Roche-Guillaume

La Roche-Guillaume (perhaps modern-day Çalan Kalesi)[1] was a medieval fortress of the Knights Templar located near the Syrian Gates in what is now the Hatay Province of Turkey.

[2] Legend states that in 1188, Saladin placed the castle under siege because Jean Gale,[3][a] a knight against whom he sought revenge, was there.

Years prior, Gale had been excommunicated from the Christian community for murder and had found refuge with Saladin in Muslim territory.

Saladin may have taken Roche-Guillaume, but news from Palestine that King Guy de Lusignan had led knights into Tripoli as forebears of the Third Crusade brought an early end to his siege of the castle.

Others placed it further east, on a plateau at 1,250-metre (4,100 ft) rocky precipice above the plain of Karasu Çayı, near the Euphrates.