Dictionary of islamic architecture

fortification
The earliest forms of fortification in Islam were
probably towers of a type still seen in Arabia today,
of mud brick or dry stone wall, with a tapering
profile, built on a circular plan. City walls do not
appear to have been common in Muham-mad’s
time and Ta
if is the only city known to have had a
wall. The conquest of Syria in the first decades of
Islam brought the Arabs into contact with the forts
and fortresses of the Roman 
limes
(desert border).
Many of these fortresses were adapted for
residential or official uses, thus Qasr al-Hallabat,
Udruh, and Azraq were all remodelled during the
Umayyad period. This form was also adapted for
new constructions, thus the palaces of Mshatta,
Khirbet al-Mafjar and Qasr al-Tuba are all built in
the form of fortresses with a square or rectangular
enclosure protected with corner and interval
towers. The palace of Qasr al-Hayr West was built
around the tower of an existing (sixth-century)
Byzantine monastery which included a
Minar i-Zarin, Firuzabad, India
Firuzabad (Iran)

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machicolation above the gateway. This feature was
later included in the gate of the palace at Qasr al-
Hayr East 40 km east of the earlier one.
The influence of Sassanian architecture in this
early period should also be noted—thus Qasr
Kharana in Jordan is purely Sassanian in form
although it is certainly an Umayyad construction.
Further east in Iraq is the palace of Ukhaidhir which
is the most complete example of early Islamic
fortification. The palace forms a large rectangular
enclosure with round corner towers and semi-
circular buttresses at regular intervals. The area
between each buttress comprised two tall arches built
flat against the wall, above the arches there is an
enclosed parapet containing vertical arrow slits and
downward openings between the arches. This is the
first example of continuous machicolation, a feature
which did not appear in Europe until the fourteenth
century.
The eighth-century walls of Baghdad were one of
the greatest feats of military engineering in the Islamic
world. Although there are no physical remains,
descriptions indicate that the city was a vast circle
enclosed within a moat and double walls. There were
four gates each approached through a bent entrance.
The bent entrance and the circular shape of the city
are both features which appear to be copied from
Central Asian architecture and were not found in
contemporary Byzantine architecture.
The best surviving examples of pre-Crusader city
fortifications are the wall and gates of Fatimid Cairo
built in the eleventh century. There are three gates—
the Bab al-Futuh, the Bab Zuwayla and the Bab al-
Nasr—each of which is supposed to have been built
by a different architect. Each gate consists of two
towers either side of a large archway which leads
into a vaulted passageway 20 m long with concealed
machicolation in the roof. The lower two thirds of
each gateway is solid whilst the upper part contains
a vaulted room with arrow slits. Another feature of
the tenth and eleventh centuries is the development
of coastal forts or ribats which were designed to
protect the land of Islam from Byzantine attacks.
These forts have a similar design to the early Islamic
palaces comprising a square or rectangular enclosure
with solid buttress towers.
The arrival of the Crusaders at the end of the
eleventh century revolutionized military
architecture. During this period there is a fusion of
European, Byzantine and Islamic principles of
fortifica-tion which produced castles of enormous
size and strength. European introductions were the
central keep, curtain walls which follow the
contours of a site and massive masonry. Although
the majority of castles of the period were built by
the Crusaders there are some outstanding examples
of twelfth-century Ayyubid castles such as Qal
at
Nimrud (Subeibe) and Qal
at Rabad (Ajlun). This
new sophistication was also applied to city
fortifications, thus the gateway to the citadel of
Aleppo has a bent entrance with five right-angle
turns approached by a bridge carried on seven
arches. Elsewhere in the Islamic world fortifications
were also developed in response to the increased
Christian threat, thus the Almohads developed
sophisticated fortifications with elaborate bent
entrances.
With the defeat of the Crusaders in the East the
impetus for fortress-building declined and
architecture of the Mamluk period was directed
mainly to civil purposes. The castles and
fortifications which were built tended to be archaic
in their military design although elaborate in their
Plan of Ayyubid-period bent entrance to citadel, Aleppo
fortification

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decoration and military imagery. With the
introduction of firearms many of the older
techniques of fortification were obsolete. From the
eighteenth century onwards western techniques
were adopted although these were sometimes
modified to the local conditions.