Masyaf Castle

The sources disagree on its origins: the English Wikipedia cites Byzantine foundations, the Arabic a Roman foundation, citing Wolfgang Müller-Wiener. According to the Arabic Wikipedia, the castle changed hands several times in the 10th and 11th centuries – Hamdanids (967), Byzantines (969), Fatimids, Mirdasids – and passed to the Banu Munqidh of Shaizar in 1081.

In 1141 the Nizaris captured the castle from Sanqur, who held it for the Banu Munqidh; Rashid ad-Din Sinan refortified it. From the mid-12th to the late 13th century Masyaf was the capital of a Nizari emirate. Saladin besieged it in May 1176 (the Arabic Wikipedia gives 22 May) but soon concluded a truce. In 1260 Masyaf surrendered to the Mongols (the Arabic Wikipedia says 1258); after the Battle of Ain Jalut the Nizaris recovered it. In February 1270 the Mamluk sultan Baybars took the castle.

In 1808 Nusayris (Alawites) killed the Ismaili emir and seized the castle; the Ismailis recovered it with Ottoman help. In the 1830s the troops of Ibrahim Pasha caused serious damage. During the French Mandate (1920–1946) a French garrison was stationed there according to the Arabic Wikipedia.[1][2]

According to the English Wikipedia, most of the present remains date from the 12th-century Nizari building phase, with further layers added by Ismailis, Mamluks and Ottomans. The Arabic Wikipedia describes a roughly square inner keep on the highest, southern part of the rock with corner towers and a courtyard, enclosed by an inner and an outer wall with rectangular and polygonal towers. The main entrance in the south-west corner turns at a right angle through two halls into a 65-metre passage partly cut into the rock. A palace in the upper section bears an inscription dated 1226; after the Mamluk takeover the entrance was extensively rebuilt.[1][2]

The castle controlled trade routes inland and towards Banyas and was the centre of the Syrian Nizaris, also known as the Assassins, in the 12th and 13th centuries. In the late 18th century it became the seat of an Ismaili ruling family; the house of Emir Mustafa al-Mulhim was built in 1793. According to the Arabic Wikipedia it remained inhabited until the Mandate.[1][2]

From 2000 the Syrian antiquities directorate restored the castle with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture; the Arabic Wikipedia gives 2005 as completion. Tons of rubble were removed, cement used in the 1980s was replaced with traditional materials, and finds included a passage, baths, cistern channels and 360 coins. The sources contain no more recent dated condition statement.[1][2]