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An hour's drive this morning to the Saladin Castle then on to Apamea before stopping for 2 nights in Aleppo.
We arrived at the castle to find that we had no guide organized and were content to go it alone until we saw the size of the place- impressive.We ummed and arred about paying for a guide ourselves and thought, what the hell.So a bit of haggling later off we set with what turned out to be a very knowledgeable and patient guide.What made the investment even more worthwhile was that he showed us all sorts of nooks and crannies, took us up and down secret passageways and showed us the best vantage points for taking decent photos.Moreover, we got 4 free postcards from the site manager when we left...still not sure if he liked Maria or me!!Anyway, The Citadel of Salah Ed-Din (also known as Saladin Castle) is a castle located c. 30 km east of Lattakia, in high mountainous terrain, on a ridge between two deep ravines and surrounded by forest.
It was built in ancient times, possibly during the Phoenician period (early first millennium BC). The Phoenicians are said to have surrendered it to Alexander the Great about 334 BC.Not much is known about what happened to it between this period and the return of the Byzantines in the 10th century AD. Emperor John I Tzimiskes gained control of the place from the Aleppan Hamdanid dynasty, and built the first of its defensive structures. It then fell in the hands of the Crusaders at around the beginning of the 12th century. The fortress was notable as being one of the few which were not entrusted to the major military orders of the Hospitaller and the Templars.The Crusader walls were breached by the armies of Muslim leader Salah ed-Din in July 1188, and it is from this victory that the castle takes its present name. From 1188 to 1272 the castle was controlled by the local family who ceded it to Egyptian sultan Baybars in 1273. From 1280 it was under Sonqor al-Ashqar, but was captured back by the Egyptians in 1287 by Qalaun.
When we finished we were walking back down the entrance stairs when I spotted something moving along the bottom of an outer wall.I kept an eye on it, followed it up and down like a BBC natural history cameraman and finally managed to snap a shot of a snake that by now had crawled into a crack in the rock wall.When we sat down with the driver at the ubiquitous tourist cafe I got chatting, of sorts, with the cafe owner and showed him the picture of the snake on the camera's LCD.Zooming in and out so he could see the detail he was so impressed that he even took a picture of my picture using his mobile phone.Magic!
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