Belvoir Castle, Israel - other names:
Belvoir Fortress, Coquet Castle; Arab: Kawkab al-Hawā, Kaukab el Hawā;
Hebrew: Kokhav ha-Yarden, Kôkhov ha-Yardēn, Kokhav Hayarden.
Belvoir Castle Facts
Belvoir Castle is a crusader castle in Israel built by the Knights
Hospitaller around 1168 and occupied until 1219.
Some form of castle already occupied the site before 1168, when it was sold
to the Hospital of St John. All trace of this early structure, however, seems to have been
removed by the Hospitallers, who almost at once began to build there the Belvoir castle.
The Hospitallers surrendered to Salah al-Din on 5 Jan 1189, after his troops
had broken into the barbican and begun to undermine the castle walls.
Although Salah al-Din considered dismantling the castle, there is no
evidence that he did so, and a Muslim garrison and governor seem to have occupied it until
1219, when the castle was finally slighted on the orders of the Ayyubid ruler of Damascus.
The area was again in Frankish hands between 1241 and 1263, but the
Hospitallers do not appear to have reoccupied Belvoir. The Arab village of Kawkab al-Hawa was
sited in the ruins of the once mighty fortress, but during the war of 1947–1948 the inhabitants
fled; between 1963 and 1968 the site was cleared by the Israel Department of Antiquities and
the National Parks Authority.
These excavations, directed by Meir Ben-Dov, have revealed that the Crusader
castle had a design considerably more advanced than had previously been thought likely for a
building of this date.
The Belvoir Castle is built mostly from the same black basalt upon which it
stands, with limestone employed as freestone as well as for much of the inner and upper parts
of the inner ward. It consists of two almost square enceintes, one inside the other, both
defended by projecting rectangular towers.
The outer enceinte (100×110 m) is surrounded on three sides by a rock-cut
ditch, 20–25 m wide and 12 m deep, from the bottom of which the walls rise on a battered
The east side, however, was protected by the natural scarp and by a
projecting barbican, roughly 30 m square and probably no more than two storey high, which
commanded the otherwise dead ground below and contained the main entrance.
The principal route into the castle led from an outer gate at the foot of
the south-eastern tower, up a ramp and into the barbican, before doubling back and up again to
reach an inner gate next to the same corner tower.
The inner gate is 2.35 m wide and was closed by a pair of wing-doors,
defended above by a slit-machicolation between two pointed arches and from either side by
A secondary gate, more conveniently sited for peacetime use but easily
decommissioned in time of war, lay on the west of the castle and was probably reached across a
level timber bridge spanning the ditch.
The outer walls would originally have stood some 12–16 m high (or 25 m
within the ditch) and 3 m thick, but the destruction has left no more than 3 m standing. From
their outer face, at the angles and mid-way along the sides, massive rectangular towers
project; the three towers at the south-west contained staircases leading down to narrow
posterns concealed in the angles where they met the curtain wall.
The inner face of the wall was lined with a continuous barrel vault, 8 m
wide internally, which, besides providing covered accommodation for the personnel, stores,
stables, smithies and other services of the castle’s outer ward, in wartime would have also
given protection to those firing from the embrasures in the outer wall and created another tier
of defence on the terrace above.
Enclosed by the outer enceinte, like a castle within a castle, stood the
inner ward, some 50 m square with a tower 10 m square projecting at each corner. The inner ward
had two entrances, a small postern on the east and a wider gate on the west, to which was later
added a projecting rectangular gate-tower with an outer gate set in its southern flank, forming
a bent entrance.
Both gates in the gate-tower have slit-machicolations above them; but while
the outer one is set between two pointed arches, the inner one is placed behind a flat arch
with decorative joggled voussoirs of a type probably derived from contemporary Islamic
architecture. There is also a postern in the north wall of the gate-tower.
In the centre of the inner ward, a courtyard some 22 m square is enclosed by
barrel-vaulted ranges. The undercrofts seem to have contained stores, stables and, on the
south-east, a kitchen, while the living area of the knights seems to have been on the floor
above, with access by a stone staircase on the south side of the courtyard.
On this piano nobile were to be found the chapel above the western gate and
probably the dormitory and refectory; but all that remains of these more finely built
apartments are some fragments of corbels, capitals, pilasters and sculpture, including the head
of a youth and an unfinished flying angel (both Jerusalem, Rockefeller Mus).
Belvoir occupies a significant place in the history of medieval military
Before its excavation, there was no physical evidence that the regular
‘concentric’ planning that it exemplifies, which can be derived ultimately from Hellenistic
theory and practice, was employed by the Crusaders in the Levant before the 13th century.
Belvoir demonstrates that in the 1170s the Franks of Outremer were already
building rectangular concentric castles, anticipating by half a century or more the appearance
of such buildings in western Europe.
Belvoir Castle Map&Location
Belvoir is situated about 12 km south of the Sea of Galilee, on the eastern
edge of a plateau from where it overlooks the Jordan Valley and the site of what in the 12th
century would have been the principal river crossings between the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
and its Muslim neighbours.
See bellow the location on the map:
View Larger Map