Citadel of Damascus, Tower VII

 

The east gate of the citadel, opening inside the walled city on sūq al-ʿAṣrūnīyyā, is of a type common in Islamic military architecture; basically, it is a gate in the flank of the big rectangular Tower 7. But to this normal oblique entrance a refinement has been added by crowding towers 6 and 7 close together so that their united defenses are concentrated on the narrow space before the gate. This arrangement denied the assailant the use of an adequate battering ram and forced him to make his last, and critical, change of front under a shower of missiles and a cross-fire at point-blank range. 

At a later date a light wall, with an outer gate, was built between the flanks of the two towers, enclosing the space between them as a sort of barbican. There are traces of a building constructed over the barbican in Turkish days, but fortunately it has vanished.

Beyond the gateway, one comes into a huge vaulted gate-hall, L-shaped, with two bays of cross-vaults in front and one behind. The purpose of this huge hall is best realized when one considers its employment during a sortie. A great body of men could collect in this enormous room, and they could all see what was going on around the gate.

Doorway D leads into the main gallery to the north. The rear bay of the gate-hall is a single-story building; the tower proper only covers the front two bays. In other words, opening E is under the rear wall of the tower. Out of the rear bay open three doorways: one, F, to the north, into a space that is, in fact, the archaic Tower 17; the second, G—the main doorway—into the enclosure; and the third to the south, leading back along the gallery. Between these last two is the miḥrāb H, which had been occupied by prison cells during King's visits in the early 1940s when the upper part of the tower served as a female prison and was therefore inaccessible.

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).