1241 · first written mention 1276 A castle called LitavaHrad, ktorý sa volal Litava

In 1241 a Mongol army broke into the Kingdom of Hungary and destroyed most of its wooden forts in a single season. King Béla IV's answer was to push his lords to build in stone and on high ground, and the great majority of Slovak castles date from the decades that followed. A castle here appears in writing for the first time in 1276, and for centuries it was called not Čabraď but Litava, after the stream in the valley below. Historians do not entirely agree how much of the stone you see is thirteenth-century work and how much was raised later — but the reason for the position never changed: below it ran the road north through the Krupinská planina towards the mining country.Roku 1241 vpadlo do Uhorska mongolské vojsko a za jedinú sezónu zničilo väčšinu drevených hradísk. Kráľ Belo IV. na to odpovedal tak, že tlačil svojich pánov stavať z kameňa a na výšinách — a drvivá väčšina slovenských hradov pochádza práve z desaťročí po vpáde. Hrad na tomto mieste sa v písomnostiach prvý raz spomína roku 1276 a po stáročia sa nevolal Čabraď, ale Litava, podľa potoka v doline pod ním. Historici sa celkom nezhodujú, koľko z dnešného muriva je práca 13. storočia a čo pribudlo neskôr — dôvod pre túto polohu sa však nezmenil nikdy: popod hrad viedla cesta na sever cez Krupinskú planinu do banského kraja.