The Castle of Cursat

This castle stands some 15 km south of Antioch, not far from the Antakya Yayla Dagi road. Cursat (in Arab, Qusayir) was founded by the Crusaders and its purpose was to protect Antioch from the south and to be a place of refuge in case of need.

The castle was used intermittently as the residence of the patriarch of Antioch. Cursat put up a drawn-out resistance to the Mameluk Sultan Baybars and did not fall until 175, seven years after the capture of Antioch. It was the headquarters of a small administrative and military subdivision dependent on Aleppo. Cursat stands on a very sheer rock, but is connected with the neighbouring mountains in the south west by a ridge through which the Crusaders dug a moat. The irregular outer wall is in ruins except for the eastern part. The castle is entered by a gate at the north west side. Inside, on the right, is a building that used to house the guards and, on the left, a large vaulted underground room lit by large windows. To the south west stood two two storeyed towers built in the 13th century and still well preserved.

The triangular peninsula of Cyzicus that widens towards the north is the forerunner of a group of islands that includes Marmora (the former Proconnesus) whose bluish marble is famous. The peninsula itself was originally a mountainsou island separated from the coast by a shallow channel. It is named after the mythical King Cyzicus who, it is said, reigned over the Doliones at the time of the voyage of the Argonauts and was killed by Jason as the result of a misunderstanding. The island is also called Arctonnesus, Dolionis, and Dindymis by ancient authors.

A Milesian colony, established in the 8th or 7th century B.C. on the southern tip of the island controlling the passage, was at the origin of the importance of Cyzicus. Racked by internal dissensions during the archaic era and for a time ruled by tyrants, torn in the classical period between the Athenians and the Persians but rebelling against the Achaemenid tutelage, the city fell to the Seleucids in Hellenic times, though it maintained excellent relations with the dynasty of Pergamum. After the foundation of the province of Asia, Cyzicus was rewarded by the Romans for its brave resistance against the attacks of Mithridates by being granted the status of a free city and control over part of Mysia to the north. It lost this freedom under Tiberius, but remained on the whole on good terms with the Roman emperors and their Thracian allies. The incursions of the barbarians from the Lower Empire and the wars of the Middle Ages, combined with the damage caused by several earthquakes, finally led to the abandonment of the site.

The ruins of Cyzicus are scattered on the mountain slope to the north of the isthmus which was created by alluvial deposits in the area of the former channel; the latter was, from the end of the 4th century B.C., crossed by bridges and causeways built on the advice of Alexander. These ruins can only be approached on foot, and are found to the left and right of the road that runs to Erdek amidst fields, thickets, vineyards, plane trees, olive trees, and mulberry trees. On the left, a Byzantine tower guides us to the rather insignificant remains of the large Temple of Hadrian, inaugurated in 167 under Marcus Aurelius. On the right, a homely “factory” for processing olives indicates the way to the hamlet, beyond which by following a brook upstream we come to the huge, and much more spectacular, ruins of an amphitheatre; in the same area, to the south south east, is a theatre whose cavea is still recognizable, and some ancient walls.

The best finds from the territory of Cyzicus were taken to the museum of Istanbul and to the museum of Bursa (Attis). There are some at Mehmet Aytekin’s at Edincik and various fragments are kept in the lapidary collection at Erdek.

Erdek (the former Artake) is on the south-east coast of the peninsula, some 20 km by the road from Bandırma. The open-air museum in a square beside the sea, displays architectural fragments, votive reliefs and fragments of statuettes. If we turn left along the shore, we come (1 km) to the foot of the rocky promonory of Murad Bair on which stand the ruins of a Byzantine mortification in which many ancient materials were reused.