Journey to the Outremere: The Knights

Salah ad-Din Triumphant near the entrance of the Hamidinyeh souk in Damascus (click photos to enlarge)

Until I gather my thoughts about my first visit to the Outremere into a semblance of coherence (thus formulating my first assumptions about the Middle-East issue - or, rather, Issue ) let me state for those of you who ask that I did not mean to trace the footsteps of the Crusaders.

Damascus, April 2008: Me at the statue of the Triumph of the great warrior-king, Salah ad-Din (photo by Dimitris Dimopoulos)

I think I did a hell of a job in avoiding them alltogether, the first step being the decision to steer clear of Tripoli (Trabulus) and Homs (with the Krak des Chevaliers). However, it seemed that there would be much to avoid even in the south of Lebanon, what with Tyre, Sidon and all. Or was there...?

View of the city of Sidon from the top of the ruins of the Sidon Sea Castle

Li frere, li Mestre du Temple
Qu’estoient rempli et ample
D’or et d’argent et de richesse,
Et qui menoient tel noblesse,
Ou sont-il? que sont devenu?
Que tant ont de plait maintenu,
Que nul a elz ne s’ozoit prendre
Tozjors achetoient sans vendre
Nul riche a elz n’estoit de prise;
Tant va pot a eue qu’il brise.

(Chronique à la suite du Roman de Fauvel)

That was my question as well. What happened to the brothers, the Masters of the Temple, full and resplendent in their riches, their gold and silver and their nobility? Where were their castles? Where were the ruins that would point to the knightly past of Tyre and Sidon?

Roman columns as horizontal supports for the walls of the Sea Fortress at Sidon

The answer more or less is: not to be found. The overthrow of the Crusaders was complete and most testaments of their passing were razed. The few ruins that remain tell a sad story of opportunistic unstable rule and very low grade of integration of the local populace.

For this, the statue of Salah ad-Din stands triumphant in Damascus, with the heretical, greedy, honourless, cowardly and insolent Templars (forever a curse and an anathema to their order: anathema, anathema, anathema ), Renald de Chatillon and Guy de Lusignan at the rear feet of his horse, desolate and defeated. Anathema sit!

The defeated: Renald de Chatillon (Salah ad-Din rid the world of this worm by beheading him after the Crusader disaster at the Horns of Hattin) and the so-called-King Guy de Lusignan... note the sack of plunder! (photo by Dimitris Dimopoulos)

Besides... there were more interesting and important things to see and experience in the psychological epicentre of the Middle East Issue...:

The walls of Beyruth cry bitter tears...

PS: Let there be, now and forever, an anathema to the name of anyone who is in anyway associated with the filth, heresy, witchcraft and insolence of the Knights Templar. May his face be forever black. May his soul burn in the eternal fire. Anathema sit! Anathema, anathema, anathema....

PS II: Still the "occult" legacy of the templar vermin persists if one knows where to look: In a back alley of Tyre, above a graveyard entrance consigned in 1948... a Templar cross! In black and white, the colours of the Beauceant... anathema: !


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