Shobak Castle (Mont Real / Montréal)

Shobak Castle, known in Crusader sources as Montréal or Mont Real and in Arabic as Qal'at ash-Shawbak (Shoubak), is a fortified stronghold perched on a rocky, conical mountain above orchids and terraced hills east of the Arabah Valley. According to Jordanian tourism material cited in the research notes, the castle was founded during the Crusader period (a construction date of 1115 CE is given, attributed to Baldwin I). It formed part of the chain of Crusader fortresses across what is now Jordan and later saw modification and expansion under Mamluk rule. The supplied notes record typical travelogues and photographic captions that repeat a narrative that the castle fell to Saladin and that it was destroyed several decades after construction; these particular chronological phrasings are present in visitor captions but are not uniformly corroborated by primary documents in the provided excerpts and are therefore treated with caution. In the modern era the site exists as archaeological ruins and has been the subject of conservation and site-risk-assessment research. It is presented in travel guides and photo galleries as a destination on routes toward Petra and is discussed in tourism development materials. The research notes do not document any folkloric or paranormal tradition associated with Shobak Castle. No apparitions, hauntings, named spirits, poltergeist activity, or other supernatural phenomena are described in the supplied sources. Historical figures (e.g., Baldwin I, Saladin) appear in the material in their historical roles; none are cited as supernatural entities. Interpretation in the provided corpus is historical, archaeological, and touristic rather than paranormal.