The Hospitallers were the partners and rivals of the Templars in the defence of the Crusader states. The order had begun in Jerusalem and before 1187 they had had properties in the city and castles in the rural areas. After the battle of Hattin their castles at Belmont, Belvoir and Bethgibelin were lost and never subsequently refortified by the Christians. They still retained estates in the area of Acre and a fortified palace within the city but no castles (with the exception of the fortified commanderie at Calansue which they regained in 1191 and held until 1265. Instead they devoted their resources, both from their local estates and from their ever greater holdings in western Europe, to the defence of their great castles in the County of Tripoli.

The Hospitallers' serious connection with the County of Tripoli began in 1144. In this year Count Raymond II of Tripoli granted them what amounted to an independent principality in the east of his county. It included the small towns of Rafanea and Montferrand on the eastern slopes of the mountains looking towards Homs and the Orontes valley, considerable properties in the Buqaiah (the plain between Homs and Tripoli and separates the mountains of Lebanon to the south from Syrian hills to the north), a number of small fortifications in this plain, fishing rights in the Lake of Homs and a castle on a spur of the Syrian hills, looking both east and south, which the Arabs referred to as Hisn al-Akrad, the Castle of the Kurds. This gift brought with it both assets and problems.