Shmemis

Harvested barley fields in autumn

Schmemis, Arabic قلعة شميميس, Qal ʿ at DMG aš - Šamīmīs, also Shammasis, " Sonnenburg "; is a ruined castle near Salamiyya in Syria, which go back visible residues on Ayyubid period.

Location

Schmemis located about 25 kilometers southeast of Hama on the edge of the Syrian desert steppe and projects on an old, 636 -meter-high volcanic cone about 150 meters beyond the plane. The ruin is located 5 kilometers from Salamiyya and can be reached on a branch off to the north paved side road from town on the road Hama. The grain fields of the plane extend to the foot of the rocky, barren hill. In the vicinity are some similar high hills, which are partly reforested.

History

The earliest archaeological finds on the hill date back to the Bronze Age of the 14th century BC. In Roman times Foggaras were created for water supply.

Salamiyya and the surrounding area was in the 8th century to around 900 the center of the Ismailis. During an earthquake, a former plant was destroyed in 1157. The castle was built around 1230 by the Ayyubid prince al - Malik Mudschtahin Shirkuh of Homs. After several victories of the Ayyubid Sultan as- Salih against the Crusaders in 1245 he took the castle in his possession. In 1260 it was destroyed by the Mongols. Baybars I, Sultan of the Mamluks from 1260, took over the castle and ordered the reconstruction.

How long the castle retained its function is unclear. The area was sparsely populated in the Middle Ages. In the 17th century, the Druze emir Fakhr - al-Din II extended (reigned 1585-1633 ) his principality on Schmemis up to Palmyra, where he also occupied the local Mamluk fortress of Qal ʿ at ibn Ma ʿ n.

It was not until the mid-19th century, the area was repopulated when the Ottoman leaders who fled the Mongol catchment Ismailis enabled the return. Starting point for the resettlement of the castle ruin was a dispute which broke out in 1843 between the then Governor of Masyaf in Jebel Ansariye and two breakaway Ismailitenführern. In the power struggle that was going on at the nearby Qadmus, a member of a prominent Sunni family was killed. Of the two insurgents one was caught and killed during his escape, the other, Isma'il, withdrew to a mountain village. 1847 or 1848 granted a commander of the Ottoman Army Isma'il amnesty on condition that he and his back should go into an area east of the Orontes. A document of the Ottoman sultan Abdülmecid I by July 1849 should have allowed them to establish a settlement on the edge of the desert and to arm 40 men to defend the place. The settlers were exempt from military service and taxes. Isma'il chose Salamiyya as settlement place. The approximately 90 expatriates from 16 families belonged predominantly to the Hajjawis, one of the two main groups of the Syrian Ismailis, who had split off around the 16th century. At first they lived in the castle, from where they began to create arable land and to take the Roman Foggaras again. They had their fields and flocks often protect them from the depredations of several Bedouin tribes. Although each settler was as much land as he wanted available, the colony grew slowly until the end of the 19th century.

Castle

From a distance, the vertical rock walls can be seen below which was created to ward round a grave cut. The walls were constructed of two shells of basalt blocks and inside filled with cast masonry. From the outer fortress wall small residues can only be obtained. A special feature is a deep cistern shaft with five meters in diameter, which was hewn out of the rock in the southern, deeper part.