The Citadel

Abraham is said to have camped on this hill and milked his red cow there on his journey from Ura to Hauran. But from even earlier the remains of more ancient civilizations have raised the level of this acropolis beneath which so many bloody events have taken place. Fifty meters above the city a ring of crenellated walls and towers rises from a steep glacis, encircling a mass of ruins of every period. On the north and south sides great moat, some 20 meters deep and 30meters wide emphasize the proud isolation of the whole fortress. This impression has been rather spoiled by the planting of a clump of trees right in front of the entrance gate. A steeply rising bridge, supported by slender arches, leads across the moat from an entrance tower on the lower side to the great and forbidding entrance fortifications above. These are both austerely beautiful and full of ingenious defensive devices which strike even a 20th-century visitor as sophisticated. Five great iron-plated doors - each set at a corner of the passageway - could be closed to trap invaders under a hail of arrows, fire and boiling oil (used in these parts since ancient times) from the lookout places, arrow-slits and machicolations above. But such grim efficiency did not preclude decoration and reminders of the presence of God. The nail-heads on the doors themselves beautifully worked, the lintels have comic or enigmatic carvings on them - intertwined serpents, a pair of lions confronting one another, one smiling the other weeping, and above all there are the fine Kufic inscriptions calling upon the power and the mercy of Allah. The interior of the Citadel shows all too clearly how it has been ravaged by enemies (the Mongols invaded it twice) and shattered by earthquakes (that of 1822 was particularly devastating). Wells 60 meters deep are said to have been linked up with mysterious underground passages. Gigantic cisterns and grain silos guaranteed the garrison’s survival in times of siege.