Muslim Fortresses in the Levant: Between Crusaders and Mongols (18 page)

Was the whole idea of building such a large-scale fortress a rash act? Were the initial calculations misleading? It seems that, while sufficient funds were found and allocated by the Sultan to finance the building, the calculations of manpower needed to garrison and maintain such a fortress, and the accessibility of an Ayyubid army that could provide military help in times of siege, those aspects were to a certain degree ignored. Reinforcements were a necessity, very few fortresses of any kind or definition could defend themselves solely with their own garrisons, however large or well equipped. Those two issues, so carefully studied and examined fifty years later by the Mamluk Sultan Baybars when he had to decide whether to rebuild or destroy the fortresses he had conquered, were evidently not given enough thought in the case of the fortress of Mount Tabor.

It is more than probable that if Egypt had not been put under direct threat the fortress at Mount Tabor would have been spared. But as the fifth Crusade aimed for Damietta and settled for a long siege (May to early December 1219) that became part of an extensive attack,
⁹⁶
the Ayyubid army was in need of all its available forces. A large fortress such as that at Mount Tabor was useless if the enemy was camped on the bank of the Nile Delta ready to head south for Cairo.

In spite of the brief role of Mount Tabor during the Ayyubid period, the historical sources combined with the archaeological remains and the numerous inscriptions provide sufficient evidence of how the Ayyubids went about the building of a fortress.

The logistics of castle building

Once the decision had been made,
was determined to build on a grand scale. The fotress at Mount Tabor is one of the largest ever built by the Ayyubids. It extends over the entire mountain summit (
Figure 1.2
). The current division of the fortress area between the Franciscan and Greek Orthodox monasteries makes it difficult to roam around freely and grasp the vast size of the compound.

army was summoned to the site to safeguard the work from any would-be interruptions by the Franks. The soldiers and their amirs, however, were mainly employed in the various construction works that did not demand experience or professional skill. According to Ibn
they transported stone and participated in the actual building.
⁹⁷
Every man on the site was put to work. Professional craftsmen
such as masons and carpenters were brought from all across the country.
⁹⁸
According to Maqrīzī 500 builders were employed on the site, not including the professional craftsmen, the soldiers and the amirs.
⁹⁹
At
labor for the building of the fortress came from the local tribe of the
. We have no further information as to where the skilled craftsmen came from, although according to John’s study the masonry is typical to the region and the masons may have been local.
¹⁰⁰
As for
and
, there is no mention in the sources or the inscriptions as to who the labor force was or where it came from.

It is not quite clear who supervised the work at Mount Tabor. Ibn
writes in one place that
ordered his son
to build the fortress,
¹⁰¹
and