Qalʿat Jaʿbar

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Qalʿat Jaʿbar
Qalʿat Jaʿbar from the north, surrounded by Lake Assad

Qalʿat Jaʿbar from the north, surrounded by Lake Assad

Alternative name (s): Arabic قلعة جعبر
Turkish Caber Kalesi
Qalʿat Dausar (ancient name)
Creation time : 1168
Conservation status: partially restored ruin
Geographical location 35 ° 53 '51 "  N , 38 ° 28' 51"  E Coordinates: 35 ° 53 '51 "  N , 38 ° 28' 51"  E
Height: 337  m
Qalʿat Jaʿbar (Syria)
Qalʿat Jaʿbar

Qalʿat Jaʿbar ( Arabic قلعة جعبر, DMG Qalʿat Ǧaʿbar , Turkish Caber Kalesi ) is a castle on the left bank of the Assad reservoir in the Syrian province of ar-Raqqa . The location of the castle was an elevated place with a good overview of the Euphrates valley and is now, after the damming by the Tabqa dam , an island that can only be reached via an artificial connection. Although the square was possibly fortified as early as the 7th century, the current form was built under the Zengid ruler Nur ad-Din from 1168. Since 1965, some excavations and restoration works have been carried out on the walls and towers. The area, which supposedly housed the tomb of Suleiman Shah , the grandfather of the first Ottoman ruler Osman I , was declared Turkish territory by the Treaty of Ankara of 1921 , and Turkish soldiers were allowed to guard the monument.

history

Before Islam

It is not known exactly when the hill was first fortified. In pre-Islamic times the place was known as Dausar and was on a route from ar-Raqqa to the west. The place was then under the control of the Ghassanids , whose leader an-Nuʿmān ibn al-Mundhir had named the castle after his slave Dūsar.

11th century and later

The Numairids later ruled the castle and expanded it. It is not certain whether the namesake was Jaʿbar Sābiq al-Qušairī or Jaʿbar ibn Mālik. The Banū Numair lost the castle to the Seljuks . Their ruler Malik Shah I handed them over to the last Uqailid of Aleppo in 1086 , who was on the run. The Uqailids owned the castle almost continuously - except during a siege by the Crusaders in 1102 - until the late 12th century. In 1146, Zengi besieged the fortress, but was murdered by one of his own slaves on September 14th. In 1168 Zengi's son Nur ad-Din took possession of the Qalʿat Jabar and had major work carried out on it. After the Zengids, the castle came into the possession of the Ayyubids and then the Mamluks of Egypt. The castle was badly damaged during the Mongol invasion of Syria. Restoration work was carried out in the 14th century. The castle had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the 16th century .

Burial place of Suleiman Shah

SDF fighters in front of the castle after the conquest in January 2017.

According to the Ottoman historian Aschikpaschazade , Suleiman Shah , the grandfather of the first Ottoman ruler Osman I , drowned in the waters of the Euphrates near the castle in 1086 and was then buried near the castle. But apparently the Ottoman ancestor was confused here with Sulaiman ibn Qutalmisch , the founder of the Sultanate of the Rum Seljuks . He lost a battle against his former overlords in 1086 and drowned while fleeing in the river. It is also not clear who is buried in the Mezār-i Türk tomb, which was rebuilt under Sultan Abdülhamid II . After the end of the Ottoman Empire in the course of the First World War , Syria became a French mandate . According to the Ankara Treaty of 1921, Article 9 declared the area around the grave to be Turkish property and Turkish soldiers were allowed to guard the monument. In 1973, due to the rising water of the reservoir, the grave was moved several kilometers upstream near the village of Qara Qusaq in the north; the status as an exclave was also transferred there. When the construction of the Tischrin Dam further north of the Tabqa Dam began in 1991, the burial site was again in danger. At first it was thought about moving it to Turkey, but then it was decided to leave the tomb in its place and renovated it. The eleven soldiers guarding it came from a unit from Şanlıurfa and took turns every week. During the Syrian Civil War , the Islamic State organization threatened to take the exclave, which Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu responded with threats of military intervention. In autumn 2014, the mausoleum was threatened with destruction during the Battle of Kobanê . In February 2015, the Turkish army cleared the facility and recovered transportable parts in order to build a new mausoleum directly on the Turkish border.

Fighters from the IS terrorist group initially occupied the facility, but were driven away by SDF units in early January 2017 .

architecture

The castle measures 370 × 170 meters, stands on a rock and is surrounded by a stone wall with 35 bastions . The shape of the castle is reminiscent of that of the citadel of Aleppo . The upper part of the fortress is made of fired bricks, the entrance to the inner part consists of a gatehouse and a winding ramp.

Of the buildings in the castle courtyard, only the wall remains of a hall and the lower part of a minaret built under Nur ad-Din 1173 remained until the 20th century . The cylindrical brick minaret is related to two similar, free-standing minarets from the 12th century in Syria: the minaret of the Great Mosque in ar-Raqqa and the minaret near the village of Abu Huraira (formerly Siffin ) on the right (southern) side of the Euphrates , about across from Qalʿat Jaʿbar, as well as to the octagonal brick minaret of Balis (in the area of Emar ), which was built in the name of al-Adil I. 1210/11. In contrast to Mesopotamia, there are abundant natural stone deposits in Syria. The use of bricks in Islamic architecture has a certain tradition in the area of ​​the Syrian desert that goes back to the Umayyad desert castle Qasr Tuba (mid-8th century), but overall it represents a foreign element that goes back to Iranian and Iraqi influence. The cylindrical or octagonal brick minarets, which were built in the region around ar-Raqqa from the beginning of the 12th century, are a break with Syrian tradition, which was characterized by a square minaret made of stone on a high base. The brickworks visible today are the result of extensive restoration work by the Syrian General Directorate for Antiques and Museums (DGAM).

The Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi described the castle in his travel book in 1648 as:

“... sky-high, high fortress built of stone on a red, terrifying rock, without a ditch ... inside the fortress 40 mud-plastered crew quarters, granaries, a small mosque and stairways embedded in the rock for fetching water leading to the Lead down the Euphrates. "

Restoration and excavations

When the construction of the Tabqa Dam began in 1968, several rescue excavations and restoration work were carried out in the flooded area - that is, also at the Jaʿbar Castle. Since the castle was quite high and therefore would not be flooded by water, but only enclosed, it was equipped with a protective dam and a raised footpath between 1965 and 1974. This work was carried out by DGAM and UNESCO and cost 4 million Syrian lira . The work focused on the eastern wall and towers. In addition, parts of the western wall were restored. To speed up the restoration work, a small brick factory was set up near the castle. The " Donjon Alia" was also repaired in order to display finds from the excavations there. However, this did not happen; the finds are shown instead in the Aleppo National Museum and the Museum in ar-Raqqa.

literature

  • Cristina Tonghini: Qal'at Ja'bar pottery: a study of a Syrian fortified site of the late 11th-14th centuries . In: British Academy Monographs in Archeology . tape 11 . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998, ISBN 0-19-727010-7 .
  • René Dussaud : La Syrie antique et médiévale illustrée . In: Bibliothèque archéologique et historique . tape 17 . P. Geuthner, Paris 1931, OCLC 610530151 .

Web links

Commons : Qalʿat Jaʿbar  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Dominique Sourdel: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition , Volume 2, 1965, p. 354 . Brill Online, Leiden 2010, OCLC 624382576 , ḎJabar or Ḳalat ḎJabar.
  2. ↑ Alois Musil: The Middle Euphrates. A topographical itinerary . In: Oriental Explorations and Studies . tape 3 . American Geographical Society, New York 1927, OCLC 1458654 , p. 94-95 .
  3. ↑ adh-Dhahabī in his Siyar aʿlam an-nubala (biography of distinguished scholars)
  4. ^ Stefan Heidemann: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition . Brill Online, Leiden 2010, OCLC 624382576 , Zangī, Abu 'l-Muzaffar' Imād al-Dīn b. Ḳasīm al- Dawla Aḳsunḳur b. Il - Turghān.
  5. ^ A b c Ross Burns: Monuments of Syria. An historical guide . IB Tauris, London 1999, ISBN 1-86064-244-6 , pp. 180-181 .
  6. ↑ Text of the Ankara Treaty (French) (PDF; 657 kB)
  7. ↑ www.haberturk.com (Turkish) Türkiye dışındaki tek Türk toprağı
  8. ↑ bigthink.com
  9. ↑ Sirwan Kajjo: "US-backed Forces in Syria Target Strategic IS-held Dam" Voice of America from January 6, 2017
  10. ↑ a b c A. Bahnassi: Le sauvatage des vestiges de la zone de submersion du barrage de Tabqa sur l'Euphrate . In: Monumentum . tape 17 . ICOMOS, 1978, ISSN  0027-0776 , p. 57-70 ( icomos.org [PDF] French).
  11. ^ KAC Creswell: The Evolution of the Minaret with Special Reference to Egypt. In: The Burlington Magazine , March – June 1926, pp. 1–21, here p. 13
  12. ^ Robert Hillenbrand: Eastern Islamic influences in Syria: Raqqa and Qal'at Ja'bar in the later 12th century . In: Ders .: Studies in Medieval Islamic Architecture. Vol I. The Pindar Press, London 2001, pp. 190–224, here p. 204
  13. ^ Carole Hillenbrand: The Crusades: Islamic perspectives . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1999, ISBN 1-57958-210-9 , pp. 495-496 .
  14. ^ Gertrude Bell : Amurath to Amurath . 2nd Edition. MacMillan, London 1924, OCLC 481634750 , pp. 48-51 .
  15. ↑ Evliya Celebi: Anatoli trip. From the third volume of the Seyahatname, pp. 75 ff.
  16. ↑ a b Adnan Bounni, JM Lundquist: Campaign and exhibition from the Euphrates in Syria . In: The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research . tape 44 , 1977, ISSN  0066-0035 , pp. 1-7 , JSTOR : 3768538 .
  17. ↑ AR Zaqzuq: Fouilles de la Citadelle de Ja'bar . In: Syria . tape 62 , no. 1/2 , 1985, ISSN  0039-7946 , pp. 140-141 , JSTOR : 4198474 (French).