Muslim Fortresses in the Levant: Between Crusaders and Mongols (50 page)

The army demanded that the River
should be the boundary between the Muslims and the Armenians, and that he should surrender all the fortresses and territory south of the River
. Constantine agreed to this and surrendered to the Muslims all the territory south of the River
including Hamūs, Tall
, Kuwayrā, al-Naqīr, Hajar Shaghlān, Sarfadkār and
, all of which are as strong fortresses as one could wish.
⁶

The fotresses south of the
often changed hands between Armenians and Mamluks. The chronicler Badr al-Dīn
quotes Ibn al-Kathīr in his work
al-jumān fī ta’rīkh ahl al-zamān
, which describes the Mamluk raid on Sīs in 703/1305. After a long siege of the fortress of Tall
, held at the time by the Armenians, the Armenian king
II appealed to the sultan
to bring the raids that were causing havoc and destruction in his country to an end. The agreement states that the area between the
River and Aleppo would belong to the Muslims while the land to the north and the east of the river would belong to the Armenians.
⁷
In 737/1339, after the Mamluks had besieged the port Ayās, the two sides agreed that the Mamluks would raise the siege if the Armenians handed over all the fortresses east of the
. The list included eight fortresses: Kāsīsh, al-Naqbar, Kuwayrā, al-Hārūnyah, Sarfadkār, Ayās, Bānās and Bakhīmh.
⁸
While some of these appear in previous treaties others are mentioned here for the first time.