ABSTRACT

Considering the very substantial number of public buildings of medieval datesurviving in Jerusalem, it is perhaps somewhat surprising that there is very little evidence for domestic architecture of the Crusade period. Whereas in the West the rarity of surviving twelfth-century domestic buildings, and the frequent lack of anything more than the most fragmentary archaeological remains, can be explained by the fact that they were constructed from perishable materials, in the Latin East they were almost always built from stone. Nonetheless, no more than a handful of twelfthcentury houses can be observed in Jerusalem, most of them merely fragments. This state of affairs seems remarkable when we compare Jerusalem to Acre, where many Crusader houses survive throughout the city and excavations are constantly exposing additional ones. Even in smaller towns such as Caesarea, Arsuf and Yoqne‘am there are several domestic buildings. How can we explain the lack of domestic buildings in Jerusalem?