondage inside the Frankish castle chapel has exposed the original flagstone church floor and has revealed the original height of the church. In addition, our work brought to light a large quantity of fragments of the plaster painted in vivid colours originally decorating the chapel, which were described by the early travelers as still in situ.
Finally, the project offers a programme of training in photogrammetry to our colleagues of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, and includes a component of community engagement, to share the research results with the broader public. History Hit interviewed me on the process of reconstructing the history of Karak castle through the study of its structures; the full episode will soon be available on YouTube. The project’s goals, first results, team and images of fieldwork of Spring season 2025 are summarized in a blog for the Council for the British Research in the Levant and were presented in a lecture given at the Department of Antiquities of Jordan in Amman, which is reported in an article in the Jordan Times.
The project builds on a preliminary study on the chronology of the Crusader-period structures at Karak castle, published in Bridges of Civilization (Karak Castle in the Lordship of Transjordan), and earlier architectural surveys at the castle carried out for a PhD thesis on the Lordship of Transjordan in the Crusader period, which is summarized in an article published in Levant, “The Crusader Lordship of Transjordan (1100–1189): Settlement Forms, Dynamics and Significance.”
I wish to express my gratitude to the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, including the Karak DOA office, for supporting, as always, the project’s realization; my dedicated international team for their excellent work; the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East for taking aerial photos of Karak castle, the people of Karak, for welcoming the team’s work at their castle and town, and the SSCLE for hosting this blog.
Micaela Sinibaldi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw in Poland and the Director of the Karak Castle and Town Documentation Project. After her PhD thesis at Cardiff University entitled Settlement in Crusader Transjordan (1100-1189): a Historical and Archaeological Study, she has co-edited the volume Crusader Landscapes in the Medieval Levant: The Archaeology and History of the Latin East.
Figures captions and credits:
Fig. 1: Aerial photo of Karak castle and town (Matthew Neale Dalton, APAAME_20181014_MND-0272)
Fig. 2: Orthographic Top View of a cluster of spaces inside the castle (Bendegúz Takáts)
Fig. 3: A sketch of the stratigraphic analysis of a detail of the northern wall of the castle drawn by the team
Fig. 4: Elevation View of the External 3D Model of Karak castle and Town (Bendegúz Takáts)
Fig. 5: Geological survey of Karak town (Micaela Sinibaldi)
Fig. 6: Excavations at the castle chapel (Micaela Sinibaldi)