Citadel of Damascus, Tower 9

Situated east of the north gate at the south bank of the ʿAqrabānī - Bānīās Canal, this massive tower has only two stories left.

As is the case with the rest of the exposed north and west fortifications of the Citadel, this tower has endured substantial damage, mostly in 1771, when the Egyptian troops led by Muḥammad Bey ʾabū aḏ-Ḏahab besieged Damascus and pointed their artillery at the north wall of the Citadel, including this tower.

ʾAbū aḏ-Ḏahab withdrew the next year, and the Ottoman authorities were thus able to reoccupy the positions vacated by the Egyptians and restore the violated edifice.

The vulnerability of the north and west walls, exposed as they were to enemies' catapults and cannons, was to a considerable extent compensated by the peripheral moat, filled with water during the siege. While the attackers could certainly attempt to divert the flow of Baradā and Bānīās from the west, the defenders disposed of an ingenious countermeasure consisting of a mill straddling the Bānīās canal in the northeast. This mill, thought to be a late Mamlūk construction, controlled the water flow in the ditches of the Citadel and Bānīās, adding yet another fail-safe to the fortress' already formidable defenses.

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).

Photograph: Ernst Herzfeld 1914.