Dead Sea

The Dead Sea formed the southeastern frontier of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Its western shore lay within the royal domain of Jerusalem, while the eastern shore belonged to the Lordship of Oultrejordain — whose great castles of Kerak and Montreal looked down on it from the Moabite plateau.

The lake's hyper-saline waters yielded both salt (harvested in open-pan salinas on the western shore) and bitumen, which medieval chronicles call 'Jews' pitch' and which supplied the caulking of ships and the waterproofing of mortar across the Levant.

In 1177 King Baldwin IV's army marched past its northern tip en route to the victory at Montgisard. Five years later Raynald of Châtillon built the galleys of his Red Sea raid at Kerak on this shore, then had them dismantled and carried overland across Oultrejordain to the Gulf of Aqaba — the only recorded medieval amphibious operation of its kind.