Thread by @MichaelDPress

Krak des Chevaliers in Syria is one of the best preserved Crusader castles but I want to look at its post-Crusader history:
I never knew that there was a modern village within the walls until the 1930s . . .

(photo by Cloj via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Il_K…)

I touched on this a bit in an earlier thread but I think it's worth looking at the village in greater detail

https://twitter.com/MichaelDPress/status/1001624849905831940

In something similar to Palmyra, the French forcibly removed the villagers in the 1930s to allow preservation and restoration of the castle
Here Hugh Kennedy describes the process (in the book Crusader Castles, 1994)

Perhaps I've been conditioned from my readings on Palmyra, but I sense some of the typical Orientalist prioritizing old buildings over living communities in Kennedy's description
"There remained, however, the question of the villagers . . ."

Kennedy is also wrong on a basic point: he incorrectly claims that the village was a recent settlement, coming after the 1860s visit by Emmanuel Guillaume Rey, the first scholar to systematically study Crusader fortresses in the Levant.

In fact, Western visitors regularly mention the village in their accounts throughout the 19th century.
Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, apparently the first European to visit the castle, estimated about 50 houses there in 1812
(Travels in Syria & the Holy Land, 1822)

The famous biblical geographer and philologist Edward Robinson visited Krak in 1852 and distinguished the village within the castle (Qala'at al-Husn) and a second village outside the walls (al-Husn, which still exists).

(Robinson, Later Biblical Researches, 1856)

Krak was also the administrative seat of the district, where the Qaimaqam (governor) resided.
Gertrude Bell visited in 1905, accompanying an escort of prisoners to be jailed there, and met by the residents
gertrudebell.ncl.ac.uk/letter_details…

And Rey -- the man Kennedy claims visited before Krak was occupied by the village -- himself describes how the cisterns of the castle were used in his day by "the inhabitants of the fortress".
(Rey, Etude sur les monuments, 1871)

Rey's major influence on the study of Crusader castles was felt at Krak -- he was apparently the first to give it the poetic name "le Krak des chevaliers" (to distinguish it from other sites named Krak/Karak?).
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emma…

But note that Rey's reference to the modern village, in an entire chapter on Krak des Chevaliers, is very brief--just like the references of other travelers.

And Rey's many plans & illustrations of the site do not appear to show anything of the village.
gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt…

The photographs I've seen of the site throughout this period focus only on the Crusader architecture and are silent, still, empty of people:
by Louis de Clercq, 1859-60 (L) and Gertrude Bell, 1905 (R)
artsandculture.google.com/asset/le-krak-…
gertrudebell.ncl.ac.uk/photo_details.…

The only images I know of from this period showing Syrians -- including children -- in the castle are a couple of prints accompanying a piece by Edouard Lockroy, who accompanied Ernest Renan on his "Mission to Phoenicia" in the early 1860s
(Le Tour du Monde, 1863)

But Lockroy also provides the best (really, worst) summary of how Westerners approached modern villages at Krak des Chevaliers, Palmyra
"You glimpse an entire population living in these ruins, like the worms on a corpse."

The Paris museum Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine has an exhibit on Krak des Chevaliers starting September 14 and running through January 14, 2019
citedelarchitecture.fr/fr/exposition/…

The description mentions the village within the Krak's walls . . . But it then adopts the official French view that they had to acquire the Krak in order to save it, as it was then "invaded by constructions" -- that is, the modern village.

What of the villagers themselves?