Shawbak Castle stands on a hilltop in southern Jordan, built in 1115 as the first Crusader stronghold in the region and later held by the Ayyubids and Mamluks.
Its walls, towers, carved inscriptions, chapel and a long stairway cut down through the rock to a water source record centuries of siege and rebuilding.
Sitting on the route toward Petra, it is often passed by, yet gives one of the clearest pictures of medieval fortification in the Levant.
