Tortosa

Before we began our trip, we downloaded from iTunes and watched a brief made-for-television program on some of the largest Crusader structures in Syria, including the Hospitaller fort of Krak des Chevaliers (post to come) and the Templar city of Tortosa (now Tartus). From this program we knew that Tartus existed as a modern Syrian city that has in part grown up within the ramparts of the old walled city, its Crusader remnants often visible through the more recent layers of construction. Even after seeing it on video, however, we were still not prepared for this merging of old and new.

Tartus was separately established as a city during the reign of Emperor Constantine in the 4th century, when it was distinguished from the older settlement on the island a few miles ashore, Arwad, which was an important city since at least Phoenician times. In the 7th century, the city was one of the conquests of the newly-Islamic Arabs, under whose control it remained until the Crusader invasion at the end of the 11th century. For most of the period from 1099 to 1291, the city was held by the Crusaders, with the Knights Templar assuming responsibility for the city in 1152. Saladin almost retook the city in 1188, but the Templars managed to hold on, and after Saladin’s departure reconstructed and fortified the city’s great cathedral, Our Lady of Tortosa, which was originally constructed in 1123.

Interior of Our Lady of Tortosa, now a museum

The fortification of the church was accompanied by enhanced fortifications of the walled city as well, which strong walls have survived encroaching homes over the last eight hundred years. Tortosa formed part of the series of defenses that ran along the Crusader-held coast and immediate hinterlands. Tortosa finally fell in 1292, after the Arabs had already conquered the great inland castles (post to come) and Tyre down the coast. Tortosa was the last Crusader hold on the mainland, although they would remain on offshore Arwad until 1302, purportedly to stage a renewed attack (which never took place, much like attacks on the Chinese mainland prepared on the island of Taiwan).

Of course, it’s perfectly natural in the course of the life of a city to build upon existing foundations, and this happens with almost every city. Buildings accumulate, and pieces of many eras are often on full simultaneous display. But this presentation, for reasons not quite clear to me, seems exaggerated at Tartus, where so much of the Crusader city layout (interior and exterior walls, moats) and pieces of several Crusader structures (donjon or keep, chapel) are, by their durable and distinctive masonry, easy to identify in the residential old city. For the most part, I think it speaks to the solidity of Crusader construction, and the lack of an organized effort by the inhabitants that followed to build competitive structures–most construction in the old city since Crusader times, it seems, has been relatively haphazard and minor, at times dismantling part of or building into the Crusader framework but never coming close to its permanence or scale. (The old city, of course, is only part of the story–most of the modern city of Tortosa lies outside the small enclosure of the city walls.)

Houses built into the Crusader chapel. In the documentary that we saw, I believe that these houses were occupied but they are now empty–a local man told us that the government has been gradually clearing (parts of?) the old city to be refurbished and maintained as a historical site and tourist attraction.

Houses built into the wall of what was once a vaulted hall.

Houses built into the exterior wall of the city. The inhabitants of Tartus have over the past 800 years superimposed their homes onto the foundations and blocks of the original wall–the moat is clearly discernible all around the exterior wall, as are the former towers.

A closeup of the wall. You can see the large Crusader blocks on the bottom, as well as older homes made of smaller blocks of stone and newer homes made of concrete.

Homes built into the interior wall. The street lies in the space between the interior and exterior (concentric) walls.

The wall of the city facing the sea. You can see the slope, or glacis, that was part of the defensive structure of the city.

By the time we arrived in Tartus, we had already seen several castles that we knew were once inhabited in this manner (castles that had villages spring up within their walls, which villages were later cleared), and so it was particularly interesting to see a contemporary example. Old Tartus is very much a living place, with clothes hanging to dry from windows, children playing in the narrow alleys and old men smoking nargileh in the town square.