T. E. Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 120

is flourishing, and heavy walls and rock-ditches are inconveniences in a growing seaport. The great square tower,which he marks within the innermost line of defence, is quite impossible to get at to-day, thanks to the existence of the harem of the governor above it : what one can see from the streets suggests rather only two towers on the sea-front. Of course forty years ago there may have been more to find, but Rey's facts are sometimes persuaded to keep pace with his imagination, when the results are disastrous. The North gate of the city, which he describes, is standing however just as he left it - one of the most interesting gateways in the Latin East ( ... h.213 ) It(appears to be)13th century, but there can be no question as to the large amount of Byzantine remains in the two great walls of the town. Half a dozen miles southward of Tortosa lies Chastel Rouge (Kalaat Yahmur,... ...) a fortress without a history, and in its present condition an architectural enigma. It stands,in a level plain, one of the very few flat places of Northern Syria, without any natural advantages of position whatever : there(may)have been ditches around it once, but if so they have been filled in completely, so that probably they were never very large. The castle is composed of a square of walls, with rectangular angle towers. Two of the towers are corbelled out, but not pierced for machicoulis. So far the work could lay claim to Byzantine origin. Within