2-751-872 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Kal'at-el-Nijm', c1915. Map of the castle of Qal'at Najm on the right bank of the River Euphrates, near the town of Manbij, (Syria). '...the finest castle I have yet seen. I started mapping it at 8 o'clock in the morning and only finished at 7.30 in the evening. Kal'at-el-Nijm, built in the twelfth century, is the most agreeable surprise, being perhaps the only perfect Saracenic castle in existence...The great gate, flanked by enormous bastions, is very impressive, and opens upon a dark passage, which turns abruptly right and left, leading to a guard-house. In the lower part or ground-works of the castle are enormous stores and barrack rooms, wells, a vast kitchen and oven, water conduits, and ammunition hoists leading up to the battlements...in one corner of the lower works is a mosque large enough to hold 300 persons'. From "The Caliphs' Last Heritage, a short history of the Turkish Empire" by Lt.-Col. Sir Mark Sykes. [Macmillan & Co, London, 1915]