As
we approached the incredible castle that was dominating the hill top that
controlled the valley and the mountains of Lebanon on the distance, Our driver
pulled in the parking lot which was well defined.Day 08 Palmera April 24, 2010 Saturday
Krak des Chevaliers
As
we approached the incredible castle that was dominating the hill top that
controlled the valley and the mountains of Lebanon on the distance, Our driver
pulled in the parking lot which was well defined.
those if us who knew French got very excited to see a young man riding a horse! what an appropriate shot of a "Chevaliers" by the fortress of the horse men - les chevaliers.
We
had a wonderful lecture on the historic significance of this fortress.
Known to the Arabs as Hisn al Akrad the Castle of the Kurds, it was
called by the Franks Le Crat and then by a confusion with karak
(fortress), Le Crac. The castle is located east of Tripoli, Lebanon, in
the Homs Gap, atop a 650-metre-high hill along the only route from Antioch to
Beirut and the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of many fortresses that were part of
a defensive network along the border of the old Crusader states. The fortress
controlled the road to the Mediterranean, and from this base, the
Hospitallers could exert some influence over Lake
Homs to the east to control the fishing industry and watch for Muslim armies
gathering in Syria.
The original fortress at this location had been built in 1031 for the emir of Aleppo.
During the First Crusade in 1099 it was captured by Raymond IV of Toulouse, but then abandoned when the Crusaders continued their march towards Jerusalem. It was reoccupied again in 1110. In 1142 it was given by Raymond II, count of Tripoli, to the Hospitallers, contemporaries of the Knights Templar.
Krak
des Chevaliers was the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller during the
Crusades. It was expanded between 1150 and 1250 and eventually housed a garrison
of 2,000
In 1163 the fortress was unsuccessfully besieged by Nur ad-Din Zengi, after which the Hospitallers became an essentially independent force on the Tripolitanian frontier. By 1170 the Hospitallers' modifications were complete. In the late 12th and early 13th century numerous earthquakes caused some damage and required further rebuilding.
Saladin unsuccessfully besieged the castle in
1188. During the siege the castellan was captured and taken by Saladin's men to
the castle gates where he was told to order the gates opened. He reportedly told
his men in Arabic, the language of his captors, to surrender the castle, but
then told them in French to hold the castle to the last man.
In 1217, during the Fifth Crusade, king Andrew II of Hungary strengthened the
outer walls and financed the guarding troops.
In
1271 the fortress was captured by
Mamluk Sultan
Baibars on
April 8 with the aid of
heavy Trebuchets and
Mangonels, at least one of which was later used
to attack Acre in 1291. However, to conquer the castle, Baibars used a trick, by
presenting a forged letter from the Crusader Commander in Tripoli, ordering the
defenders to surrender the castle. Otherwise, this immensely strong castle would
probably never have fallen. Baibars refortified the castle and used it as a base
against Tripoli. He also converted the Hospitaller chapel to a mosque.
The fortress was described as “perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world” by T. E. Lawrence In 1935, the castle was bought by the French government.
The Hospitallers rebuilt it and expanded it into the largest Crusader fortress in the Holy Land, adding an outer wall three meters thick with seven guard towers eight to ten meters thick to create a concentric castle. The fortress may have held about 50–60 Hospitaller knights and up to 2,000 other foot soldiers; the Grand Master of the Hospitallers lived in one of the towers.
The
buildings in the inner ward were rebuilt by the Hospitallers in a Gothic style.
These buildings included a meeting hall, a chapel, a 120-meter-long storage
facility, and two vaulted stone stables which could have held up to a thousand
horses. Other storage facilities were dug into the cliff below the fortress; it
is estimated that the Hospitallers could have withstood a siege for five years.
Crac can be classified both as a spur castle and a fully developed concentric castle. The southern side of the castle is the most vulnerable to attack, as this is where the spur on which the castle stands is connected to the next hill, so that siege engines can approach on level ground. The inner defenses are strongest at this point, with a cluster of towers connected by a thick wall. The inner curtain wall is up to 100 feet thick at the base on the south side, with seven guard towers 30 feet in diameter. Between the inner and outer walls at the southern side there is a large open cistern, fed by an aqueduct from outside the castle. The square tower in the South does not date from the crusader period, but was added when the Mamluks repaired the damage from their successful siege after they had taken over the castle.
On the eastern side between the inner and outer walls a vaulted ramp leads from the outer to the inner gate. The ramp makes a number of elbow turns and is defended by arrow slits and machicolations, making it a strongly defended bent entrance. On the northern side, there is a postern gate flanked by two towers. On the Western side, the ward between the outer and inner walls does not contain any buildings, but it is here that the concentric principle of defense is most evident, with the inner defenses completely dominating the outer wall. The walls on all sides contain passages that act as shooting galleries or vaults leading to arrow slits.
After our visit at the fortress we headed for the wonderful site of Palmyra.
Baal Temple
- Palmyra
In the mid first century CE, Palmyra, a wealthy and elegant city located along the caravan routes linking Persia with the Mediterranean ports of Roman Syria and Phoenicia, came under Roman control. (See below.) During the following period of great prosperity, the Aramaean and Arab inhabitants of Palmyra adopted customs and modes of dress from both the Parthian world to the east and the Graeco-Roman west. Tadmor is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Second Book of Chronicles 8:4) as a desert city built (or fortified) by the King Solomon of Judea, the son of David. In the First Book of Kings (9:18) is mentioned the city of Tamor or Tamar, also built by Solomon. But it is traditionally read (see Qere) as Tadmor, and several citations in the tractates of the Talmud and of the Midrash refer to that city in the Syrian desert (sometimes interchanging the letters "d" and "t" - "Tatmor" instead of "Tadmor"). Some modern scholars wrote that it could refer to a place near the Dead Sea.
Tadmor is the name of Palmyra in modern Hebrew. The exact etymology of the name "Palmyra" in this case is unknown, although some scholars believe it was related to the palm trees in the area. Others, however, believe it may have come out of an incorrect translation of the name "Tadmor"
The city was first mentioned in the archives of Mari in the 2nd millennium BC. It was another trading city in the extensive trade network that linked Mesopotamia and northern Syria. Palmyra is also mentioned in 2 Chronicles (8:4):
When
the Seleucids took control of Syria in 323 BC, the city was left to itself and
it became independent. The city flourished as a caravan halt in the 1st century
BC. In 41 BC, the Romans under Mark Antony tried to occupy Palmyra but failed as
the Palmyrans had received intelligence of their approach. The Palmyrans escaped
to the other side of the Euphrates, demonstrating that at that time Palmyra was
still a nomadic settlement and its valuables could be removed at short notice.
Jones and Erieira note that Palmyran merchants owned ships in Italian waters and
controlled the Indian silk trade. "Palmyra became one of the richest cities of
the Near East." "The Palmyrans had really pulled off a great trick, they were
the only people who managed to live alongside Rome without being Romanized. They
simply pretended to be Romans."Palmyra was made part of the Roman province of Syria during the reign of Tiberius (14–37). It steadily grew in importance as a trade route linking Persia, India, China, and the Roman empire. In 129, Hadrian visited the city and was so enthralled by it that he proclaimed it a free city and renamed it Palmyra Hadriana.
Beginning
in 212, Palmyra's trade diminished as the Sassanids occupied the mouth of the
Tigris and the Euphrates. Septimius Odaenathus, a Prince of Palmyra, was
appointed by Valerian as the governor of the province of Syria. After Valerian
was captured by the Sassanids and died in captivity in Bishapur, Odaenathus
campaigned as far as Ctesiphon (near modern-day Baghdad) for revenge, invading
the city twice. When Odaenathus was assassinated by his nephew Maconius, his
wife Septimia Zenobia took power, ruling Palmyra on the behalf of her son,
Vabalathus.
Zenobia rebelled against Roman authority with the help of Cassius Longinus and took over Bosra and lands as far to the west as Egypt, establishing the short-lived Palmyrene Empire. Next, she attempted to take Antioch to the north. In 272, the Roman Emperor Aurelian finally retaliated and captured her and brought her back to Rome. He paraded her in golden chains but allowed her to retire to a villa in Tibur, where she took an active part in society for years. This rebellion greatly disturbed Rome, and so Palmyra was forced by the empire to become a military base for the Roman legions. Diocletian expanded it to harbor even more legions and walled it in to try and save it from the Sassanid threat. The Byzantine period following the Roman Empire only resulted in the building of a few churches; much of the city turned to ruin.
The city was captured by the Muslim Arabs under Khalid ibn Walid in 634. Palmyra was kept intact. After the year 800 and the civil wars which followed the fall of the Umayyad caliphs, people started abandoning the city. At the time of the Crusades, Palmyra was under the Burid emirs of Damascus, then under Tughtekin, Mohammed the son of Shirkuh, and finally under the emirs of Homs. In 1132 the Burids had the Temple of Ba'al turned into a fortress. In the 13th century the city was handed over to the Mamluk sultan Baybars. In 1401, it was sacked by Tamerlan, but it recovered quickly, so that in the 15th century it was described as boasting "vast gardens, flourishing trades and bizarre monuments" by Ibn Fadlallah al-Omari.
In the 16th century, Qala'at ibn Maan castle was built on top of a mountain overlooking the oasis by Fakhr ad-Din al-Maan II, a Lebanese prince who tried to control the Syrian Desert. The castle was surrounded by a moat, with access only available through a drawbridge. It is possible that earlier fortifications existed on the hill well before then.
The city declined under Ottoman rule, reducing to no more than an oasis village with a small garrison. In the 17th century its location was rediscovered by western travellers, beginning to be studied by European and American archaeologists starting from the 19th centuries. The villagers who had settled in the Temple of Ba'al were dislodged in 1929 by the French authority.
The
most striking building in Palmyra is the huge temple of
Ba'al considered "the most important
religious building of the first century AD in the Middle East".It originated as
a Hellenistic temple, of which only fragments of stones survive. The central
shrine (cella) was added in the early 1st century AD, followed by a large
double colonnaded portico in Corynthian style. The west portico and the entrance
(propylaeum) date from the 2nd century. The temple measures 205 x 210 m.
Starting from the temple, a colonnaded street, corresponding to the ancient decumanus, leads to the rest of the ancient city. It has a monumental arch (dating to reign of Septimius Severus, early 3rd century AD) with rich decorations. Next were a temple of Nabu, of which little remains today apart the podium, and the so-called baths of Diocletian.
The second most noteworthy remain in Palmyra is the theater It has been dated to the early 1st century AD. Behind the theater were a small Senate, where the local nobility discussed laws and political decisions, and the so-called "Tariff Court", which an inscription led to think to be a custom for caravans' payments. Nearby is the large agora , with remains of a banquet room (triclinium); the agora's entrance was decorated with statues of Septimius Severus and his family.
The first section of the excavations ends with a largely restored tetrapylon , a platform with four sets each with four columns (only one of the originals in Egyptian granite still visible). A transverse streets leads to the Diocletian's Camp, built by the Governor of Syria Sosianus Hierocles,[with the remains of the large central principia (Hall housing the legions' standards). Nearby are the Temple of the Syrian goddess Allāt (2nd century AD), the Damascus Gate and the Temple of Ba'al-Shamin, erected in AD 17 and later expanded under the reign of Odenathus. Remains include a notable portico leading to the cella.
We had a wonderful experience at the theater. An Italian group had given us an unforgettable concert. After a young man singing arias, a lady who was celebrating her 80th birthday had performed. We all had tears in our eyes.
Our day continued at the fortress overlooking at Palmyra. watching the sun set we had wine