Muslim Fortresses in the Levant: Between Crusaders and Mongols (25 page)

The amir who supervised the Ayyubid building phase was
al-Dīn Barghash
.
¹³⁵
The name implies he was an officer belonging to
al-Dīn’s brother,
. Since he supervised the site it seems that part of the construction work was linked or initiated directly by
, who in later years became one of the most renowned builders among the Ayyubid sultans.

The supervision of the construction was seldom entrusted to civilians. The military men who acted as supervisors were often moved from one site to another as attested by the inscriptions. Officers such as
al-Dīn Aybak supervised work at both
and Mount Tabor, while
al-Dīn Barghash’s name appears on inscriptions at the fortresses of
and later at Karak.
¹³⁶
The supervisors of
and Mount Tabor were both of the rank of amīr kabīr, while
al-Dīn Usāma who supervised the construction of
was one of
al-Dīn’s chosen officers. Since an army was often present on a site to safeguard the construction, and occasionally joined the building force, a high-ranking officer had to be present. The logistics of running a large building site were no doubt different from those of a battlefield, but experience and efficiency in handling large numbers of men, seeing to their daily needs, and finding solutions for large and small problems must have served these officers well on such grand-scale building projects. They may have been involved in the initial stages of planning, lending their own experience to improve and modify the construction of a fortress as they thought fit. They had all probably participated in siege warfare at one point or another in their military careers.