Baghras Castle

The castle of Baghras in what is now South Eastern Turkey, was one of the first major fortresses donated to the Templars in the Latin East. They renamed it Castle Gaston and greatly extended it. It lay within the Crusader principality of Antioch, in the mountainous Amanus Marches. It guarded the strategic Belen Pass, on the road between Aleppo and Antioch and the ports of Alexandretta and Port Bonne. The castle was built on a high, rocky crag, and from there the Templars could control the border with Armenian Cilicia.
The Templars lost the castle to Saladin in 1188, and it was subsequently occupied by Armenian King Leo. The Templars took it back in about 1216, in alliance with Bohemond IV of Antioch, though it seems the Hospitallers sided with the Armenians against the Templars at this time. In the 1230s, the Templar garrison withstood a siege by the Muslim army of Aleppo.
The Catalan Rule of the Templars (a set or military regulations) contains various case studies for how breaches of Templar discipline have been dealt with. One of these accounts (in clause 180) sheds light on how Baghras was finally lost to the Mameluks (a Muslim warrior caste, based in Egypt, who were called 'Islam's Templars' by one Arab chronicler).

The loss of Baghras happened soon after the fall of Antioch to the Mameluk Sultan Baybars in 1268. When the Mameluks were marching on the northern Principality, the Templar Brother Geraut de Saucet, Preceptor of Antioch, based in Baghras, knew that the castle had inadequate provisions to make much of a defence. He appealed to Thomas Berard, the Grand Master, 'for the love of God to send supplies and reinforcements'. No reply was forthcoming and the garrison grew nervous about the prospect of encountering Baybars in their parlous state. One of them, Gins de Belin, turned traitor. He mounted his horse while the others were eating and rode to deliver the castle keys to the Sultan. Meanwhile the rest of the garrison decided that they could not defend the castle and so decided to destroy its contents before withdrawing to la Roche Guillaume, farther north. This as it happened was exactly what the Grand Master issue orders for them to do, but they went ahead with the evacuation before the orders arrived. Subsequently the garrison were charged at Chapter with abandoning the caste without permission. Geraut de Saucet and his brethren faced expulsion from the Order, but argued that as they had correctly anticipated the Grand Master’s command, they should escape punishment. (If they had waited for the order to come they might have died waiting.) The Chapter at Acre decided that under the circumstances the deserters of Baghras should be allowed to retain their Templar mantles.
The ruins of Baghras may still be seen. A steep winding track leads up to the massive walls of the lower bailey. There is a gaping hole in the courtyard resulting from the collapse of part of the ceiling of the great vaulted undercroft.



A Turkish friend of mine, a distinguished surgeon, visited Baghras in August 2008, and I am in his debt for the photos included here. He was told by the local villagers that the Templars used slave labour in the construction of the castle. Evidently the knights are not well remembered. He also mentioned the presence of sinister tunnels leading below the ruins. Apparently not long ago some local boys were playing in the ruins ; two, aged aged 15 and 13, went into these tunnels and were never seen again.

'Two of them said to the other two that they will enter the tunnles. They all were in second floor. And they leaved from second floor. Two of them were in second floor still... then... they waited... but nobody came back. Then they went to village maybe their friends came back to village... but no... they were lost.'

'This story (the slave labour) was told to me by local villagers. I dont know more... but I saw deep tunnels, tunnel entrances... but not their exits. It was very terrible... There are 2 buildngs also one of them is a bath... villagers said me that soldiers in here dont permit to good foreign people before they get a good shower. But they said me that maybe this bath buildng was built by seljuks...not templars.'