Karak Resources Project

The written accounts of the Karak plateau, and the remainder of southern Jordan in the fifteenth century paint a picture of a region in crisis. In the historical chronicles of the period there are descriptions of incessant bedouin raiding upon both travelers and the settled communities. The Mamluk government no longer had the will or the capacity to control the area, and many villages were depopulated. The area of land under cultivation diminished, and the tax revenues gathered from these formerly prosperous areas dwindled. Assuming that this instability continued into the Ottoman period, then we would expect to find a region almost devoid of occupation. Indeed, this was what apparently greeted the first Europeans to visit the Karak plateau in the early years of the nineteenth century. The intrepid traveler John Lewis Burckhardt (died 1817) reports that beyond the small urban center of Karak itself, there were few permanently settled villages on the plateau. This situation was also encountered further south. It was not until the end of the century that population levels started to increase and many previously deserted villages (Arabic: khirba or khirbat) were reoccupied.

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were a period of considerable prosperity in Jordan. At this time, the castle of Karak played its most important role in the political life of the Middle East. In order to understand this parallel development it is necessary to consider the wider geographical and political environment at this time. With the construction of the castle by the Crusader lord, Pagan, after 1142, Karak became the administrative and military center of a region that covered the lands south of the Wādī Zarqa’ and east of the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea valley [ Photo], as well as Hebron (Arabic: Khalīl) in Palestine. In later periods Karak continued in this role as the regional capital of Jordan. The importance of the lands of Balqa’ (the area between the Wādī Zarqā’ and the Wādī al-Mūjib), the Karak plateau, and the lands south of the Wādī al-Hasā was both economic and strategic in nature. On the economic side, the provided abundant quantities of wheat, barley, olives and fruit (the Karak plateau had been the breadbasket of the Crusader Kingdom before 1188). In the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea areas this was supplemented by valuable crops such as sugar and indigo and mineral resources such as salt, bitumen and, possibly, copper. The bedouin tribes of the eastern Syrian desert (Arabic: Bādiya al-Shām) not only raised large numbers of horses, camels and sheep but also were employed as auxiliary troops.

The location of Karak made it of crucial strategic importance. In the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Crusaders regained their strongholds on the coast of Palestine and Syria. Karak thus became one of the border regions of this enemy state guarding the passes across the Jordan valley and around the south end of the Dead Sea. The castle housed garrisons and functioned as an arsenal for weapons used in campaigns against the Crusaders. The major trade route of the King’s Highway (Arabic: Darb al-Malik) passed through the territories controlled by Karak. This road carried much of the commercial traffic passing between Cairo and Damascus, and every year many pilgrims from Syria used the road south for the annual pilgrimage (Arabic: hajj) to the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. It was the responsibility of the officials in Karak and other military sites along the King’s Highway to ensure that the road remained safe for travellers. The Mongol invasions of Syria in the second half of the thirteenth century further emphasized the important role played by Karak. The town became one of the main meeting points between state officials and the bedouin tribes of the eastern desert. These groups performed valuable services gathering intelligence about future military expeditions by the Mongol army in Iraq.