Rum Kalesi

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Rum Kalesi
Rum Kalesi (Euphrates side, September 2006)

Rum Kalesi (Euphrates side, September 2006)

Alternative name (s): Hromklay, Rum kalesi, Ρωμαιων Κουλα, Qal'at ar-Rum, Ranculat
Conservation status: ruin
Geographical location 37 ° 16 '14.8 "  N , 37 ° 50' 16.5"  E Coordinates: 37 ° 16 '14.8 "  N , 37 ° 50' 16.5"  E
Rum Kalesi (Turkey)
Rum Kalesi

Rum Kalesi ("Roman fortress", Ottoman روم قلعه سى Rum kalesi , İA Rūm ḳalʿesi , Greek Ρωμαιων Κουλα , Armenian Հռոմկլայ Hromkla , Assyrian Kala-Rhomata , Arabic قلعة الروم, DMG Qalʿat ar-Rūm ) is now a ruined castle on the upper Euphrates in the west of Şanlıurfa , the former Edessa. It is located in the district of Nizip in the Turkish province of Gaziantep .

building

The earliest building cannot be dated, but the name suggests a Roman or, more likely, Byzantine (Rhomean) predecessor. The oldest surviving structures date from the early 12th century. Major modifications took place during the Mamluk and Ottoman rule.

Today the fortress is mostly destroyed and partially flooded. The area towers around fifty meters above sea level on a headland, where the Merziman flows into the Euphrates. The ruin is surrounded by a large defensive wall; from the west a path leads over a Roman bridge to the castle, which passes several guard houses, in the east there is a staircase.

The largest building in the ruins is a church from the middle of the 12th century, which was converted into a mosque in the 13th century. In the middle of the 18th century the masonry gave way so that the building collapsed.

In the north there are also the remains of a palace from Ottoman times. A church is assumed to be the previous building.

The remains of dwellings exist on the northern slope.

history

Rum Kalesi, at the mouth of the Merziman in the Euphrates

The oldest surviving parts of the fortress were built by the Byzantines ( Rhomeans ); on it is probably also the name Rum Kalesi or Rumkale , d. H. "Castle of the Romans (Rhomeans)". After the first crusade, the castle and town of Rumkale / Hromkla were conquered by Baldwin in 1116 and part of the Crusader principality of Edessa under the name "Ranculat" .

As the seat of the Catholicos of the Armenian Church

Around 1150 Gregor III. Pahlawuni , the Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church , moved from Tzvok to Hromkla at the invitation of Beatrice, wife of the prisoner of war Joscelin II of Edessa . According to Bar Hebraeus , in 1151 he drove out the castellan Michael there; he seems to have bought the Byzantine castle in truth and passed the castellan over in the negotiations with Beatrice. From around 1150 to 1292, Hromkla was the official seat and burial place of the Katholikoi of the Armenians (then Sis in Cilicia ) and was equipped with three churches and expanded into an almost impregnable fortress. The famous Catholicos Nerses IV. Schnorhali resided here and found his final resting place .

In 1179 a council met in Hromkla on the question of the union of the Armenian and Byzantine churches. The participants also included the Catholicos of the Caucasian Albanians and bishops from Eastern Armenia (Greater Armenia), but not the anti-union heads of the important northern Armenian monasteries Haghpat and Sanahin .

The patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church from the nearby Barsauma monastery was a frequent guest in Hromkla . The Syrian Patriarch Ignatius III. David (1222–1252) had the entire library of that monastery transferred to Hromkla, including the original manuscripts of Patriarch Michael I the Elder. Size († 1199). Ignatius David died in Hromkla after several years and was buried there in 1252.

The famous manuscript illuminator Toros Roslin was the head of the Hromkla scriptorium and one of the best-known representatives of the Hromkla school from around 1256 to 1268 .

Under Islam

On June 28, 1292, the castle was conquered by the Islamic Mamluks under Sultan Chalil . After Hethum of Korykos , the conquerors captured Catholicos Stephan IV , bishops, Vardapets , priests and many Christians, plundered the church treasures and handed over the bishop's palace and churches of Hromkla to former Christian apostates. Stephen IV was brought to Egypt, where he died in 1293 after a year in captivity.

Hromkla remained under the Mamluks an important border fortress, which was even expanded. The cathedral of the Catholicos was converted into a mosque and a bazaar was created. During the Ottoman period it served as a state prison and was later privately owned. During this time a church in the north was replaced by a palace. It was honed by Ibrahim Pascha in 1832 and has since been left to decay. In the middle of the 19th century, part of the masonry of the mosque collapsed.

Lower parts of the complex disappeared at the end of the 20th century with the construction of the Birecik reservoir , which makes the castle virtually inaccessible to visitors. Nevertheless, it is a popular photo opportunity for tourist river trips.

literature

  • Shahe Ajamian: The Colophon of the Gospel of Hethum "Bayl". In: Shahe Ajamian (ed.): Text and context: studies in the Armenian New Testament (= University of Pennsylvania Armenian texts and studies. 13). Scholars Press, Atlanta GA 1994, ISBN 0-7885-0033-3 , pp. 1-13, here 5.
  • Hellen C. Evans: Manuscript Illumination at the Armenian Patriarchate in Hromkla and the West . Ph. D. diss. New York University, 1990.
  • Hanspeter Hanisch: Hromklay: the Armenian monastery fortress on the Euphrates. Book accompanying the exhibition of the photo documentation in the Vorarlberg Landesmuseum Bregenz. March 15 - April 20, 2002. Vorarlberger Landesmuseum, Bregenz 2002, ISBN 3-901802-11-8 .
  • Hansgerd Hellenkemper : Crusader castles in the county of Edessa and in the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia . Habelt, Bonn 1976, pp. 51-61.
  • Arnold Nöldeke : The Euphrates from Gerger to Djerebis (Djerablus). In: Paul Langhans (Ed.): Dr. A. Petermann's communications from Justus Perthes' geographical institute. Year 66, Justus Perthes, Gotha 1920, pp. 53–54.
  • Paul Rohrbach : From the Caucasus to the Mediterranean. A wedding and study tour through Armenia. Teubner, Leipzig / Berlin 1903, pp. 208–210 (tour).
  • Andrea B. Schmidt: The Armenian-Syrian relations as reflected in the Cilician translation literature. In: Armenuhi Drost-Abgarjan (Hrsg.): Armenologie in Deutschland . Münster 2005, pp. 119–126.
  • TA Sinclair: Eastern Turkey: An Architectural and Archaeological Survey. Vol. IV, Pindar Press, London 1990, ISBN 0-907132-32-4 , pp. 166-172. (English).
  • Angus Stewart: Qal'at al Rǖm / Hṙomgla / Rumkal and the Mamluk Siege of 691 H / 1292 CE. In: H. Kennedy (Ed.): Muslim Military Architecture in Greater Syria . Leiden 2006, pp. 269-281.
  • Gagig Danielyan: Arabic Sources on the History of the Armenian Catholicosate of Hromkla. In: AA Bozoyan (Ed.): Cilician Armenia in the Perceptions of Adjacent Political Entities . Gitutyun, Yerevan 2019, ISBN 978-5-8080-1394-0 , pp. 184-266.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d T. A. Sinclair: Eastern Turkey: An Architectural and Archaeological Survey . tape IV . Pindar Press, London 1990, ISBN 0-907132-32-4 , pp. 166-172 .
  2. ^ Angus Steward: Hromgla. In: Alan V. Murray (Ed.): The Crusades: An Encyclopaedia . Volume 2, Santa Barbara 2006, p. 607.
  3. ^ Arnold Nöldeke: The Euphrates from Gerger to Djerebis (Djerablus). In: Paul Langhans (Ed.): Petermanns Mitteilungen. Year 66, Gotha 1920, p. 54.
  4. ↑ a b Thomas Sherrer Ross Boase (Ed.): The Cilician Kingdom of Armenia . Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh 1978, ISBN 0-7073-0145-9 , pp. 166-167 .
  5. ↑ Christian Lange: The ancient oriental churches. Belief and history . WBG, Darmstadt 2010, ISBN 978-3-534-22052-6 , p. 57 .
  6. ^ Philippe Talon: La chronographie de Bar Hebraeus. Ktābā dmaktbānut zabnē. L'histoire du monde d'Adam à Kubilai Khan . In: Michèle Broze, Philippe Talon (eds.): Nouvelles Études Orientales . tape 2 . EME, Fernelmont (Bruxelles) 2013, ISBN 978-2-8066-1000-3 , p. 67 .
  7. ↑ Peter Halfter: The papacy and the Armenians in the early and high Middle Ages. From the first contacts to the establishment of the church union in 1198 . In: Commission for the revision of the Regesta Imperii at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the German commission for the processing of the Regesta Imperii at the Academy of Sciences and Literature (Ed.): Research on the imperial and papal history of the Middle Ages. Supplements to JF Böhmer, Regesta Imperii . tape 15 . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-412-15395-8 , p. 148-149 .
  8. ↑ Erwand Ter-Minassiantz: The Armenian Church in its relations with the Syrian churches up to the end of the 13th century. Adapted from the Armenian and Syrian sources. In: Oscar v. Gebhardt, Adolf Harnack (Hrsg.): Texts and studies on the history of early Christian literature. Archive for the edition of older Christian writers undertaken by the Church Fathers Commission of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences . New episode XI. Volume, 4th issue. JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1904, p. 134 f .
  9. ↑ Bezalel Narkiss, Michael E. Stone, Avedis K. Sanjian (Ed.): Armenian Art. The fascinating collection of the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem. Belser, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-7630-1695-3 , fourth chapter: Illuminated manuscripts of the thirteenth century from Zilizien, p. 47 .