Location: Lake Assad, Ar- Raqqah Governorate Map
Qalʿat Jaʿbar (Arabic قلعة جعبر, DMG Qalʿat Ǧaʿbar, Turkish Caber Kalesi) is a castle on the left bank of the Assad Reservoir in the Syrian province of Ar-Raqqa. The location of the castle was an elevated place with a good view of the Euphrates valley and is now, after the damming by the Tabqa Dam, an island that can only be reached via an artificial connection. Although the square may have been fortified as early as the 7th century, the current form was built under the Zengid ruler Nur ad-Din from 1168. Since 1965, some excavations and restoration work have been carried out on walls and towers. The area said to contain the tomb of Suleiman Shah, grandfather of the first Ottoman ruler Osman I, was declared Turkish territory by the 1921 Treaty of Ankara, and Turkish soldiers were allowed to guard the monument.
It is not known exactly when the hill was first fortified. In pre-Islamic times the place was known as Dausar and lay on a route from ar-Raqqa to the west. The place was then under the control of the Ghassanids, whose leader an-Nuʿmān ibn al-Mundhir had named the castle after his slave Dūsar.
Later, the Numairids ruled over the castle and expanded it. It is not certain whether the namesake was Jaʿbar Sābiq al-Qušairī or Jaʿbar ibn Mālik. The Banū Numair lost the castle to the Seljuks. In 1086, its ruler Malik Shah I handed it over to the last Uqailid of Aleppo, who was on the run. The Uqailids held the castle almost continuously - except during a siege by the Crusaders in 1102 - until the late 12th century. In 1146 Zengi besieged the fortress, but was murdered by one of his own slaves on September 14th. In 1168, Zengi's son Nur ad-Din took possession of the Qal'at Ja'bar and had major work carried out on it. After the Zengids, the castle came into the possession of the Ayyubids and then into that of the Mamluks of Egypt. During the Mongol invasion of Syria the castle was heavily damaged. Restoration work was carried out in the 14th century. The castle had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the 16th century.
According to the Ottoman historian Ashikpaschazade, Suleiman
Shah, the grandfather of the first Ottoman ruler Osman I, is
said to have drowned in the waters of the Euphrates near the
castle in 1086 and was then buried near the castle. But
apparently the Ottoman ancestor was confused here with Sulaiman
ibn Qutalmish, the founder of the Rum Seljuk Sultanate. He lost
a battle against his former overlords in 1086 and drowned in the
river while fleeing. It is also not clear who is buried in the
Mezār-i Türk tomb complex, which was rebuilt under Sultan
Abdülhamid II. After the end of the Ottoman Empire during the
First World War, Syria became a French mandate. According to the
1921 Treaty of Ankara, Article 9 declared the area around the
tomb Turkish property and allowed Turkish soldiers to guard the
monument. In 1973, due to the rising water of the reservoir, the
grave was moved several kilometers upstream near the village of
Qara Qusaq in the north; the status as an exclave was also
transferred there. When construction began on the Tishrin Dam
further north of the Tabqa Dam in 1991, the burial site was
again in danger. Initially, consideration was given to moving it
to Turkey, but then it was decided to leave the grave in its
place and renovated it. The eleven soldiers who guarded it came
from a unit from Şanlıurfa and took turns every week. During the
Syrian Civil War, there were threats from the Islamic State
organization to take over the exclave, which were countered by
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu with threats of
military intervention. In autumn 2014, the mausoleum was
threatened with destruction during the Battle of Kobanê. In
February 2015, the Turkish army cleared the facility and
recovered transportable parts in order to build a new mausoleum
directly on the Turkish border.
Fighters from the
terrorist group IS initially occupied the facility, but were
driven out by SDF units at the beginning of January 2017.
The castle measures 370 × 170 meters, stands on a rock and is
surrounded by a stone wall with 35 bastions. The shape of the castle
is reminiscent of that of the citadel of Aleppo. The upper part of
the fortress is made of baked bricks, the entrance to the inner part
is made of a gatehouse and a winding ramp.
Of the buildings
in the castle courtyard, only the remains of a wall and the lower
part of a minaret built under Nur ad-Din in 1173 remained until the
20th century. The cylindrical brick minaret is related to two
similar free-standing minarets from the 12th century in Syria: the
minaret of the Great Mosque at ar-Raqqa and the minaret at the
village of Abu Huraira (formerly Siffin) on the right (southern)
side of the Euphrates , roughly opposite Qal'at Ja'bar, and the
octagonal brick minaret of Balis (in the Emar area), which was built
in the name of al-Adil I in 1210/11. In contrast to Mesopotamia,
there are abundant natural stone deposits in Syria. The use of
bricks in Islamic architecture has a certain tradition in the Syrian
desert area, going back to the Umayyad desert castle of Qasr Tuba
(mid-8th century), but overall it represents a foreign element that
goes back to Iranian and Iraqi influence. The cylindrical or
octagonal brick minarets that emerged in the region around ar-Raqqa
from the beginning of the 12th century represent a break with the
Syrian tradition, which was characterized by a square minaret made
of stone on a high base. The brickwork visible today is the result
of extensive restoration work by the Syrian General Directorate of
Antiquities and Museums (DGAM).
The Ottoman traveler Evliya
Çelebi described the castle in his travel book in 1648 as:
“... a
towering high fortress without a moat built on a red, fearsome rock,
made of stone ... inside the fortress there are 40 clay-plastered
crew quarters, granaries, a small mosque and paths set into the rock
with stairs for fetching water, which lead to the lead down the
Euphrates.”
When construction of the Tabqa Dam began in 1968, the flood plain - i.e. H. also at Jaʿbar Castle - several rescue excavations and restoration work were carried out. Since the castle was quite high and would therefore not be flooded by the water, but would only be surrounded, it was equipped with a protective dam and an elevated footpath between 1965 and 1974. This work was carried out by DGAM and UNESCO and cost 4 million Syrian lira. The work focused on the eastern wall and the towers. In addition, parts of the western wall were restored. To speed up the restoration work, a small brick kiln was set up near the castle. The “Donjon Alia” was also renovated in order to exhibit finds from the excavations there. However, this did not happen; The finds will instead be shown in the Aleppo National Museum and the museum in Raqqa.