This photograph of the 3rd and 4th towers of the Citadel of Damascus was taken by Ernst Herzfeld in 1914 from north, that is, from inside the fortress, to south. Still in excellent condition, these towers rise above the fortress' south wall, running parallel to sūq al-Ḥamīdīyyā.
The Citadel failed to impress an American traveler, Albert H. Heusser, who visited Damascus just before WWI. He disdainfully described it as a "weather-beaten mass of old Arabian walls" (page 56). Though misguided, Mr. Heusser's opinion is eminently understandable. Suffocated between newly constructed marketplaces from three directions at the time of his visit, the Citadel was virtually invisible to the casual observer. It was this very Citadel, however, that frustrated the ambitions of the Mongol emperor Ghazan in 1300 and valiantly withstood the assault of Tamerlane a hundred years later, though it eventually succumbed to his onslaught.
D. J. Cathcart King. The Defences of the Citadel of Damascus; a Great Mohammedan Fortress of the Time of the Crusades. Archaeologia, Volume XCIV, 1951 (p 57-96).
Albert H. Heusser. The Land of the Prophets. Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, 1916.
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