Girl castle
| Girl castle | ||
|---|---|---|
 Girls Castle from the northwest |
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| Alternative name (s): | Kız Kalesi | |
| Creation time : | 1104 | |
| Castle type : | Inselburg | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Construction: | Cuboid | |
| Place: | Kızkalesi | |
| Geographical location | 36 ° 27 '24.5 " N , 34 ° 8' 53" E | |
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The girl's castle (Turkish Kız Kalesi) is a fortress on an island off the Kızkalesi resort . It is located in southern Turkey in Cilicia , in the Erdemli district in the Mersin province .
construction
The island is about 300 meters in front of the beach, about 600 meters from the land fortress of Korykos . It can no longer be determined whether it was connected to this via a pier. The walls of the fortress are equipped with loopholes and have a total length of 192 m, in east-west direction the castle has its greatest width with 75 m. The south and west walls are roughly at right angles to each other. The southern one has three rectangular towers, of which the three-story east tower is the tallest. The now largely lost Armenian building inscriptions were located above the inner entrance. In addition to the southern corner tower, the western wall has a semicircular projection in the middle and a round corner tower in the northwest. From there the north-east wall extends in four sections to the east tower. The second section contains the entrance via a semicircular gate tower. This is followed by a round, protruding tower and a triangular wall projection. The walls consist of different stones, partly embossed and unbossed cuboids, spoils from ancient buildings, but partly also the small masonry typical of Armenian buildings. On the inside of the west wall, a battlement has been preserved, which opens inwards via arches. In the inner courtyard there are remains of a chapel and a cistern .
Historical mentions
In Strabo the island under the name Krambusa is mentioned. The Venetian traveler Giosafat Barbaro mentions two Armenian inscriptions in his travelogue from the 15th century , as does the French orientalist Victor Langlois , who published them in 1861. One of them is still preserved above the restored door of the eastern corner tower, the second has disappeared. According to Langlois, the island was connected to the mainland and the Korykos castle by a dam in the Middle Ages. In fact, the remains of a mole can still be seen today both on the western beach and at the Korykos land fortress. The British captain Francis Beaufort , who explored the Cilician coast on behalf of the Admiralty in the years 1811–1812, found the pier from the country castle still about 100 m into the sea, with a platform for a lighthouse.
history
According to the inscriptions on the southeast tower that Langlois has documented, the fortress was built in the 12th and 13th centuries. Erected in the 18th century under the Armenian King Leon II and expanded a little later. Herzfeld and Guyer nevertheless consider it possible that it was built by the Byzantine admiral Eustathios as early as 1104 , which Hild and Hellenkemper refused. In the 13th century it belonged temporarily to the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia under Hethum I. After the land fortress fell to the Ottomans in the 15th century , the Emir of Karaman was also able to conquer the island fortress. In 1481 Cem , the son of Sultan Mehmet II, hid here on the run from the stalkings of his brother Beyazit . Later the castle was a notorious corsair hideout. She got the name Mädchenburg from the legend about a princess who was banished here by her father. She had been prophesied of death from a snakebite. The snake overtook them despite the banishment over a fruit basket. A similar legend is told in numerous places, including the Maiden's Tower in İstanbul , which has the Turkish name Kız kulesi (Maiden's Tower).
During restoration work on the towers, more than a dozen skeletons were discovered on the island in 2001. Research showed that they came from a violent crime some 45 years ago.
The fortress can be reached from the beach for experienced swimmers, alternatively you can rent small boats for the crossing in the summer season. As a tourist attraction, the fortress also contributes to the fact that Kızkalesi has developed into a popular holiday destination for Turkish and foreign tourists in recent years. US soldiers stationed at Incirlik Air Base also use the site as a destination.
Individual evidence
- ^ Strabons Geographika, Book XIV, p. 105
- ^ Francis Beaufort: Karamania. A Brief Description of the South Coast of Asia Minor and os the Remains of Antiquity. R. Hunter, London 1818, pp. 241 f.
- ↑ Victor Langlois: Voyage dans la Cilicie et dans les montagnes du Taurus: exécuté pendant les années 1851–1853… B. Duprat, 1861, p. 215 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Ernst Herzfeld , Samuel Guyer: Meriamlik and Korykos. Two Christian ruined cities of the Rough Cilicia , Monumenta Asiae minoris antiqua 2, Manchester 1930 p. 92
- ↑ Friedrich Hild , Hansgerd Hellenkemper : Kilikien and Isaurien. Tabula Imperii Byzantini Volume 5. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-7001-1811-2 , p. 319.
- ↑ Marianne Mehling (ed.): Knaur's cultural guide in color Turkey . Droemer-Knaur, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-426-26293-2 , p. 375.
- ^ Michael Bussmann / Gabriele Tröger: Turkey . Michael Müller, Erlangen 2004, ISBN 3-89953-125-6 , p. 487.
literature
- Francis Beaufort: Karamania. A Brief Description of the South Coast of Asia Minor and os the Remains of Antiquity. London 1818 on GoogleBooks
- Victor Langlois: Voyage dans la Cilicie et dans les montagnes du Taurus. Exécuté pendant les années 1851-1853. at GoogleBooks
- Ernst Herzfeld; Samuel Guyer : Meriamlik and Korykos. Two Christian ruins of the Rough Cilicia , Monumenta Asiae minoris antiqua 2, Manchester 1930 pp. 161–168
- Hansgerd Hellenkemper: Crusader castles in the county of Edessa and in the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia. Studies on the historical settlement geography of Southeast Asia Minor (Geographica historica Volume 1) . Habelt, Bonn 1976, ISBN 3-7749-1205-X , pp. 247-249.
- Friedrich Hild , Hansgerd Hellenkemper : Kilikien and Isaurien. Tabula Imperii Byzantini Volume 5. Verlag of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-7001-1811-2 , pp. 319-320.
Web links
- Kızkalesi ( Memento from January 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive )