- Built by
- Byzantine command
- Built
- 10th c., Byzantine
- Why
- Fortification of the pilgrimage complex
- Taken
- 986, after a three-day siege
- Then
- Fatimid control, 1017
The place is called Qal'at Sim'an — the Citadel of Simeon — and it is worth being precise about why, because the name is not a metaphor.
In the tenth century, when Islamic authority in the north weakened, Byzantine forces took the hill and fortified it. Walls went up around a complex that had been built for pilgrims, and the shrine became a military position. That is when the monastery acquired the word *qal'a*, and it never lost it.
It did not hold for long in any one hand. In 986 the Hamdanid commander took the fortress after a siege of three days; in 1017 it passed to the Fatimids. After that its military value fell away, it was left, and eventually it passed to the antiquities authorities as a ruin.
So the walls are the reason for the name, and the name is the reason most people expect a castle and find a church. Both things are true: it was built as the largest church in the world and it spent part of its life as a fort.