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Whether you approach Karak from the ancient Kings Highway to the east or from the Dead Sea to the west, the striking silhouette of this fortified town and castle will instantly make you understand why the fates of kings and nations were decided here for millennia.
An ancient Crusader stronghold, Karak sits 900m above sea level and lies inside the walls of the old city. The city today is home to around 170,000 people and continues to boast a number of restored 19th century Ottoman buildings, restaurants, places to stay, and the like. But it is undoubtedly Karak Castle that dominates.
The Kerak Castle is one of the largest crusader castles in the Levant
The history of Karak it has parallels with many other cities in the area and throughout Jordan in general. It was an important Moabite city for its strategic location, in the middle of the caravan route that connected Syria with Egypt and Arabia, and also for this reason it was used by Nabataeans, Greeks and Romans, as well as their successors the Byzantines. A good example of this importance is in its appearance in the famous mosaic map of Madaba
In the following century, Karak Castle It was consolidated by the Mamluks, but at the end of that century it could not resist another onslaught, this time from the earth: a great earthquake caused very important damage to its structure. This was found in 1812 by Jean Louis Burckhardt, the Swiss explorer who rediscovered Petra for the Western world, who visited it on his travels in the area.
In parallel to the Karak Castle, the city was growing gradually, where Arabs and Christians coexisted, although not without conflicts: at the end of the nineteenth century, the entire Christian population was forced to leave the city after one of these confrontations, heading to Madaba, where the climate of tolerance was greater.
Karak Castle is a dark maze of stone-vaulted halls and endless passageways. The best preserved are underground and can be reached via a massive door (ask at the ticket desk). More imposing than beautiful, the castle is nevertheless an impressive insight into the architectural military genius of the Crusaders.
With some care, you can walk along the crenellated top of the West Front wall and admire the sweeping view. On clear days, you can look across the Dead Sea and see all the way to the Mount of Olives bordering Jerusalem
Outside the castle, visitors can visit the Castle Plaza, where beautiful 19th century Ottoman administrative buildings have been redesigned to house a tourist center, with restaurants, a crafts center and other facilities grouped around a central plaza.
Located at Al-Mazar near Karak, the museum is host to a collection of items representing Islamic civilization and culture, including sculpture, ceramics and coins.
The Karak Archaeological Museum was established inside the old castle, which has remains from the Moabite period in the first millennium BC, going through the Nabataean, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic and Crusader periods. The museum was opened in 1980.
The main part of the museum is a large hall in a vault of the castle, used as living quarters for soldiers in the Mameluk period. The collections date from the Neolithic up to the late Islamic periods and come from the Karak and Tafila regions. Among the sites is Bab Adh-Dhra’, famous for its Bronze Age burials. The museum houses remains of skeletons and pottery from the Bab Adh-Dhra’ graves; Iron Age II artefacts from Buseirah; Byzantine glass vessels and inscriptions, and Roman and Nabataean artefacts from Rabbah and Qasr.
You can visit Prophet Nuh’s (Noah) shrine in Karak, and his tomb lies close to the city. God sent Noah to his people to warn them of divine punishment if they continued to worship idols, and to build a mighty ark that would withstand the floods to come
Except for the statue of Saladin located in the center of the city, all attention and interest is concentrated in the castle of Karak. Its figure rises imposing on top of the hill, although it is even missing important elements such as several towers, fallen during the earthquake of the thirteenth century. Its current state, however, denotes an important effort to restore and preserve the elements that have survived since then, with abundant information panels and a simple ticket office at the entrance.
This is the list of places to see in Karak, all of them within the castle grounds:
It is easy to get here, on journeys that are not too long, since it is located in the center of the country. These are some distances and indicative durations: