The Salah El-Din Castle is located on

Pharaoh's Island Pharaoh's Island ( ''Jazīratu Firawn''), whose current popular name is Coral Island, is a small island in the northern Gulf of Aqaba some east off the shore of Egypt's eastern Sinai Peninsula. Some scholars identify this island port with bib ...

in northwestern tip of the

Gulf of Aqaba The Gulf of Aqaba () or Gulf of Eilat () is a large gulf at the northern tip of the Red Sea, east of the Sinai Peninsula and west of the Arabian Peninsula. Its coastline is divided among four countries: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

.Said Aly ''Sinai, the meaning and importance'' The

castle A castle is a type of fortification, fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by Military order (monastic society), military orders. Scholars usually consider a ''castle'' to be the private ...

is composed from two parts (Northern and Southern).

History

It has been claimed that this was built by Baldwin I, who was the

King of Jerusalem The king or queen of Jerusalem was the supreme ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a Crusader state founded in Jerusalem by the Latin Church, Latin Catholic leaders of the First Crusade, when the city was Siege of Jerusalem (1099), conquered in ...

, in 1116 AD because the island was situated on a place of strategical importance: in the crossroads of trade and

pilgrim The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as ...

routes from Egypt (Sinai) and

Syro-Palestine The Levant ( ) is the subregion that borders the Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west, and forms the core of West Asia and the political term, ''Middle East''. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultura ...

to the

Arab Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula (, , or , , ) or Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia, situated north-east of Africa on the Arabian plate. At , comparable in size to India, the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world. Geographically, the ...

with holy

Mecca Mecca, officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, is the capital of Mecca Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia; it is the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley above ...

. The Crusaders allegedly pursued two objectives: for one thing, to defend southeastern corner of the

Kingdom of Jerusalem The Kingdom of Jerusalem, also known as the Crusader Kingdom, was one of the Crusader states established in the Levant immediately after the First Crusade. It lasted for almost two hundred years, from the accession of Godfrey of Bouillon in 1 ...

against its Muslim neighbours, for another, to exact a ransom from the passing Muslim pilgrims. Location of the castle was easily defendable on high ground, in the narrowest part on the Gulf of Aqaba. According to Prof

Adrian Boas Adrian is a form of the Latin given name Adrianus or Hadrianus. Its ultimate origin is most likely via the former river Adria from the Venetic and Illyrian word ''adur'', meaning "sea" or "water". The Adria was until the 8th century BC the main ...

there is, however, no evidence of Frankish occupation of the island. Fulcher of Chartres mentions that when King Baldwin travelled down to the city of Elim (Ailah), the locals fled to the island by boat, but he does not describe the Franks pursuing them or taking the island.Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem 1095-1127, trans. F.R. Ryan. New York, 1969, II.56, pp. 215-16. The castles played a major rule in the

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding t ...

Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...

and Ottoman eras. A battle allegedly took place on the island in about 1170 where the fortress was captured by Salah El-Din, who largely expanded the fortress. It unclear who he captured it from, however, and there are no records of a Frankish garrison being present. After that period the Mamelukes and Ottomans had some further additions to the fortress. The fortress has many small rooms, which include sleeping quarters for troops, bathhouses, and kitchens with huge ovens. There are towers for pigeons, which were used for relaying messages and also circular towers for archers.

References

{{Egypt-struct-stub Castles in Egypt