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Then and Now: a Medieval Visit to the Castle of al-Rāwandān recalled

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

David Morray
David Morray
Affiliation:
University College Dublin
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Extract

In the topographical introduction to his biographical dictionary of people connected with the city of Aleppo, the seventh/thirteenth century north Syrian writer Kamāl al-Dīn ‘Umar b. Aḥmad Ibn al-‘Adīm includes a brief gazetteer entry on the castle of al-Rāwandān (present-day Revanda Kalesi), situated north of Aleppo on the way to ‘Ayn Tāb (modern Gaziantep):

“It is a small castle on the top of a high hill, isolated in its situation. Neither mangonels nor arrows can reach it. At the foot of the hill there is a small settlement (rabaḍ). It is one of the strongest castles, and most favoured spots. A valley runs north and west of the castle, making for a fosse. It contains a permanent river.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 43 , December 1993 , pp. 137 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1993

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References

1 Bughyat al-ṭalab fī ta'rīkh Ḥalab. Facsimile edition of MS Ayasofya 3036 (Istanbul, Stüleymaniye), Frankfurt am Main 1986, 1, p. 329, 1. 17–p. 330, 1. 1Google Scholar.

2 ibid., p. 330, ll. 1–2.

3 al-Kutubī Ibn al-Shākir. Fawāt al-wafayāt, Beirut 1973, 3, p. 127Google Scholar.

4 Ibn al-'Adīm, 1, p. 69, 1. 16–p. 70, 1. 4Google Scholar.

5 Khallikān, Ibn. Wafayāt al-a'yān. Trans, by de Slane, Baron MacGuckin as Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, Beirut 1970, 2, p. 446Google Scholar.

6 Ibn al-'Adīm, 1, p. 329, ll. 9–11Google Scholar.

7 Albert of Aix. Historia Hierosolymitana, III, XVII–XVIII.Google Scholar In Recueil des historiens des croisades (Historiens occidentaux), Paris 1872–1898, 4, pp. 350–1Google Scholar.

8 William of Tyre. Historia Rerum in Partibus transmarinis gestarum, X, xxivGoogle Scholar. In Recueil (Historiens occidentaux), 1.1, p. 437.

9 Ibn al-Athīr. Ta'rīkh al-dawlah al-Atābakiyyah. In Recueil des historiens des croisades (Historiens orientaux), 2.2, pp. 182–3Google Scholar; and William of Tyre, VII, xvii, p. 789.

10 Ibn Shaddād, Izz al-Dīn. al-A‘lāq al-khaṭīrah fī dhikr umarā’ al-Shām wa'l-Jazīrah: 1.2, Damascus 1991, pp. 94–7Google Scholar.

11 Cahen, C.La Syrie du Nord à l'époque des croisades, Paris 1940, pp. 117–8Google Scholar.

12 Hellenkemper, H.Burgen der Kreuzritterzeit in der Grafschaft Edessa und im Königreich Kleinarmenien, Bonn 1976, pp. 43–6 and plates 7–8Google Scholar.

13 al-A 'lāq, p. 94.

14 p. 118, note 12. I cannot find any reference in the topographical introduction to, as is clearly intended here, a pre-Islamic inscription at al-Rāwandān. However, the place in the manuscript where Cahen locates the reference to the inscription, is also where Ibn al-‘Adīm's account of the strange light occurs. That, as we have seen, is to be found in the chapter that purports to deal principally although not exclusively with epigraphy. This may be the source of what seems to be a confusion on Cahen's part. (Any such ancient inscription is not, of course, to be confused with a medieval signature like the one which Cahen reports from the site (see below). The latter Ibn al-‘Adīm would hardly have found remarkable enough to comment on.)

15 al-Ḥamawī, Yāqūt. Mu‘jam al-buldān, Beirut 1979, 3, p. 19Google Scholar.

16 p. 118.

17 p. 45.