The following description is adapted from King, who visited the Citadel twice in 1942 and 1943.
The precincts of the actual prison begin with Tower 5, making it inaccessible and therefore precluding a thorough inspection.
Tower 5 is a truncated structure, having lost both its parapets and its topmost story (2); even what remains has been rebuilt. An inscription (2) of Qanṣū al-Ġawrī—the last Mamlūk sultan to rule over Syria—on the east face of the tower records its rebuilding in AH 919 (1513-1514 AD). By the tenor of the inscription, the tower had been completely ruined, but this would appear to be hyperbole, for not only does the lower part of the structure at least appear to be al-ʿĀdil's, but an earlier inscription on the south face records repairs by an-Nāṣir Muḥammad II, the son of Qaytbāy, in AH 903 (AD 1497-1498).
1. These are still to be seen in the photograph in von Oppenheim, Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf (Berlin, 1899, p. 65), together with the complete superstructures of towers 6 and 7, now destroyed.
2. Sobernheim, inscription 25.
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).
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