Tancred's Tower
former tower in Jerusalem's Old City walls
Tancred's Tower, known in Arabic as Qasr (al-)Jalud ("Goliath's Castle", see below), was a large tower at the northwest corner of the Old City of Jerusalem, of which only meager remains were unearthed by archaeologists.
Today, much of the area of the original structure is beneath the Collège des Frères of the De La Salle Brothers.
Parts of it are in the external base of the city wall where the section coming from the New Gate to the northeast meets the section coming from Jaffa Gate to the southeast.
Names
The tower is known in Arabic as Qaṣr Jālūd/Jālūt ("Goliath's Castle") or Qalʿat Jālūd ("Goliath's Fortress") or Burj Jālūd ("Goliath's Tower").
The name may be from traditions about Goliath or an allusion to its size or a reference to the Tower of David.
To the Crusaders, it was the Turris Tancredi (Latin for "Tancred's Tower"), after Tancred of Antioch, the commander whose troops breached the Fatimid defenses at this specific point during the 1099 siege. There was also a 13th-century map where it is the Turris Nebulosa.
History
The remains are of a large tower, probably first built in the 11th century during the Fatimid period, when the Christian community was forced by decree in 1063 to erect a new wall complete with towers in the north-western part of the city. Sources speak of a forewall, moat, and main wall. During the 1099 siege at the end of the First Crusade, the city and tower fell to the Franks, who later referred to it as Tancred's Tower because it was at this spot that the Italo-Norman leader first attempted to scale Jerusalem's city wall by ladder on 13 June 1099.
“Tancred's Tower” enters the record as former tower in Jerusalem's Old City walls. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tancred's, Tower and former can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Tancred's Tower” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Tancred's, Tower and former provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12408818. Authority coordinates are 31.779, 35.226. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1099 and 1063.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tancred's Tower” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.