T. E. Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 116

And a range of late date is a rarity. The gateway gives on a flight of steps, leading in the thickness of the wall to the first floor. Each storey is stone-vaulted, on one huge pier, in the centre,nine feet square. The upper room is well lighted, by windows of reason- able size, and has garderobes and withdrawing rooms, like any keep in Normandy. A staircase in one corner leads in the wall to the roof, which is surrounded with a parapet on low arches, pierced with loops. This parapet is Byzantine in design, though if, as seems probable, some lord of Sicily drew the plan of the keep, he may have copied buildings standing in his home: in other words this parapet of the keep need not necessarily be a copy of the parapet of the Byzantine curtain wall just below. The straight staircases, and the drafted blocks of which the tower is built are of course not European features. The Crusaders brought with them to Syria their architects, who also acted as chief masons: but the mass of the work must have been done by the natives of the country, the Syrians accustomed to build Greek fortresses. They naturally adopted their own technique in doorways and staircases, and ways of dressing stone, but their secondary position is evident. The keep form owes nothing to the Greeks. From Saone northwards to Tortosa (Tartus) there are no early Latin fortresses: and Tortosa itself is one half Byzantine, and the other half destroyed. Rey's plans give far more than can be seen to-day on the spot, for Tartus