Island Citadel of Crusader Foe, Sultan Saladin, Now Enjoys the Fruits of Peace

PHARAON ISLAND, Egypt —  For more than 800 years, a medieval fortress honoring the Crusader-foe Saladin knew only wars or rumors of wars. Today, rebuilt on a tiny island in a turquoise gulf, the picturesque citadel enjoys the fruits of peace.

Named for the most dreaded and able Muslim warrior, Saladin’s Citadel has become a tourist mecca.

It was little more than rubble when Egyptian antiquities officials came in 1985. They put archeologists and restorers to work piecing together the long-forgotten history and architecture of the once-proud fort, Egypt’s eastern gateway, and the restoration continues.

But the rebuilt citadel stands again, its walls up to 100 feet high.

From the site in the northern Gulf of Aqaba, visitors can see four countries with the naked eye. The fort’s doorway faces Saudi Arabia, its curving wall Jordan and Israel. The peaks of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and the coral reefs of the gulf complete the panorama.

Egyptian and foreign tourists, including many Israelis, come by launch from mainland Egypt little more than a stone’s throw away. Others come by passenger ferry from Jordan.

Still others, like Jordan’s King Hussein and Queen Noor, pass by in private yachts.

Visitors from Jordan and Israel, still technically at war with each other, scamper side by side up, down and around walls and mazes that cover Pharaon Island.

Nevertheless, until September, 1988, the fort’s future was uncertain, because of a protracted struggle between Egypt and Israel over Taba, 250 acres of Israeli-held beachfront four miles to the north, seized by the Israelis in the 1967 war.

International arbitrators, however, have given Taba back to Egypt and now Saladin’s Citadel holds a large share of the area’s tourist market.

At night, its lighted walls can be seen for miles against the backdrop of the Sinai’s seemingly endless starry sky.

It is a peaceful setting now, but in the late 12th Century it wasn’t so.

Saladin spent his adult life fighting. He fought Islamic holy wars against the Crusades’ most famous knights, and he fought local skirmishes among rival Muslim groups throughout the Middle East.

Saladin became sultan of Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Palestine, founding the Ayyubid Dynasty in 1171.

Known not only for his battle prowess but also his statesmanship and courtliness, he was driven by the idea of jihad --Islamic holy war. In 1187 Saladin captured Jerusalem for the Muslims, which had been in Frankish hands for 88 years.

“War was everywhere,” said Fahmy Abdul-Alim, director of Islamic monuments for the Egyptian Antiquities Organization and a leading Egyptian Islamic archeologist.

“Many battles happened here. This fortress is of major historical interest because it was the gateway to Egypt, strategic for Saladin.

“He built many fortresses in Egypt, but this one is especially important. It helped to prevent the enemy from cutting the caravan and supply routes east and west, which enabled pilgrims to continue making the hajj to Mecca.”

The hajj is the pilgrimage Muslims make to Mecca, the Prophet Mohammed’s birthplace.

Though much smaller, the fort’s architecture bears some resemblance to Saladin’s masterpiece, Old Cairo’s hillside Citadel. The Pharaon Island installation was an active fort until early this century.

A front tower holds the remains of a roost for carrier pigeons used by Saladin for communicating with Cairo and Damascus.

Archeologist Abdul-Alim said the fortress enabled the Muslim militiamen, whose lives were difficult and lonely, to be self-supporting for long periods.

“The fortress has storerooms for food and a water system that would have allowed the soldiers to survive for months at a time until reinforcements arrived,” he said. “You even have a mosque for their religious needs.”

During excavations last winter Egyptian archeologists uncovered a weapons-making area, the first such furnace at a citadel in Egypt.

“You have to remember how isolated this fortress would have been,” Abdul-Alim said. “The soldiers naturally would have been required to repair their weapons on the spot, make new ones if necessary.”

He said the archeologists also found coins dating to the end of Saladin’s reign and a plaque with his name.

Gamal Celiman, the island’s antiquities inspector, said the island is made of granite, which in Saladin’s time was quarried and shaped on the spot. Other stones and building materials were brought from elsewhere.

“We found stones with 2,000-year-old Nabatean writing, which probably were taken from buildings in south Sinai,” Celiman said. The Nabatean kingdom was based in what is now western Jordan. “One room was covered by a palm roof, but no palms grew here,” he said.

The fort had some comforts for its soldiers.

“There were steambaths with hot-water pipes,” Celiman said. But the fort also provided for troublemakers.

“We have chains with cuffs, just in case,” he said.