A Fortified Mill on Bānīās

 

The city wall of Damascus, close to its junction with the northeast corner of the Citadel, is doubled by an exterior line, ranging along the banks of Baradā (C), while the inner wall follows the line of Bānīās (D). At the end, next to the Citadel, these two lines of defense are united by a singular building standing astride the space between them and bridging Bānīās, whose waters, passing beneath its floors, drive the wheels of the mill that still occupies the building.

The mill forms a right-angled salient whose two sides are about 28 meters in length. It is not a separately defensible work. It consists at present of a large vaulted hall, approximately 16 meters square, occupying the angle of the salient, and two narrower wings completing the flanks. The east wing rests against the side of the town gate on the outer line, Bāb al-Faraǧ (E), and the south wing returns upon the inner line, with the inner town gate just inside it (F). Westward from the point of junction, the city wall is represented only by a single short length of curtain through which has been driven an arch (G) communicating with the terrace along the north of the Citadel. Just beyond the arch the wall proper ends, on what must have been the lip of the Citadel ditch, and the last few meters of the line are only represented by a thin wall (H).

The basement of the mill is entered by way of the inside corner of the central hall; the latter, though partitioned off by the modern millers, is still a huge and impressive apartment, with its numerous cross-vaults springing from twelve stout piers, each about a meter square. The western row of bays is the widest and continues to form the south wing; there are five loopholes in the side of the hall and another, without an arched recess, in the wing; this and a small doorway between it and the last loophole in the side of the hall (J) are both blocked by the earth of the terrace. 

The north wall has five loopholes; the fourth one (K) has been chiseled out to take a small horizontal mill wheel, and next to this is the stair communicating with the upper floor. This story is covered with a modern roof, and whatever parapet there may have been has vanished.

The whole building has a late Mamlūk appearance, according to King. Sauvaget (p 42) attributed the mill to the fifteenth century.

The mill clearly controlled the waters in the ditches of the Citadel and in Bānīās itself, while its numerous loopholes and bold projection enabled it to enfilade the whole north front of the Citadel, to act, in fact, as a canopier in the defense of the fortress.

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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).