With the confrontation of opponents, cultures and religions, the different spiritual and material possessions of sides end up with a synthesis. Such a unity may be one of the rare benefits of events like wars / while the main objection is to destroy the other. The crusades where the idea was to rescue the Holy Lands not only generated a culture of Levant but also furnished the lands of near east with the art and architecture of the crusading Latin Kingdom. Cyprus, as support and stronghold had been an important and strategic place where the Latins took advantage and granted back with beautiful Gothic churches and strongly built inaccessible castles. The castles, especially the three hilltop castles of St Hilarion, Buffavento and Kantara on the north probably perfectly reflect the crusading culture and exemplify the architecture which the Latins built in Cyprus.
The crusader castles in Cyprus are certainly the products of a synthesis which combine the war and castle building experiences of the west, which crusaders brought with them when they came and the east which they faced with in the Holy Lands. In order to comprehend on the castles in Cyprus, subjects like the idea of crusading, the feudal system and knighthood in Europe and Levant are also important to enlighten the context as well as the characteristics and the types of the crusader castles in Levant. Therefore this study aims to find out the place and the importance of crusader castles in Cyprus in the crusading history.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12605612/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| Creators | Ucar, Gulnur |
| Contributors | Guven, Suna |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.A. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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