Digital Documentation of Mediaeval Castles in Syria and Lebanon

During the past few years many technologies and methodologies have been developed and fostered to provide good documentationDocumentation and better recording for the built heritageHeritage. Digital documentationDocumentation nowadays has no limits. Everything could be documented for the support of the scholar’s analysis, and many other future architectural and archaeological works. Therefore, this chapter treats the methodology and the power that can be provided by the adapted surveying and documenting methods. Focusing on the Near East sites, located in critical areas, such as war zones or encroaching of modern housing, makes the documentationDocumentation much more intriguing and challenging. These methodologies can be a tool of maintaining the different stages of the built heritageHeritage all along the years and to be a support for further comparisons and studies held off-site studies. Two castles will be discussed: first the Crac des chevaliers castle (SyriaSyria) and second the Qulay’at castle (LebanonLebanon), dating from the same era, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, showing common elements in different environment and conditions, located in the nowadays different countries, but used to be the same neighbourhood as the “County of Tripoli”.