The Al-Subayba (Nimrod) Fortress: Towers 11 and 9.

• Author: Schultz, Warren C.
• Position: Book Review

By MOSHE HARTAL, with contributions by Reuven Amitai and Adrian Boas. Israel Antiquities Authority Reports, no. 11. Jerusalem: ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY, 2001. Pp. 130, plates, maps, figs.

The large medieval fortress of Qal'at al-Subayba (alternatively known as Mivzar Nimrod or Qal'at Namrud), located on a spur of the southern slopes of Mt. Hermon, is by all accounts an impressive site for the modern visitor. Many readers of this journal will also recognize it as an important location in the history of the region, guarding as it does a southern approach to Damascus, and for them this volume will be a valuable and useful addition to their libraries.

Thanks to the work of Ronnie Ellenblum (Dumbarton Oaks Papers 43 [1989]: 103-12), we know that Qal'at al-Subayba is not a Crusader castle but was built in the late 1220s by the Ayyubid al-'Aziz 'Uthman, governor of nearby Banias (or Banyas). Soon thereafter the fortress was enlarged, and then sacked and looted by the Mongols before being rebuilt and refurbished during the reign of the Mamluk Sultan Baybars (1260-77). Jumping forward several centuries, it was severely damaged by an earthquake (likely in 1759), partially rebuilt by a local official in 1761, and its ruins even utilized by the French in the 1920s to counter local Druze opposition. The large fortress has been studied before, including by such notables as Max van Berchem in the late nineteenth century and Paul Deschamps in the early twentieth, but this volume offers the first detailed description of towers 11 and 9 and their environs. The bulk of the work thus consists of the findings gleaned from archaeological surveys and excavations supervised by Moshe Hartal in the mid-1990s. The discussion of the towers is supplemented by more than two hundred photographs, figures, and plans. An additional section by Reuven Amitai offers a detailed analysis of Mamlukera inscriptions found at the site. (The reader would be well served to read Amitai's chronological overview of the history of the site [pp. 111-16] first in order to grasp the historical narrative that underpins the rest of the volume.) The final section by Adrian Boas provides a catalogue of the ceramic materials excavated, most of which date from the Mamluk and early Ottoman periods.

This reviewer is no archaeologist, and thus cannot comment on the methodology or presentation of this material according to the canons of that discipline. As a historian of the Mamluk-era, however, I...