Castellum Regis
| Castellum Regis | ||
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 Castellum Regis |
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| Alternative name (s): | Mhalia Castle, Château du Roi |
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| Creation time : | before 1160 | |
| Castle type : | Hilltop castle | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Place: | Mi'ilya | |
| Geographical location | 33 ° 1 '30 " N , 35 ° 15' 34" E | |
| Height: | 500 m | |
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Castellum Regis ( King's Castle ; French: Château du Roi ) is a former crusader castle in Mi'ilya (Mhalia) in Galilee in northern Israel .
location
The ruins of the crusader castle are located in the mountains of Galilee, about 22 km northeast of Acre , about 2 km southeast of Montfort Castle . Today the residential development in Mi'ilya extends right up to the castle.
history
The castle was first mentioned in a document in 1160, when King Baldwin III. von Jerusalem gave the castle as a hereditary fiefdom to John of Haifa , son of Gambre . 1182 gave Baldwin III. of Jerusalem the castle to his uncle, Count Joscelin III , who was ousted in Edessa . The castle was called "the new castle in the mountains of Akkon", which may be due to the fact that it was rebuilt in 1179.
At the end of 1187 the castle fell to Sultan Saladin , but was recaptured a few years later.
The husband of Joscelin's heir, Otto von Botenlauben , sold the castle to the Teutonic Order in 1220 . The purchase was contested by Jakob von Mandelée (Amigdala), son of Joscelin's youngest daughter, Agnes, who claimed a share of Joscelin's estate and was finally paid out by the Teutonic Order in 1228. At this point the castle had already lost its importance to the nearby Montfort Castle .
The castle was finally conquered by the Mamluks between 1266 and 1271 .
investment
Castellum Regis was built as a hilltop castle on the top of a hill. It has a rectangular floor plan and at each corner a protruding rectangular tower, from which attackers could also be shot at at the foot of the wall. The outer walls are approx. 3 m thick and enclose an area of almost 40 m². Further below the hill there are partly bricked, partly cut into the rock remains of a bailey with a church and houses.
Excavations
Since 2002 the ruins of the Castellum Regis and the surrounding area have been researched and secured by archaeologists from the Zinman Institute of Archeology at the University of Haifa .
literature
- Ronnie Elenblum: Frankish rural settlement in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Cambridge University Press, 1998. pp. 41 ff.
- Rabei Khamisy: The History and Architectural Design of Castellum Regis and Some Other Finds in the Village of Mi'ilya . In: Crusades , ISSN 1476-5276 , Vol. 12 (2013), pp. 13-51.
- Denys Pringle: Secular Buildings in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. To Archaeological Gazetteer. Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 71 f.
- Denys Pringle: The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. A corpus. Volume 2. Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pages 30-32.
