Some 85 km north of Beirut, shares in the long history of the Levantine coast. The center of a Phoenician confederation with Sidon, Tyre and Arados Island, its name "Tripolis", means "triple city".

Some of the oldest evidence of the presence of man in Lebanon has been found on the southern outskirts of Tripoli at a place called Bahsas-stone tools dating back tens of thousands of years. But of the ancient community itself, nothing remains. There is no lack of ancient ruins in the general area ( for example, the temples at Bziza, Naous and Sfireh ); but in the city itself and its immediate surroundings, the ruins that have aesthetic and historical significance date from the Middle Ages, and from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in particular.

It seems that the age of the Mamluks did away effectively with all vestiges of former times. However, the little that has remained from the two preceding centuries certainly deserves the attention of the visitor. For these are Crusader ruins. The older parts of the citadel date from this time, and particularly noteworthy is the eastern face, round the foot of which runs the Kadisha River, which becomes at this point the Abou 'Ali. This is said to be the "Fountain of the garden " of the Song of Songs, "a well of living waters, like streams from Lebanon". The site has always aroused admiration. The spur which the fortress crowns, and which was known as Mount Pilgrim by the Crusaders from Provence, commands a view of the river valley on one side and the seashore on the other. It was here that Raymond of Saint Gilles planned to blockade the city, which was then huddled close to the port area, at Al-Mina.

The castle is referred to in Arab chronicles as Qal'at Sanjil, and one can still see part of the building work begun by Raymond with the help of the Byzantines. This may well make it the oldest example of Frankish architecture in Lebanon. At the foot of the fortress a small community nestled, which ultimately became the centre of the present city. The spot is particularly evocative. Here the walls echoed to the Provencal laughter of the counts of the Toulouse line. Here strutted the Bohemonds, the norman princes of Poitou. And here the commune announced the princes' downfall in a curious manifesto which declared the burghers' desire for independence. Here lived the sad Melissinda, the "Faraway Princess", who was to become a legendary figure of Troubadour romance. Here Sa'adi, the poet from distant Gulistan, worked as a prison-labourer on the fortifications. In 1289 the town was destroyed, and in its place there arose the new Tarablos---"the new Triple", according to one old French text, "in a place which bears the name of Mount Pilgrim".

Badly burned and disfigured, the castle was partly rebuilt by the Emir Esendemir, who was governor at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Since that time, the castle has so often been altered, battered to pieces and put together again that the first builders would never recognize it now. But it has faithfully preserved for us traces of all the rulers and political parties that have held power here for the last eight centuries. Engraved above the gateway built by the Franks, there is an edict of the Mamluk Sultan Sha'ban concerning the military budget. And over the first doorway of the castle, carved in basalt rock, is the name of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent who, according to the inscription, ordered the restoration of "this blessed tower, that it may serve as a fortified position until the end of time". Until the end of time, indeed.

Along the coast there were a number of towers, starting from the point of Al-Mina and continuing as far as the mouth of the Abou 'Ali River. One of them still stands, the famous Lion Tower ( in Arabic, Borj as-Sba' ). The Lion Tower itself was constructed in the fifteenth century, and it may well hide the remains of an older tower. It is the most remarkable example of Mamluk construction on the Lebanese coast. It is imposing not only in size and impregnability, but also in its "numerous decorative elements, distributed with a sure of rhythm, symmetry and proportion, so that it resembles more nearly a religious or communal edifice than a military fortification".

Although not of great architectural value, the religious and communal buildings dating from Mamluk times in Tripoli constitute an impressive whole. They are worth a visit, particularly as they have survived almost intact. The oldest of them incorporate the remains of earlier twelfth- and thirteenth- century churches. Thus in the Great Mosque one can see chunks of western architecture which probably belonged originally to the old cathedral of Saint Mary of the Tower. The bell tower of the same cathedral has found its way into the present minaret, which certainly looks more Lombard than anything else. And pieces of the old baptistery seem to have been reused in the adjacent Al-Qartawiya Madresseh, or theological school. The unusual nature of the design of the Taynal Mosque is probably due to the re-use of a partially preserved Carmelite nave-while the rest of the mosque has all the normal characteristics of fourteenth-century Arab art. Over the doorway to the sanctuary, along the string-course of the bay of the magnificent inner portal, a lengthy inscription informs us that this beautiful mosque, completed in 1336, was constructed, along with the adjacent mausoleum, by "our master, His Most Noble and High Excellency, the Governor, the Lord, the Man of Might, the Well-Served Saif ed-Din Taynal", the prefect of the Sultan.

The numerous texts engraved on the ancient religious buildings of Tripoli are precious documents indeed - not only in dating the buildings themselves but also in shedding light on the history and currents of feeling of the times. They are often most picturesque-as on the facade of the Es-Saqraqiya Madresseh and the southern wall of the Al-Qartawiya. They often give us delightful details. For example in the Taynal Mosque and the Al-Burtasiya Madresseh inscription, it is strictly forbidden to give sums of money regularly to those who are not employed by the establishment ( presumably to discourage begging ); and "he who assigns such a sum of money shall be cursed by God, by the angels, and by all men". Set in the walls of the mosques and the theological schools, there are fascinating details of financial arrangements and the economy in general, set out in decrees promulgated by the court of the Circassian sultans as administrative ordiances. These theological schools, which were centres for canonical jurisprudence, are themselves a significant sign of the times. About fifteen in number, they lend to the town its particular character and its architectural unity. They all date from the time of the Mamluks.

Both in construction and in detail, the mosques and the schools present to the visitor the characteristics of their times. Immediately noticeable are the delicate little ceilings with their honey-comb patterns and tiny stalactites: there is one over the entranceway to the Al-Qartawiya Madresseh. The elegant façade of the same building has alternate black and white facings, and these appear again in the magnificent portal of the Taynal Mosque. There are about ten memorial schools, adjacent to the tombs of their benefactors, and these all display fanciful lines running along the cornices, gates and windows framed in various moulded patterns, and zigzags, palm-leaves and interlacing weaving about at the slightest opportunity.

To recapture "the taste for detail and ornament peculiar to the period", one has only to turn to the Al-Burtasiva Madresseh : what a wealth of intricacy in the stalactites and the lintel of the gateway, what richness of inlaid work in the mihrab and the moukarna-studded hanging shapes of the prayer hall ( a moukrana is a sort of staggered, upside-down honeycomb affair )! Remarkable also is the amazing variety of minarets. And most spectacular of all is "the variety of architectural and decorative solutions adopted to change the rectangular or square plan into the polygonal plan of drums, and then into the circular plan of cupolas".

Even more than the religious buildings, the hammams or bathing-houses of Tripoli provide ample material for a fascinating study devoted to the cupola. They have common rooms, private cubicles, and corridors-and the whole is covered, no matter what its size or shape, by a richly envisioned and engineered cupola. The "innumerable little glass eyes", which are really bottle-ends inlaid into the masonry for lighting purposes, give the buildings a glitteringly attractive look. The Hammam En-Nouri and the Hammam 'Izz ed-Din have been in operation for more than six hundred years; the doorway of the latter has a Latin inscription on the lintel, indicating that at least some of the stonework came from some far older Frankish building.

Another obviously communal building was the Khan - the caravanseria or warehouse. Khans tended to be tied to guilds or groups of people - like certain mosques ( for example the perfumers' mosque, known as Al-Attar, and the mosque of the tanners, Ad-Dabbaghin ), and some of the madresseh ( Al-Burtasiya was reserved, for instance, for the followers of the Immam Esh-Shafi'i ). The fourteenth-century Khan Al-Misriyyin was used by Egyptians in Tripoli, and the Khan Al-Askar served soldiers of the same period. There is the Khan es-Saboun, which was originally an Ottoman barracks, but was converted into a warehouse where soap is still piled up today. There have been tailors in the Khan Al-Khayyatin since the fourteenth century, as well as in the old Souk Al-Haraj.

Restoration work in the Khan Al-Khayyatin has brought to light various Byzantine remains, including an intact column and capital. Maybe tomorrow we shall find traces of a more distant past. The buildings that claim our attention at the moment represent only the most recent little bit of the city's long history. At the moment, it is mediaeval history and remains that bring the visitor to Tripoli.: for Tripoli is richer in remains of this period than anywhere else in Lebanon. Indeed, there are more than mere ruins: there are corners and alleys in the old city where the visitor gets the strange impression of floating back into the past; there are doorways where the middle Ages still lurk magically; here the past is close at hand, in all its grace and richness.

But it would be wrong to think of Lebanon's second city as an out-of-date, thoroughly mediaeval place. One should not confuse the modern, bustling, thriving community with the mystery and magic of Mamluk and Ottoman buildings, or with a ghostly feeling on certain street corners. Tripoli lives!

Source: Ministry of Tourism