Baghras Castle

When one ponders a castle one can't help but wonder how it could be taken. Yet,  medieval commanders often racked up a long list of successful sieges during invasions. The question again came up today as I pondered Baghras Castle, also known as Gaston, just outside Antioch. The journey up to the castle involved a delaying action by an army of goats and then a steep clime up a rough and precipitous track. At the top we gazed upon a massive, grim and somewhat ruined structure still above us. To call it brooding would do injustice to its obvious intent to threaten and intimidate. 

My Blue Guide to Turkey informed me that the first castle here was built by the Arab conquerors in the seventh century but this was constructed on even more ancient fortifications. The sight was always important because it controlled the route from Antioch up the coast. Thus the Byzantines besieged the Arabs and then later the Crusaders captured and destroyed it only to rebuild. The place was handed over to the Templars to hold as part of their defensive perimeter around the kingdom of Jerusalem. The castle was attacked again by the king of Armenia and then finally taken by Saladin in 1188. The Templars took it back shortly after and then the Arabs finally captured it at the beginning of the 14th century. Looking upon it now one wonders how this place changed hands so many times? The entrance, before it was destroyed by an earthquake, was a ramp that ran along the edge of a cliff defended by a thousand feet of oblivion. Any other approach involved scaling walls built on top of a giant rock formation already a hundred feet high.

My companions chose to stay in the van but castle hound that I am I found the rocky path that snaked its way into a broken wall. The view offered the kind of perspective on the world that only eagles or perhaps vultures experience. I could easily see into Syria fifty miles away. I explored the mostly ruined interior structures and finally came upon the most intact building in the castle, the chapel. It still contained a vaulted roof, several Gothic features and windows that had once perhaps held stained glass. Here the Templars practiced the traditional part of their strange monastic lives. As I gazed out of the broken windows down into the desolate chasm below I could begin to understand how a garrison could give this place up to an attacker. Isolated, without knowledge of what was happening in the outside world, hungary and depressed by the lofty bleakness of the place a surrender on terms must have been appealing. 

With a shudder I too abandoned the castle to its ghostly Templar defenders and scrambled back down to the van and away.