'… a welcome addition to the literature of military architecture. With well-chosen drawings and excellent photographs taken by the author, it provides one of the best-balanced accounts of the fortification of Palestine in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries … a thoughtful and illuminating survey of the entire Crusader military building effort in its different phases.' The Times Literary Supplement

• 1. Prologue to the study of crusader castles; 2. Fortification in the east and west before the First Crusade; 3. Castles in the twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem; 4. Twelfth-century castles in the northern states (County of Tripoli, Principality of Antioch and County of Edessa); 5. Siege warfare in the crusader lands; 6. Nobles, Templars and Teutonic knights in the thirteenth century; 7. The Hospitallers in Tripoli and Antioch; 8. Muslim castles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; Postscript: crusader castles and the west.