NIMROD’S FORTRESS

High in the Golan Heights, near the Lebanese border, lies the magical Nimrod’s Fortress. It stands on a hilltop, at an altitude of 816 meters (2675 ft) on the slopes of the towering Mt Hermon. It is surrounded by cultivated olive groves and a forest made up of mainly Calliprinos Oak. It overlooks the fertile Hula Valley and the Banias Springs.

THE NAME

Nimrod’s Castle is named after Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah, and son of Cush. According to the Bible, Nimrod was a mighty hunter and warrior, and his kingdom extended over the Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent, which included the Babylonian and Assyrian region (see map below).

Cush became the father of Nimrod; he was the first on earth to become a mighty warrior.  He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.” The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria, and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.

Genesis 10: 8-12

Although the Bible does not explicitly say so, it would appear that Nimrod was the king who ordered the construction of the Tower of Babel as recorded in Genesis 11:

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.  As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.  Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

⁸So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Genesis 11: 1-9

The non-canonical Book of Jasher, referred to in Joshua 10:13 and II Samuel 1: 18, confirms and adds much detail to this account:

20 And king Nimrod reigned securely, and all the earth was under his control, and all the earth was of one tongue and words of union.

21 And all the princes of Nimrod and his great men took counsel together; Phut, Mitzraim, Cush and Canaan with their families, and they said to each other, Come let us build ourselves a city and in it a strong tower, and its top reaching heaven, and we will make ourselves famed, so that we may reign upon the whole world, in order that the evil of our enemies may cease from us, that we may reign mightily over them, and that we may not become scattered over the earth on account of their wars.

22 And they all went before the king, and they told the king these words, and the king agreed with them in this affair, and he did so.

23 And all the families assembled consisting of about six hundred thousand men, and they went to seek an extensive piece of ground to build the city and the tower, and they sought in the whole earth and they found none like one valley at the east of the land of Shinar, about two days’ walk, and they journeyed there and they dwelt there.

24 And they began to make bricks and burn fires to build the city and the tower that they had imagined to complete.

25 And the building of the tower was unto them a transgression and a sin, and they began to build it, and whilst they were building against the Lord God of heaven, they imagined in their hearts to war against him and to ascend into heaven.

26 And all these people and all the families divided themselves in three parts; the first said We will ascend into heaven and fight against him; the second said, We will ascend to heaven and place our own gods there and serve them; and the third part said, We will ascend to heaven and smite him with bows and spears; and God knew all their works and all their evil thoughts, and he saw the city and the tower which they were building.

27 And when they were building they built themselves a great city and a very high and strong tower; and on account of its height the mortar and bricks did not reach the builders in their ascent to it, until those who went up had completed a full year, and after that, they reached to the builders and gave them the mortar and the bricks; thus was it done daily.

28 And behold these ascended and others descended the whole day; and if a brick should fall from their hands and get broken, they would all weep over it, and if a man fell and died, none of them would look at him.

29 And the Lord knew their thoughts, and it came to pass when they were building they cast the arrows toward the heavens, and all the arrows fell upon them filled with blood, and when they saw them they said to each other, Surely we have slain all those that are in heaven.

30 For this was from the Lord in order to cause them to err, and in order; to destroy them from off the face of the ground.

31 And they built the tower and the city, and they did this thing daily until many days and years were elapsed.

32 And God said to the seventy angels who stood foremost before him, to those who were near to him, saying, Come let us descend and confuse their tongues, that one man shall not understand the language of his neighbor, and they did so unto them.

33 And from that day following, they forgot each man his neighbor’s tongue, and they could not understand to speak in one tongue, and when the builder took from the hands of his neighbor lime or stone which he did not order, the builder would cast it away and throw it upon his neighbor, that he would die.

34 And they did so many days, and they killed many of them in this manner.

35 And the Lord smote the three divisions that were there, and he punished them according to their works and designs; those who said, We will ascend to heaven and serve our gods, became like apes and elephants; and those who said, We will smite the heaven with arrows, the Lord killed them, one man through the hand of his neighbor; and the third division of those who said, We will ascend to heaven and fight against him, the Lord scattered them throughout the earth.

36 And those who were left amongst them, when they knew and understood the evil which was coming upon them, they forsook the building, and they also became scattered upon the face of the whole earth.

37 And they ceased building the city and the tower; therefore he called that place Babel, for there the Lord confounded the Language of the whole earth; behold it was at the east of the land of Shinar.

38 And as to the tower which the sons of men built, the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up one third part thereof, and a fire also descended from heaven and burned another third, and the other third is left to this day, and it is of that part which was aloft, and its circumference is three days’ walk.

39 And many of the sons of men died in that tower, a people without number.

Jasher 9: 20-39

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In Rabbinical literature Nimrod is also identified as the builder of the Tower of Babel and the epitome of rebellion against God. It is possible his name, Nimrod, actually derives from the Hebrew root m,r,d, meaning rebellion. There are many Rabbinical writings and other ancient writings concerning Nimrod but it is unclear how much of these is true and how much is legend. Whatever the case, it is certain that Nimrod, although he started out as a mighty hunter before the LORD, he led his people into rebellion against God (see v 25 above), desiring to conquer Yahweh himself and become god in his place.

At this point in time we cannot know for sure if the Fortress site ever had any direct connection with Nimrod, but as it lies on the southwestern margin of his kingdom and overlooks an important transport route, it is possible. Recent research claims to have uncovered proof of a structure dating back at least to the Hellenist era, underlying the current Fortress.

HISTORY of the FORTRESS

After the Crusader armies lost the battle of the Horns of Hittim in 1187 they lost their hold on the Land of Israel. The Muslim Salah-e-Din systematically destroyed all the Crusader fortresses but the Crusaders attempted to return and reconquer the Holy Land. They only managed to gain control over the Coastal Plain and the Galilee, however. In 1227 the army of the German Kaiser, Frederick II, arrived in the Holy Land. Fearing that the Crusaders were about to attack Damascus, the Governor of the Banias region, al-Aziz Othman, the nephew of Salah e-Din, together with his older brother, Al-Moatis, initiated the building of the Fortress in 1227. The Fortress was intended to defend the road that connected Tyre, in Lebanon, with Damascus in Syria. After the danger had passed the Fortress was expanded and completed in 1230, but just seven years later the Mongols, invading from Central Asia, destroyed it. The Mongols were defeated by the Mamelukes at the great battle of Ein Harod. One of the Mameluke commanders, Baybars, named himself Sultan of the Mamelukes and gave the Fortress to his second-in-command, Bilik. Bilik restored and expanded the Fortress and some of the most impressive structures, such as the ‘Beautiful Tower’, date from his time. The Beautiful Tower, overlooking the road below, is semicircular on the outside but octagonal inside, with slits for archers facing in every direction. Bilik, in 1275, memorialized his accomplishments and the name of his sultan in the magnificent Baybar’s Inscription.

After the Crusaders were finally evicted from the Holy Land at the end of the 13th Century, the Fortress lost its prestige and was eventually abandoned. It was used as a prison for rebels during the 15th Century but it eventually fell into disuse, used only as shelter by shepherds and their flocks. It is now a National Park under the auspices of the National Parks Authority, the Antiquities Department , the Golan Regional Council and the Israeli Government Tourist Corporation.

OUR VISIT

It was a glorious spring day the day of our visit. The temperature was just right for a picnic in the olive grove before we set off to see the Fortress. Since my last visit, at least 20 years ago, the number of stairs seem to have multiplied, but nevertheless we made it all the way to the top of the highest point of the fortress, the Donjon (or Keep).

The views from the Fortress were absolutely stunning. To the north east we could see the patches of snow on Mt Hermon, and below it the Druse town of Majdal Shams. Stretching below the town lie orchards and fields on the basalt rubble of the volcanoes in the region. From these orchards we enjoy the juicy and delicious Hermon apples. To the south and west we could see glimpses of the Huleh Valley far below.

NATURE

The hills around Nimrod’s Castle are surrounded by low Mediterranean shrubland dominated by the Calliprinos Oak ( Quercus calliprinos) and the Atlantic Pistachio (Pistachio palaestina). The Calliprinos Oak is also known as the Palestine Oak and the Kermes Oak. In Hebrew it is ‘ alon matzui’ (the common oak), because it is the most common of Israel’s three oak species, the other two being the Tavor Oak (Q. ithuraburensis) and the Allepo oak ( Q. infectoria).

Mount Hermon is a cluster of extinct volcanic mountains that lie at the southern end of the Anti-Lebanon Mountain Range. It straddles the borders between Syria, Lebanon and Israel. The peak lies in Syria and is 2,814 m (9232ft) above sea level, the highest elevation in Syria. Its southern flanks lie in Israel and sport Israel’s only skifield. Snow falls abundantly on Mt Hermon in winter and filters down through the layers of basalt and limestone emerging at its foot in many crystal clear, sparkling springs which water the Golan and feed the rivers that drain into the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee.

As the water drains off the mountains it cuts deep gorges through the layers of solidified volcanic lava, basalt, and the softer layers of limestone which make up the region. These alternating layers create many waterfalls, many of which are dry in the summer months. We passed one of these spectacular waterfalls, the Saar Waterfall, as we left Nimrod’s Castle on our homeward journey.