قلعة الشقيف من كتاب Hachette World Guides - Lebanon ،الصادر عام 1955. النص الأصلي بالانكليزية :
32 km (20 m.) : Nabatiye el Tahta, at 1,476 ft., a small town of 3,500
inhab., most of them Shiites.
35 km (22 m.) : A short distance before Kerer Tibnit the Merjayun road
turns away towards the NE., whilst a lesser road bears away towards
the SE., and brings you to (5.5 km, 3 1/2 m.) Arnun; from here you can
make the ascent, in about half-an-hour, of the hill on which stands the
*Qalaat esh Shaqif or Beaufort Castle.
This castle, called Beaufort by the Franks and Shaqi/ Arnun by the Arab
chroniclers, formed part of the principality of Sayette. It was captured
from the emir Shebab ed Din in 1139 by Fulk of Anjou, king of Jerusalem,
and given back to the lords of Sayette, who reconstructed it, and ever after
that time took the title of "Sayette and Beaufort."
William of Tyre tells us that after the defeat of the Christians in 1179 near
Paneas (Baniyas) many knights and soldiers took refuge inside the fortress.
In 1192 the castle was besieged by Saladin, but because the siege seemed
likely to be long, and success uncertain, the sultan tried to get possession
of it by a ruse ; he requested a meeting with Renaud, prince of Sayette, who
had shut himself up within the fortress, and sent him his ring as a pledge
of good faith. But when Renaud arrived in Saladin's tent he was clapped
in irons, led out in front of the castle, and tortured in full view of its defenders.
Renaud none the less exhorted his men to resist. Saladin sent him to Damascus,
w.here he was kept prisoner. After two years of blockade hunger compelled
the defenders to capitulate (1194).
In 1240, by an agreement with Ismail, sultan of Damascus, Beaufort and
the castle of Safed were both restored to the Franks. But the restoration
was not accomplished without trouble; the Muslim garrison refused to obey the
sultan's orders and to yield up the castle; a full-scale siege proved necessary
to reduce it.
Julian, lord of Sayette, . restored the defences of Beaufort, and sold the ,
fortress to the Templars in 1260. In 1268, after the capture of Safed, Baibars
besieged the castle, .captured it, and installed a Muslim garrison. In the 17th
cent. , the emir Fakhr ed Din, in revolt against the government of the Sublime
Porte, tried to restore the defences of the Qalaat esh Shaqif for the purpose of
resisting troops sent against him by the pashas of Acre and Damascus.
The platform on which Beaufort stands was chosen at the summit of
a rocky ridge which was flanked on the E. by a vertical precipice of more
than 1,000 ft., below which flows the Nahr el Qasmiye (Nahr el Litani),
the Leontes of former times. On the We, the ridge falls away quite
sharply to the level of the plain, where the modern village of Arnun now
stands. A small system of hot baths was excavated on this slope in 1942.
To the S. of the castle can be seen a small plateau which appears to have
been constructed by human agency; it was here in the Middle Ages that
the village of Beaufort stood. To the W. can be seen traces of a turreted
wall constructed in the 17th cent. by the emir Fakhr ed Din with plain
quarry stones. In 1260, at the southern extremity, the Templars when
they acquired this site built a redoubt called the "new castle"; this was
destroyed eight years later by sultan Baibars. It was rectangular in
shape, some 80 ft. by 65 ft. in dimension, and constructed from stones of
medium size. Some of its cisterns and vaulted chambers survive.
The view from here covers a wide expanse : to the E. are the summits of
Hermon; SE., the castle of Baniyas in Syria; in the N. , the Beqaa plain and
the mountains of Lebanon; to the S., the Balad Beshara, on which the ruins of
the Qalaat Tibnin look down, the Toron of the historians of. the Crusades
(p. 179).
The architects who built the castle had to allow for the configuration
of the ground on which it was built. Its shape would be roughly that of
an elongated triangle, measuring approximately 500 ft. by 330 ft.
consists of two parts, the lower redoubt on the E., on the brink ot the
escarpment of the Litani ravine; the upper redoubt, planted on the crest
Of the rock, which has been demolished.
This fortress was built with stones with bossages, and of fairly conside-
rable size; and the escarpments of the ridge on which the upper part of
the castle stands were revetted at nearly all points with a glacis of masonry,
traces of which still remain. On the S. and W. it is bordered by a deep
ditch. In the ditch, on the western side, several large vaulted cisterns have
been carved out of the natural rock. The entrance to the fortress opened
(at A) on to the esplanade, and through it access was gained to the lower
courtyard of the castle. On the l. of the entrance can be seen a great reser-
voir cut into the rock and linked with the ditch. In the S. wall of the
ditch a number of grottoes, the purpose of which is unknown, have been
cut into the rock.
On the E. side three round towers (C, B, and B') still survive; the third,
almost entirely destroyed, looks down on the escarpments of the Litani.
From the N. limit of the lower courtyard, where the structure (D) stands,
as far as the tower (B') are three storeys of rooms, probably used as stores;
the upper storey is in ruins.
Considered from S. to N., the circuit wall of the upper section of the castle
contains first. on the S., the remnants of two magnificent round towers
(E and G), built from trimmed stones with bossages, and standing them-
selves on a glacis wall of fine smooth stonework. Note the truncated-
cone shape of the glacis of the tower (G), and the beautiful moulding that
crowns the tower. The tower (E) is almost totally destroyed. These
two towers are virtually outside the circuit wall, which looks out on to
them, and consists, at this side, of an enormous wall, partially fallen in,
and of fine stonework with bossages.
According to Rey the gate of the castle appears to have been at (D), which
at the present time is no more than a breach in the wall, commanded from the
tower (E). A ramp, cut across the rock-face, led up to it. This breach leads
to a vaulted room (F), beyond which an assailant would have found himself
without cover, as if at the bottom of a ditch, and exposed on all sides to the
defenders' fire before being able to come at the redoubt's real entrance, at (H).
At this point in fact there still survives, pierced in the S. wall and half-hidden
in the earth, an arched gateway with a double row of arch-stones and machico-
lation. A long vaulted corridor, now blocked up, led from this gateway and
debouched on the terreplein of the castle,
The western face of the castle consists of a wall of great height and
thickness, the lower sections of which, built on to the rock, are composed
of stones of fairly considerable size, for the most part with bossages.
This wall was dominated by the keep (K), an irregularly-shaped tower
built flush on the outer wall without any projection.
The walls of the castle are broken down, except on the E. face, into which
the entrance-gate opened; its lintel carried an arch formed from three arch-
stones trimmed with bossages and arranged as a platband. The staircase in
In the interior, the remains of the cradle-
the thickness of the wall still exists,
vault ceiling of the old hall on the ground-floor are still to be seen.
Opposite the keep, on the E., stands a small building (L) built from
medium-sized materials and containing a hall divided into two bays
vaulted in tierce-point over ogival windows. It was entered from the W.
by a small doorway the archivolts of which, in tierce-point, rested on
piers surmounted by capitals with sculptured leaves. Unscathed at the
time of Rey's travels, this doorway is now damaged and half-buried.
Vv'ith good reason Rey assigned this structure to the second half of the 13th
cent. ; because of the N.-S. orientation it cannot have been a chapel as he
suggested; it seerns rather to have been the main hall.
Beneath the courtyard dominated by this building and the keep is a
long passage running N.-S. This is not to be confused with the passage,
now blocked up, which communicated, further to the W. , with the gate
At the N. end of the fortress stands (at M) an irregularly-shaped tower,
built of dressed stones, and containing on its lower storey a room with
three loopholes reached by a staircase.
In order to flank the curtain-wall to the N. a curious structure (N)
of three storeys, each with a loopholed chamber, was subsequently joined
on to the tower; a staircase joins the upper to the middle floor, but there
is no trace of that which linked the middle with the lower floor. The two
lower storeys communicate with the store-rooms mentioned previously.
Below this structure, on the N., there is a great cistern, partly excavated
from the rock and partly constructed in masonry; its outer perimeter
glacis." END
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