Some observations on the medieval rural settlements in northern Lebanon twelfth - Thirteenth centuries

Abstract

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, after the First Crusade in 1095–1098 the eastern Mediterranean coastline was inhabited by Western European settlers, who formed a lordship known as the County of Tripoli in what is currently Lebanon and Syria. A number of architectural achievements were built during the creation of this county, and many of them remain from that period, including castles, towers, churches, etc. Besides the most known and important monuments, and the scatter amount of both historical and archaeological sources which indicate the existence of a variety of smaller structures in the area covering the northern governorate of Lebanon, it offers an ideal area for the analysis of the settlement pattern and typologies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In this paper, we will only attempt to briefly describe some of the main points concerning the Crusader settlements in Northern Lebanon.