Crusader sites in Haifa and on Mount Carmel

Haifa was a small port in the Crusader period — far smaller than Acre to the north or Caesarea to the south — but it controlled the narrow coastal corridor between the Carmel headland and the sea. Tancred took the town in 1100 after a hard fight, and the Frankish chroniclers record that much of its defence was carried out by its Jewish population alongside the Fatimid garrison.

Mount Carmel itself was sparsely fortified but spiritually significant. The Carmelite hermits established their first community here in the early thirteenth century, sheltered by the small Hospitaller stronghold at St Margaret's near modern Stella Maris. Further inland, Khirbat Rushmiya — Frankish Francheville — guarded an important spring on the lower slopes of the Carmel. The Lordship of Haifa, granted to Geldemar Carpinel and his heirs, also controlled the coastal road that ran south past Atlit, the great Hospitaller castle of the Templar Order's rival.