A tale of two citadels: The contribution of the archaeological evidence from Shayzar and Urfa to the history of medieval fortifications in Greater Syria

This paper discusses the contribution to the history of medieval fortifications in Greater Syria that has emerged from two projects carried out under the direction of the present writer on two citadels in the area: the citadel of Shayzar (Tonghini et al. 2012) and the citadel of Urfa (Tonghini et al. 2021). Both projects were aimed at establishing the constructional history of the citadels: field work concentrated on the evidence preserved above ground employing the methods of stratigraphic analysis applied to built remains. Constructional operations and modifications of structures, arranged in a relative sequence on the basis of stratigraphy at first, are then ascribed to absolute chronology employing data from inscriptions in situ, from the Masonry Typology (masonry type, decorative elements, specific architectural forms) and from the historical sources. In both projects the identification of the constructional history was regarded as the first step aimed at the study of the political and economic factors that stimulated the building of these citadels and made their construction possible, including technological achievements. Research should ideally have gone further with the exploration of the buried deposits to acquire first-hand data on the society that inhabited them.