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View looking east at the interior of the Crusader Church. It consisted of a nave and two aisles and was built in the Romanesque style. Running from the lower center of the image upward to the right is the southern nave of the church. To the left of that is the central aisle.
The wall on the left, with the three arches, separates the north aisle, on the other side of the wall, from the nave—on this side of the wall. The stones closing two of the archways, and the ground level arches, are not Crusader. They were part of a later Islamic structure that incorporated the Crusader Church.
The Church was built ca. 1136 by King Fulk of Anjou.
A Crusader fortress was built at Beit Gibelin by King Fulk of Anjou on the ruins of an Early Islamic fort. This was granted to the Hospitallers in 1136. Under their patronage and protection a civilian settlement of 32 Frankish families settled there in AD 1160.
