T. E. Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 106

could be made quite long without any sacrifice of stability, and therefore the most pier was not required. One example however is to be found at Tonequadec in Brittany, in work of the fourteenth century. In Rum Kalaat ( ........ ) another stronghold of Edessa, the only sign of Latin occupation is in the form of the grooves for a portcullis. For some reason the Byzantines never used this defence for a gateway with any frequency. They knew of it of course, for it is described by Vegetius, and found in action in Pompeii and the Great Pyramid ; and judg- ing from their practice European castle-builders found them profitable. In the East they may be taken invariably as tokens of European influence. These castles are a little disappointing, but there is one great castle, depending on Antioch, that of Saone (Sahyun ........) which, taken as a whole, is probably the finest example of military architecture in Syria. Like the other castles in the North the remains are very largely of the Byzantine period, but added to in a very definite and very evident fashion by the Crusaders. The castle is built (.....) on a narrow ridge, isolated from its neighbours on each side by being placed in the sharp angle of two streams just about to meet. The valleys on this side and on that are extremely narrow, and some four hundred feet deep. Across one of them half way up had been thrown a bridge, leading to a road cut