Tyron Caves
| Tyron Caves | ||
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| Alternative name (s): | Cave de Tyron; Tirun an-Niha |
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| Castle type : | Cave castle | |
| Standing position : | Barons | |
| Place: | Niha (Chouf) | |
| Geographical location | 33 ° 35 '0 " N , 35 ° 36' 50" E | |
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The fortified caves of Tyron (French: Cave de Tyron , Latin: Cavea de Tyrum , Canan Turoriis , Arabic تيرون نيحا, DMG Tīrūn Nīḥā orقلعة نيحا / Qalʿat Nīḥā , old Arabic:شقيف تيرون / Šaqīf Tīrūn ) were a crusader castle in today's Lebanon .
location
The plant is located in the Chouf district about 16 kilometers east of Sidon on a hill west of the Litani .
The complex was driven into the mountainside a few hundred meters above sea level as a cave castle with a view of Sidon. It was only accessible via a narrow mountain path barely a meter wide. Although mostly only occupied by a small Frankish garrison, it was difficult to take. The rooms of the complex, which have been cut into the rock to this day, housed a chapel as well as large grain silos, which enabled the castle crew to defy longer blockades. When the weather was clear, the castle crew had a wide view of the area between Tire and Beirut .
history
The area had been conquered by the Crusaders around 1110 and added to the Kingdom of Jerusalem . Presumably, the crusaders took over an existing cave fortification, which they expanded in the following period.
The fortified caves of Tyron were an important fortress within the Schuf rule , which was detached from the Sidon rule as an independent lower vassal around 1170.
Although the difficult to access facility was actually considered impregnable, it changed hands relatively often. So it fell back to the Muslims under Ismail , Lord of Damascus, for the first time in 1133 . Recaptured by the crusaders around 1140, it was taken again in 1165 by Nur ad-Din's commander Schirkuh . Between 1182 and 1187 the crusaders regained the caves. In the period that followed, they fell into Muslim hands again when the Crusaders peacefully got the fortress back from as-Salih Ismail of Damascus as part of the barons' crusade in 1240 . The names of the lords of the castle Andreas von Schuf and his successor Johann von Schuf have also come down to us from the following period .
In 1257 Count Julian von Sidon sold the castle and estate to the Teutonic Order . In 1260, after Sidon was destroyed by the Mongols , the Crusaders abandoned the Caves of Tire and withdrew from the area.
In 1936 the caves were examined archaeologically.
literature
- Paul Deschamps: Une Grotte-Fortresse de Croisés dans le Liban. La Cave de Tyron. In: Mélanges Syriens Offerts A Monsieur René Dussaud. Volume 2, Bibliothèque Archéologique et Historique XXX, 1939. (French)
- Kristian Molin: Unknown Crusader Castles. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001. (English)
- Denys Pringle / Peter E. Leach: The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. University Press, Cambridge 1998. (English)