Page 75 - A Walk to Caesarea / Joseph Patrich

A Walk to Caesarea: A Historical-Archaeological Perspective 61

The Mamluk Conquest and the Destruction of Crusader Caesarea

In the meantime, the Mamluks assumed power in Egypt, Palestine and Syria. In
1260, under the command of Baybars, who eventually became the sultan, they
defeated the Mongols in the Battle of cAin Jalut, near today’s Macayan H. arod. Only
afterward were they free to fight the Crusaders. Their first attacks on the area of
Caesarea and Athlit, which were held by the Crusaders, began only in 1264, under
Emir Nasir al-Din al-Qaymari. The final attack, under the leadership of Baybars,
began at dawn on 28 February 1265. The number of attackers exceeded the number
of defenders and the walls were quite long so the latter found it difficult to defend
them effectively. The Mamluk soldiers rushed to storm the walls in many places
with the aid of makeshift ladders made out of reins and did not delay by filling
in the moats or wait for the arrival of siege towers. The attackers managed to
penetrate the city and open the gates from within. The walls were taken and the
sultan’s flags were raised upon them. The defenders retreated to the harbor fortress.
Baybars chose to place his headquarters near the cathedral, at the top of the hill
overlooking the fortress, and he conducted the attack from there.

Ibn al-Fura¯t, Description of Baybars’ attack on the Caesarea Fortress (1265)

“The citadel, known as al-Khad.r¯a (the Green), was one of the most strongly fortified and finest of its kind. For
Louis had had granite pillars carried there which he had arranged with skill. No finer construction was to be seen
in al-S¯ah.il (the coastal zone of Syria and Palaestina), nor any stronger or loftier, for round it was the sea whose
water flowed in its moats. It could not be mined because of the granite columns used crosswise in its construction,
and even were it undermined it would not fall. However, the Muslims continued to attack it, bombarding it with
their mangonels….. Siege engines and moving towers were constructed and an issue of arrows from the citadel of
cAjlu¯n was made to the troops – every leader of a hundred horse got four thousand arrows…... The sultan ordered
wood and mangonel stones be brought, and he gave robes of honour to the emir ja¯nda¯r …. for the work that he
had done on the mangonels and to their crews. ….

The Sultan remained steadfastly at the front of the fighting. He did not got out of his dihl¯ız but stayed in the
church with a company of crossbowmen, shooting away and preventing the Franks from climbing to the top of
the citadel. …. Then the Franks came and surrendered the citadel with its contents. The Muslims climbed up to
it from the walls, burned its gates and entered it from above and below, while the call for the morning prayer was
made from its top” (tr. U. and M.C. Lyons, Ayyubids, Mamlukes and Crusaders, Cambridge 1971, pp. 70–71).

The fortress was separated from the city by a moat c. 20 m wide full of sea water
(Fig. 64), pillars laid horizontally and vertically at its foundations prevented the
Mamluks from penetrating beneath it and causing its walls and towers to collapse.
At the end of a week-long siege, negotiations began toward surrender, but in the
end the defenders preferred not to give in but rather to retreat on their ships
to Acre (early March 1265). Baybars, loyal to the policy begun already by the
Ayyubids, to destroy the Crusader fortresses and outposts along the coast, ordered