Crusader fortresses in the Galilee

The Galilee was the Crusader Kingdom's most heavily fortified frontier — a contested zone between the kingdom's heartland on the Mediterranean coast and the Ayyubid emirates of Damascus to the east. Every major hill, ford, and road through the Galilee was watched from one of a dozen great castles, and the catastrophe at Hattin in July 1187 was the defeat that broke this line and let Saladin sweep the kingdom away in a single summer.

Belvoir, the great Hospitaller concentric castle perched 500 metres above the Jordan Valley, held out for eighteen months after Hattin — longer than any other Crusader castle in the kingdom. Montfort, hidden in a steep wooded gorge above modern Nahariya, became the Teutonic Order's headquarters in 1220. Saphet (Safed) was the Templars' great mountain stronghold, refortified after 1240. Yehiam (Judin) controlled the road from Acre to the upper Galilee. Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee was the capital of the Principality of Galilee, the kingdom's senior baronial fief.