A belt of walls and towers has transformed a theater into an impregnable fortress.
This imposing ʾAyyūbid fortress was built at the beginning of the 13th century and is in an excellent state of preservation. Its high walls and basalt bastions surround the Roman theater, which was itself used as a fortress in the 12th century, like so many other monuments of the East (Palmyra, aḍ-Ḍmayr, and Bʿalbak especially). During the reign of ʾAyyūb (1), the father of Saladin, the strategic position of Buṣra on the border of the Islamic territory and of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem made it the object on an attack of the Frankish army led by the governor of the city, an emir of Armenian origin who had defected to the Crusaders. The attack was repulsed by the garrison commanded by the wife of the defector; she had remained loyal to her sovereign, but ʾAyyūb could not get her to counterattack the army in which her husband now fought.
(1) Najm ad-Dīn ʾAyyūb was the military governor of Damascus under Nūr ad-Dīn. The Battle of Buṣra took place in 1147 C.E. (Elisséeff: Nūr ad-Dīn pp. 403-405).
Jacques Ghislain de Maussion de Favières. Damascus, Baghdad: Capitals and lands of the caliphs. Translation to English by Edward J. Banks. Librairie orientale (Dar el-Mashreq), Beirut, Lebanon. 1972.
Nikita Elisséeff: Nūr ad-Dīn. Un grand prince musulman de Syrie au temps des Croisades. Institut français de Damas 1967.
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