Homes for Crusaders: Domestic Architecture in the Crusader Kingdoms:
It is still commonplace (at least in fiction and Hollywood) to
depict medieval homes, as unhygienic, cold, dark and gloomy. One problem, of
course, is the tendency to assume that houses hardly changed over a thousand
years of history and to imagine the homes in Norway were no different from
those on Sicily. In reality, medieval architecture was highly sophisticated
produced not just wonders of ecclesiastic architecture from the splendors of
York Cathedral to the sublime beauty of Fontfroid Abbey, but also luxurious and
comfortable domestic structures. What follows is a look at domestic
architecture in the crusader states.
The
Bishop of Oldenburg, traveling to the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1212, was stunned
by the luxury of the residences of the elite. According to Sir Steven Runciman
in his "Families of Outremer," Oldenburg was particularly impressed
by the Ibelin palace in Beirut:
Its
windows opened some on the sea, some on to delicious gardens. Its walls were
paneled with plaques of poly-chrome marble; the vaulted ceiling [of the salon]
was painted to resemble the sky with its stars; in the center of the [salon]
was a fountain, and round it mosaics depicting the waves of the sea edged with
sands so lifelike that [the bishop] feared to tread on them lest he should
leave a foot mark.
Unfortunately,
nothing of this palace remains today.
The
same is true of the Lusignan palace in Nicosia, but Volume 4 of A History of
the Crusades: The Art and Architecture of the Crusader States, Hazard,
Harry W ed. provides the following summary:
The
royal palace, adjoining the church of St. Dominic, seemed to travelers the
finest in the world. Its great throne room, its balconies, its golden
ornaments, its tapestries, pictures, organs, and clocks, its baths, gardens and
menageries suggest the most sumptuous of medieval residences. (p. 175)
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| Interior courtyards with fountains and gardens were regular features of medieval residences. The cloisters of contemporary monasteries may provide a hint of what they looked like. Here Fontfroid in Southern France -- origin of many crusaders. |
While
both the above passages refer to palaces (baronial and royal respectively), the
following is a more general commentary on Frankish domestic architecture in the
crusader states. Writing after the re-conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187,
Ibn-Khallikan wrote:
"the
infidel had rebuilt [Jerusalem] with columns and plaques of marble...with fair
fountains where the water never ceased to flow--one saw dwellings as agreeable
as gardens and brilliant with the whiteness of marble; the columns with their
foliage seemed like trees." (quoted in Hazard, p. 138.)
 |
| A close-up of the capitals in the crusader cloisters at Bethlehem. (Photo by the author) |
Yet
only scattered fragments of this sophisticated urban secular architecture from
the crusader period have survived into the present. Even these remains have
largely been obscured by subsequent changes in style and function that obscure crusader structures almost beyond recognition.
Descriptions such as those cited above as well as systematic analysis of the
archeological evidence nevertheless enables us to imagine a great deal. Here is a short summary:
Due
to a general scarcity of wood, the basic building material in the Middle East
in the crusader period was stone and/or brick. The latter, and often the
former, was plastered over and whitewashed, both inside and out, or faced with
marble in the case of important and representational buildings. The floors of
poorer dwellings were either beaten earth or cut out of the bedrock, while
upper floors were plaster. In wealthier homes the floors were usually flagstone
on the ground floor, marble or mosaic. Courtyards were usually paved with
cobbles.
The
basic building block of houses in the Holy Land were vaults. Barrel vaults were
the easiest and most fundamental building block and could be stacked on top of
one another at perpendicular angles for several stories. A good example of this
is the Hospitaller Castle of Kolossi. Below are three images of vaulted
chambers: one an upstairs chamber from the Hospitaller castle at Kolossi, one a
cellar from the Byzantine/Crusader castle of St. Hilarion, and the third
showing a wine or oil press in the ground-floor chamber, something very common
in the crusader kingdoms.
Groin vaults and rib-vaults, however, was also common, particularly in larger structures such as palaces, monasteries, customs houses, and the like. Here is an image of beautiful vaulting from Bellapais Monastery on Cyprus.
Most
houses in the crusader states appear to have had at least one, and in
urban
areas -- particularly in the 13th century -- as many as three upper
floors. The
upper floors were often reached by means of an external stairway over a
arch
(see photo below), or by means of internal wooden stairs or even ladders
through trap doors. In larger, rural structures, stairs could also be
built
into the thickness of the walls. Bellow are pictures of exterior stairs
from Kythera, which are similar to what is described in crusader urban
architecture.
Most
buildings in the Middle East were crowned, then as now, by flat roofs,
which were sometimes decoratively crenelated. The roof provided
additional living or work
space in the form of a roof-top terrace that could be shaded from the
sun by
canvas awnings, or a vine arbor. Whether
used as a terrace or not, rooftops almost always collected rain water in
a
cistern. Indeed, even the poorest and smallest of urban dwellings had
cisterns, often several. All had settlement tanks to help purify the
water. Water could be pumped from these tanks to the kitchens or
latrines.
Many
urban dwellings were built around one or a series of courtyards.
These in turn contained cisterns or sometimes wells, kitchen and formal
gardens, or working space, depending on the wealth of the occupant. The
courtyard below in Jerusalem has many medieval elements and does not look so
very different from what it could have looked like in the 12th
century.
The
courtyard in the next photo is from the Hospitaller headquarters in Acre. It is
an example of a more spectacular, 13th century courtyard and only
relevant for public buildings, but it is indicative of style, taste and
crusader capabilities.
In poorer neighborhoods, several
dwellings were clustered around a large, communal courtyard and shared the space space and water.
Despite
the prevalence of courtyards, Frankish houses were not inward-looking. Unlike
their Arab contemporaries, the houses of the rich had beautiful balconies and
logias that looked out over the streets from the upper stories. The roof of the
logia in urban areas might be supported either by an arcade or by pillars. Some
of these pillars were reclaimed Roman pillars, employed in a new function, but
the Franks were skilled at producing pillars themselves and the capitals of
these were famous -- even among their enemies -- for the lifelike quality of
their decoration. In rural settings the logia could be even more dramatic as in
the example below from St. Hilarion on Cyprus.
The
working class on the other hand had workshops and store fronts that opened onto
the street at ground level.
Doors
throughout the Frankish territories from the mid-12th century until the end of
Frankish rule were usually made by a wide, slightly pointed arch. This arch,
borrowed from the Arabs before the beginning of true Gothic architecture in the
West, was the dominant, indeed iconic, shape of crusader architecture. Poorer
dwellings, however, usually had square doors, and secondary/back doors even on wealthier dwellings might also be square.
Windows
could be either arched or square, with the Romanesque forms of “double-” or
“triple-light” windows as common in the Holy Land as in the countries of the
crusaders’ origin. Below are two examples of windows from St. Hilarion and Krak de
Chevaliers respectively.
Because there were major glass producing centers in the crusader states (notably Tyre and Beirut), window glazing was more common in the crusader states than in the West, a fact supported by both archaeological finds and descriptions. Below are examples of crusader glass manufacture. While the context is different, this glass demonstrates the very high quality of the industry generally.
Archaeological
evidence suggests that Frankish window glazing consisted either of plate
glass or round glass set in
plaster (the latter being presumably much cheaper and more common).
Below left is an example of the round glass technique used here in the
Templar Church in Famagusta, Cyprus. The same technique is still in use
today (right) on Kythera.
As the description at the start of this essay indicated, interior décor could include poly-chrome marble, but mosaics and glazed tiles may also have been used. Certainly, a wide variety of crusader glazed pottery has been found, using cream colors, yellows, greens and blues. The pottery gives us some indication of what colors and motifs could have been used on floor and wall tiles, although the evidence is lacking. Below is an example of crusader pottery.
However,
we also know that the Turks and Saracens were very fond of brilliant blues and
turquoise tiles in later centuries, and these may also have been available to
the crusaders. At least I like to imagine it so! Below is an example of modern
tile work just to hint at the possibilities.
As
for mosaics, the description at the start of the article is perhaps the best
indication of quality and the fact that life-like motifs were possible in the
crusader era. However, we should not forget that mosaics floors were very
common in the Roman and Byzantine periods, and the many crusader residences in
fact dated from earlier periods and retained these older tiles. Below is a
picture of tiles that date back the 4th century AD and were
allegedly commissioned by St. Helena. Particularly under the influence of the
Byzantine brides of Baldwin III and Amalric I, Byzantine styles and artists
were welcomed and employed in the crusader kingdoms. They would easily have
produced tiles similar to this example from the Church of the Nativity in
Bethlehem.
Last
but not least, as the contemporary written descriptions stress, no description
of urban architecture in the crusader states would be complete without reference to gardens. Frankish elites oriented their
houses so that their (glazed) windows looked out at either views (such as the
ocean) or gardens. The Holy Land offered a variety of beautiful vegetation from
trees such a palms and olives, lemons and pomegranates, to flowers such as
hibiscus and oleander. Frankish gardens would have been beautiful indeed.
So to conclude, here is a picture of a garden in the crusader church of St.
Anne in Jerusalem today.
Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.
She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.
She
is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction
and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total
of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the
founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at:
http://crusaderkingdoms.com
