The Estate in the Levant

Abstract

Extending nearly 1000 kilometres from north to south, the region of Syria and Palestine forms the western horn of the Fertile Crescent. Two parallel mountain ranges, broken by a depression carrying the watercourses of the Orontes, Litani and Jordan, run at some distance from the sea. Since the wind is a prevailing westerly, winter rainwater is deposited on the high ground which retains it (better then than now because there were more trees) and gradually releases it back to the coast throughout the dry season. The plains between the mountains and the coast are, therefore, relatively green. Some districts beyond the mountains, such as the land east of the Sea of Galilee, are quite fertile too, before they merge into the desert which borders the region to the east and south. So is Cilicia to the north-west, the agricultural possibilities of which interested the Hospitallers in the early thirteenth century.¹ Although the population throughout the region had suffered in the wars between the Egyptians and Turks in the eleventh century there was still a flourishing town life. The greatest cities in the region — Cairo and Damascus — were never occupied by the westerners, but the settlers held Jerusalem, which had always been a goal for Christian, Muslim and Jewish pilgrims, and important trading cities like Acre and Tyre.