Travel Guide Qasr Al-Hayr Al-Sharqi

The «castle» of Nineveh Al-Hayr al-Sharqi is one of the mysterious works built in the great Syrian desert in the early th century by the Umayyad. Syria, but also Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq account for about.Their isolation, apart from the major modern axes, has always made it a subject of surprise for the tourist on the affût lookout. Their function has long eluded speculation.They were regarded as princely residences, hence their name as "desert castles." Recent studies have shown that they are also real farms. Today, these castles are deprived of their irrigation system, their pens and their garden, so that we can hardly imagine the attractiveness they were exercising on these desert children (from Arabia) that were the Umayyad.Leaving Damascus, their capital, princes and their court gathered the pleasures of hunting and consolidaient their ties with desert tribes. For rest, the residence, in general square, with walls and towers, had richly decorated reception rooms decorated with stucco, mosaics, frescoes and a hammam. A symbol of the new religion, the mosque was never forgotten.Syria has three umayyad residences. The castle of Jebel Dis, built at the foot of a Safa volcano (100 km south-east of Damascus - not accessible); Qasr Al-Hayr al-Gharbi castle, «the West», 75 km southwest of Palmyra (see above); finally, Nineveh Al-Hayr al-Sharqi castle, «the Oriental», is the best preserved. Do not expect to find the equivalent of a cross fortress here. The words of these books were not defensive. The pleasure is just as much in the route through the steppe as in the discovery of these curiosities of the omeyyade golden age.