Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 16

I.

Any consideration of the influence of Levantine mili-
-tary architecture on that of the West must almost of nec-
-essity be minute and technical; and any such enquiry must
obviously be based on first-hand study of the actual rem-
-ains of 12th. century castles in Syria and Europe.(1) A few
of the castles in the East have been adequately described
with plans and illustrations, but beyond these there are
many, often of equal importance, of which details have
never been published; and the sites of some, which figure
in history, remain unidentified in the riot of hills fill-
-ing up Syria between Antioch and Nazareth.   Reference is
here made to some forty Crusading castles, including, for
the 12th. century, nearly all those in the East.  The mat-
-erials for the 13th. century in Armenia and the Greek Is-
-lands are almost entirely unworked; there has, as a matter
of fact, been practically no exhaustive study even of the
castles of that period in Europe.

(1).    The Byzantine castles in Northern Africa are described from
Diehl, “L’Europe byzantine”.   Except for this, no castle
has been mentioned, unless personally visited.  This will
account for the omission of a few well-known 13th. century
castles, such as Kerak or Grignols.