Gülek Kalesi
| Gülek Kalesi | ||
|---|---|---|
 Gülek Kalesi from the south |
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| Alternative name (s): | Kuklak, Guglag, Cogulat, Cogolaquum, Kawlāk | |
| Creation time : | 12th Century | |
| Castle type : | Hilltop castle | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Construction: | Boss cuboid, ashlar cuboid | |
| Place: | Gülek | |
| Geographical location | 37 ° 16 '12 " N , 34 ° 47' 26" E | |
| Height: | 1526 m | |
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Gülek Kalesi is a small Armenian castle near Gülek in the Tarsus district of the Turkish province of Mersin . She watched over the Cilician Gate in the Middle Ages . Today it is a ruin.
Surname
The fortress was named Guglag or Kuklak in Armenia, Cogulat in Frankish, Kawlāk in Arabic and Cogolaquum in Latin. Evliya Çelebi mentions her as Gülek Kale, Theodor Kotschy as Güllek Gala and Victor Langlois as Kulek-Kalessi.
location
South of Pozantı, about 20 kilometers north of the castle, the Cilician Gate breaks through the chain of the Taurus Mountains . Already in ancient times it formed the most important pass connection from the Anatolian heartland to Cilicia, Syria and further south. The southern exit of the gate is at Gülek, which is why it is called Gülek Boğazı (Gülek Gorge) in Turkish . A mountain rises from the Bolkar Dağları mountain range to the west with a spacious summit plateau on which the castle is built. The rock breaks off steeply to the north and east, there is the bottom of the gorge almost 500 meters below, through which the E 90 , the road connection through the Kilikische Pforte, runs today . From here the fortress could monitor the transit traffic over the Taurus. From the D-750 trunk road to the west through Gülek, a six-kilometer path leads in numerous serpentines to the castle.
history
The castle is believed to have been built on the site of a Byzantine fortification that was given the Arabic name Ḥiṣn Bulas. It is mentioned for the first time in 1199 in the fief list of King Leon I of Armenia. A lord of the castle is named there by the name of Sempad. In a privilege document of King Leon II of Lesser Armenia for the Republic of Genoa , Guglag is mentioned in 1288 as the customs office of the Kingdom of Cilicia. In 1310, Alinak, a brother of King Oshin of Armenia , is referred to as dominus Cogolaqui (Lord of Cogolaquum). Towards the end of the 14th century, Kawlāk is a district of the Mamluk Empire inhabited by Turkmen . In the 15th century , the French traveler Bertrandon de la Broquière called Cublech the tallest castle he knew. According to Kotschy, a Kaleh Agassi (lord of the castle) still lived in the area in 1855 , while Langlois only reports about the ruins of a few abandoned Turkmen huts around the same time. According to Hansgerd Hellenkemper and Friedrich Hild , who visited the place in 1973, the abandoned house of the poet Kasim Gülekçi stands there today.
construction
On the south and west sides, the castle area is protected by double-shell walls, with only substructures remaining from the western side . The curtains are interrupted at irregular intervals by semicircular bastions and a rectangular bastion . The gate system is located between two overlapping curtain wall sections. It consists of a pointed arched portal 3.44 meters wide and 2.55 meters high and a formerly closed double-leaf door measuring 2.32 × 3.35 meters with a three-part lintel. In between there is a machine shaft . Fortifications were not made to the north and east because of the steep rock faces. Only two cisterns carved into the rock remain from the interior. According to the bosses and ashlar blocks , the building can be dated to the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries.
literature
- Hansgerd Hellenkemper: Crusader castles in the county of Edessa and in the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia. (= Geographica Historica 1 ) Habelt, Bonn 1976, ISBN 3-7749-1205-X , pp. 225–228, plates 57, 58.
- Friedrich Hild, Hansgerd Hellenkemper: Kilikien and Isaurien. Tabula Imperii Byzantini Volume 5. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-7001-1811-2 , pp. 323-324.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Seyahatnâme Volume IV p. 39
- ↑ Theodor Kotschy: Journey into the Cilic Taurus via Tarsus. Gotha, J. Perthes 1858 p. 204. Digitized
- ↑ Victor Langlois: Voyage dans la Cilicie et dans les montagnes du Taurus: exécuté pendant les années 1851–1853… B. Duprat, 1861, p. 362 ( limited preview in Google Book search).