Crusader Fortress of Tiberias
Impressive
remains of the Crusader fortress from the
12th century CE were
discovered in an excavation recently conducted
in the old Jewish Quarter of Tiberias,
near the shore of the Sea
of Galilee.
On the 4th of July 1187
a defining moment took place in the history
of the Middle East – the Battle of
Hattin, in which Saladin and
his soldiers routed the Crusader army
and its leader, Guy of Lusignan, and sealed
the fate of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The pretext for the battle was the siege
that Saladin placed on Tiberias, seat of
the Principality of Galilee, on the 2nd of
July, two days prior to the decisive battle.
At this time the Crusader princess Eschiva,
wife of Raymond III of Tripoli, ruler of
the Galilee, and a unit of loyal knights
were inside the mighty fortress of Tiberias;
however, Raymond himself was at that time
together with the king in the Crusader encampment
at springs of Sepphoris.
At the start of the siege
an alarmed Eschiva sent a messenger to the
Crusader camp informing them of it and the
imminent danger that awaited her and the
knights
of Tiberias it Saladin’s intention
to conquer the city were to occur. In the
feverish consultations going on at the camp
in Sepphoris it was Raymond, the husband
of Eschiva, who advised the king not to engage
the Muslim army
in a conflict at this time, despite the looming
danger to his wife and comrades in Tiberias.
But the king decided to heed the advice of
the commander of the Templar Order and attack
the Muslims in order to lift the siege on
Tiberias. On the way to Tiberias, in the
vicinity of the Horns of Hittim, the decisive
battle took place when the Crusader army,
which was dying of thirst, was vanquished.
After the hostilities the army of the Crusader
kingdom ceased to exist and the Templar and
Hospitaller knights were executed (only King
Guy was taken prisoner and released after
a year while Raymond succeeded in fleeing
before the end of the battle). The following
day Tiberias surrendered to the Muslim forces.
Princess Eschiva and the knights of Tiberias
were allowed to leave the city and made their
way unharmed to Tripoli.
Where
was the Crusader fortress of Tiberias? Until
the 1970’s scholars believed it should
be sought outside the walls of the Ottoman old
city, perhaps in the region of the citadel
built during the days of Dahar al Omar in
the 18th century CE, on a hill in the northwest
of the city or on Mount Bereniki rising above
the city to the southwest. Based on an analysis
of historical texts and drawings of Tiberias
from the Ottoman period, the historian Zvi
Razi suggested in 1970 placing the fortress
inside the city walls, on shore of the Sea
of Galilee, in the vicinity of the old Jewish
Quarter.
Archaeological excavations
conducted on a limited scale by Esther Dinor
(1976) and Elliot Braun (1977) of the Department
of Antiquities, near the promenade,
west of the Sea Mosque, reinforced this supposition
with the discovery of sections of massive
walls that the excavators consider to be
elements of the southern part of the fortress.
E. Braun even suggested that a water filled
moat connected to the Sea of Galilee enclosed
and protected the fortress from the south
and found parallels to the building style
and plan of the fortress with that located
at Belvoir (the
only difference being that in the latter
case the moat was not filled with water).
But there were those that doubted this and
proposed looking for the Crusader fortress
of Tiberias, the heart of the seat of the
Principality of Galilee in the 12th century
CE, elsewhere in the old city.
During the spring and summer
of 2003 archaeological excavations were conducted
on behalf of the Antiquities Authority in
the area adjacent to the “Etz Haim” synagogue,
named after Rabbi Haim Abulafia, close to
the shore of the Sea of Galilee and some
seventy meters north of the excavations directed
by E. Brown and E. Dinor. The excavations
were carried out in the wake of a plan to
develop the Jewish Quarter in Old Tiberias
(The Courtyard of the Jews) that was put
forth by the Government Tourist Corporation.
In the excavation an impressive
section of a massive 3.4 m thick wall, oriented
east west (i.e. perpendicular to the shoreline),
was discovered and in it a three meter wide
gate that was in an excellent state of preservation.
The façade of the wall is built of
large ashlar stones and was preserved to
a minimum height of 4 m (the foundations
courses that that are embedded in the water
table at the level of the lake have not yet
been exposed). In the wall and gate the excavators
detected the quintessential characteristics
of Crusader construction that left no room
for doubt: here is part of the northern wall
of the Crusader fortress, which indeed indicates
that underneath the old Jewish Quarter is
the lost Crusader fortress of Tiberias. The
discovery makes it possible to estimate the
size of the fortress (c. 50 x 70 m); although
it is still difficult to delineate its precise
plan. The Crusader characteristics that were
discovered in the wall and gate are: massive
construction using large ashlar stones that
are carefully fitted and bonded together,
some of which have drafted margins; diagonal
stone dressing across the surface of several
of the stones in the jambs of the gate; a
V-shaped mason’s marks on the surface
of one of the building stones; secondary
use of ancient construction items; and a
track in the form of a slot in the jambs
of the gate house for raising and lowering
the iron portcullis – a clearly Crusader
means of defense in front of a fortress’ gate.
The ceramic assemblage
also included sherds that are typical of
the period; some of them are imported Crusader
ware.
It seems that in front
of the wall and gate there was a broad moat
filled with water that protected the fortress
from the north (as was discovered in the
1977 excavation at the south of the fortress).
If there also was a moat on the western side
of the fortress (the side that has not yet
been exposed) then we are dealing with an
edifice that was surrounded entirely by water,
a kind of island cut off from the other parts
of the city, which was probably joined to
them by way of wooden bridges that could
be raised. After the fall of the fortress
in 1187 its ruins stood desolate for hundreds
of years until they were filled over and
covered with soil on which the Jewish Quarter
of Tiberias was constructed, beginning from
the time of Rabbi Haim Abulafia, in the middle
of the 18th century CE’.
During the excavation it
was discovered that probably already in the
12th century (before or after the Battle
of Hattin) or in the 13th century CE, not
long after it was built, the gate itself
was blocked by the construction of two walls
that were erected across it, thereby negating
its use altogether. The archeologists were
surprised to find large decorated architectural
elements in the wall, the gate and in the
soil fill in the moat; these comprised parts
of a large lintel adorned with floral patterns
and a wreath of Heracles for which there
are almost exact parallels in the ancient
synagogue of Capernaum (the
Crusaders incorporated one such piece in
secondary use in the jambs of the western
gate), a basalt ashlar decorated with a crude
relief of a five branch candelabrum, cornice
stones and capitals, column drums, fragments
of Italian marble and other limestone and
basalt elements. These items almost certainly
originated in an ancient and magnificent
structure that was probably a synagogue from
the Roman or Byzantine
period. Where did these stones come from?
Did the Crusaders bring them from the ruins
of the Jewish city dating from the time of
the Mishnah and Talmud located south of here
or perhaps we are dealing with a monumental
building that stood near the fortress (and
perhaps below it)? These questions have not
yet been answered, as well as numerous other
questions concerning the function of the
fortress and its plan. At the time of its
existence, during the seventh decade of the
12th century, Benjamin
of Tudela visited Tiberias, where he
found a Jewish community numbering fifty
families; he also mentions the Synagogue of
Caleb ben Jephunneh. In ca. 1180 the Ashkenazi sojourner,
Pethahiah of Regensburg, encountered a vibrant
Jewish community here, including Rabbi Nehorai
who was from the “seed of Rabbi
Judah HaNasi”; he also mentions
the “synagogue that Joshua Ben Nun
built”. And perhaps these synagogues
are one and the same, none other than the
building from which the magnificent architectural
elements of the fortress were taken. Here
too, more remains unknown than that which
we have answers to.
The discovery of the fortress
and the other Crusader remains inside the
Old City of Tiberias (that have not been
mentioned here owing to a lack of space)
shed light on several riddles connected with
the traditions the Jews of Tiberias in the
past several hundred years. “The Large
Cave that is in Tiberias” (or by its
other name –“The Cave of Rabbi
Judah HaNasi and the Emperor Antoninus”)
that cast terror on the local residents who
therefore did not dare go into it, is probably
an underground cavity that was part of the
Crusader fortress (perhaps a covered passage
the likes of which were found in Akko recently,
and we should assume still exists there today
underground). The tradition of the “Domes
of Shaloh” – near the Greek Orthodox
monastery in the southeast of the Old City
(according to the Jews of Tiberias – it
is the location where Rabbi Yesha’yahu
HaLevi Ish-Hurvitz used to pray, “HaShaloh
HaKadosh” named after his book – “The
Two Tablets”) refers to a fortified
Crusader site, built with massive vaults,
buried today beneath the monastery building
(what we believe is the fortification of
the southeastern corner of the Crusader city).
Sources: Israeli Foreign Ministry |