قلعة مونتفورت (القرين)‎ الصليبية 625-669 ه 1227-1271 م : دراسة تاريخية-أثرية

Abstract EN

During the period of the Crusades, the Levant saw inhabitable interests with the construction of castles and fortifications, which it’s peaked in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

This phenomenon was strongly ruled as an inevitable necessity demanded by the nature of armed conflict between Muslims and Crusaders coming from Europe at that time.

After the Crusaders took control of large parts of the Levant and their settlement in those lands, they had to seek the necessary protection for their emerging dominions.

This was the superior concern of Crusader leaders, who spend enormous efforts to constructed and rebuild a dozens of fortresses and castles that still witness nowadays On an interval station in the history of relations between the West Christendom and the Islamic Near East.

This study aims at shedding light on al-Qurayn castle, which known in historical documents as the Crusader fortress of Montfort, it’s erected by the Teutonic knights, one of the most important military religious orders in the Levant in the first half of the thirteenth century.

The castle located halfway between Acre and Tyre, under the feudality of Crusader kingdom of Acre.

Montfort considered one of the most important defensive military strongholds, with a defensive style, distinctively by the immunity of it's location, unlike the Crusader castles in the Islamic Near East, it did not made any of immense threaten on Muslim’s territories.

Montfort is one of the most stronger crusader strongholds in Palestine built by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century.