Gesher B'not Ya'acov (גשר בנות יעקב, "Daughters of Jacob Bridge"), known by the Arabs by the same name, Jisr Benat Ya'kub (جسر بنات يعقوب), had been a crossing point for thousands of years before the first bridge was built in mediaeval times. The Crusaders first referred to the crossing as Jacob's Ford or, in Latin, Vadum Iacob. After King Baldwin III of Jerusalem broke the siege of Banias in 1157, he was ambushed at Jacob's Ford in June of that year. Later in the twelfth century, Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Saladin (An-Nasir Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, known as Salah ad-Din) continually contested the area around Jacob's Ford.
Between October 1178 and April 1179, Baldwin began the first stages of constructing his new line of defense, a fortification―known in Hebrew as Mezad Ateret ("Castle of Abundance") and in Arabic as Qașr al-'Athra, but known in those times as Le Chastellet, or simply as Vadum Iacob―overlooking Jacob's Ford, thus commanding the road from Quneitra to Tiberias. In the 12th century the castle's Arabic name was Bayt al-Ahzan, meaning "The House of Sorrow," in the belief that it was on this spot that Jacob received Joseph's bloodstained coat, as retold in the Koran, Sura 12:18. Amber and I visited on a day of torrential rain and flooding, but we managed a viewing between rain clouds.
Crusader masonry remains.
While construction was in progress, Saladin became fully aware of the task he would have to overcome at Jacob's Ford if he were to protect Syria and conquer Jerusalem. At the time, he was unable to stop the erection of Le Chastellet by military force because a large portion of his troops were stationed in northern Syria, putting down Muslim rebellions so, according to Ibn Abī Ṭayyiʾ, a Muslim historian of Aleppo, he offered Baldwin 60,000 dinars to halt construction. Baldwin declined, but Saladin made an improved offer of 100,000 dinars. Baldwin again refused again and continued to build Le Chastellet and, by the summer of 1179, his forces had constructed a stone wall ten metres high, with a single tower.
With Baldwin having refused his bribes, Saladin turned his attention away from the internal uprisings and summoned a large Muslim army to march southeast towards Jacob’s Ford. Baldwin at this time was situated at Tiberias, only half a day’s march from Jacob’s Ford, and what was completed of the fortification was relatively strong and was likely able to hold out until it could be relieved. It was a race against time!
Excavations have confirmed that the construction of the castle was not completed at the time of its destruction in August, 1179. Remains of construction works were excavated throughout the castle, including a large and complete collection of mediaeval working tools: spades, hoes, picks, a wheelbarrow, plastering spoon, scissors and more. Adjacent to one of the gates was a heap of lime with working tools embedded in it, which was covered with Muslim arrowheads, clearly demonstrating that the builders where interrupted by the sudden attack.
On 23 August 1179, Saladin arrived at Jacob’s Ford and besieged the fortification, ordering his troops to shoot arrows at the castle. While the archers distracted the men inside the fortification, sappers dug a tunnel under the stone and iron walls at the north-east corner of Le Chastellet, placing large amounts of wood inside and setting it alight. But the walls didn't collapse, because the tunnel was too narrow. Saladin's troops were forced to put out the fire with buckets of water―they were paid one gold piece per bucket to do so―so that the sappers could broaden the tunnel and try again. At the same time, Baldwin, having learned of this attack, called for reinforcements from Jerusalem. However, communications between Baldwin and Le Chastellet were slow and, by this time, the siege had been under way for several days.
Baldwin’s forces inside the castle began to reinforce the main gates, but Saladin's troops soon re-lit the fire in the tunnel under the castle, and the walls collapsed. Thus, approximately six days after the siege began, Saladin and his troops entered the still-unfinished Chastellet, killing its garrison. In all, 700 knights, architects, and construction workers who were killed and the other 800 who were taken captive. Saladin took the armors of about a thousand knights and sergeants, 100,000 weapons and many animals as booty. The captives were led to Damascus.
On the same day the castle fell, 30 August 1179, Baldwin and his supporting army set out from Tiberias, only to discover smoke rising above the horizon as they approached. Baldwin and his troops turned back towards Tiberias and Saladin ordered the remains of the fortification to be torn down.
Having thrown the bodies of the 700 dead Crusaders into a deep cistern, the bodies soon decayed in the August heat, and plague ensued. Although Saladin claimed a military victory at Le Chastellet, his troops fell victim to plague sand he lost ten of his officers. Of course the story at Le Chastellet is one part of a longer history, in which Saladin and Baldwin signed a truce in 1180 but, seven years later, Saladin captured the Crusader Kingdom following the Battle of Hattin. After the capture of Jerusalem, Saladin remained militarily and politically successful in the region until a military encounter with Richard the Lionheart, after which he was forced to make peace in 1192. He died the next year. Meanwhile, King Baldwin IV, afflicted with leprosy, died in 1185 at age twenty-three.
After the Ayyubid conquest, a mosque was erected on the tel, inside the ruins of the castle, and a settlement here continued through the Mameluke and Ottoman periods. Many of the stones from the castle were reused over these centuries. In fact stones from the castle were reused in the construction of the B'not Ya'acov bridge to the north, as well as in the various flour mills along the river and its channels, one of which can still be seen south of the tel today.
Despite Saladin's destruction, and the ravages of time and earthquakes, impressive remains can be seen today at Ateret, which are currently undergoing preservation and preparation as a heritage site. The ruins of the castle were examined for the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine, as reported in Conder & Kitchener's 1881 Galilee volume. They state that the rectangular castle―420 feet by 200 feet―
"was surrounded on the north and west by a ditch, and on the east and south by the River Jordan. The place is entirely ruined, though traces of the walls can still be distinguished, and some large well dressed limestone stones are still in position. The majority of the building material was basalt."
French archaeologist, Victor Guérin, also visited the site, and he is quoted by Conder & Kitchener:
"The upper surface of the hill is generally flat, and is surrounded by a rectangular enclosure, which consisted of a thick wall composed of small volcanic stones cased with splendid limestone blocks either completely smoothed or cut in relief. The casing has been three-fourths taken away. A tower flanked each of the angles of this rectangle, and at the centre of each side a gate was constructed, facing one of the four cardinal points. Within this enclosure nothing is to be distinguished in the midst of the bushes except at the northern extremity, at the highest part of the hill, where is remarked a mass of piled-up rubbish, under which some foundations still in place are visible."
The site continues to attract the attention of a number of archaeological surveys. Tel Aviv University's School of Geosciences has a particular interest in the geology, as well as the archaeology, and has been working since 1994 at the tel. Constructed on the active Dead Sea Fault between the tectonic plates of Arabia and Sinai, the tel where the Crusaders built their fortress has been settled intermittently for over six millennia, from the iron age to the Ottoman era. In fact the series of structures unearthed there―offset by earthquake ruptures on the fault―provide a record of alternating construction and slip. The Vadum Iacob Research Project of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem also has archaeological and geological interests. The caste was drastically deformed during a destructive earthquake triggered by motion along the Dead Sea Fault at dawn on 20 May 1202, creating an offset of 1.6 metres in the castle. The precise date was established by the Hebrew University project through a combination of primary historical sources, excavating the Dead Sea Fault where it bisects the castle, and by dating faulted archaeological strata. The geologists of the project go on to attribute the remaining half-metre of the full 2.1 metre offset visible today to the earthquakes of October 1759.
Ceramics dated to the Iron Age period, along with the description of the borders of the tribes in the book of Joshua, suggest that the iron age settlement on the tel may tentatively be identified with the city of Judah upon Jordan.
You can read about more sites nearby in my posts on B'not Ya'acov & customs houses and Old Mishmar Ha'Yarden.
Comments