Maraclea, the Crusader Sea Tower on the Syrian Coast

Maraclea is the site of a Crusader town and sea tower on the coast between Tartus and Baniyas, off the present-day village of Kharab Maraqiya. The remains on land have gone. More than 100 metres offshore, the footings of a square tower built on a shoal can still be made out just below the surface. There is little to see; what makes the place worth telling is that in 1285 a Mamluk sultan threatened to besiege Tripoli over this single tower.

What you can see today

The short answer: very little. From the shore you can pick out the trace of the foundations in the shallows, and that is all; the guidebook Monuments of Syria notes that the tower cannot really be photographed from land. Aerial photographs taken by the French Army of the Levant in 1936 show the square footprint in the sea clearly, and the cover of this page is one of them. In January and September 2022 a team of Syrian and Russian underwater archaeologists surveyed the remains of the sea castle.

From the Umayyads to Byzantine raids

After the Muslim conquest, the caliph Mu’awiya I resettled and garrisoned the coastal cities, Maraclea among them. In 675/676 a Byzantine fleet attacked Maraclea and killed the governor of Homs. In 968 Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas ravaged the region. In 1030 Niketas, the Byzantine governor of Antioch, forced a coalition of Nasr ibn Musharraf al-Rawadifi, the qadi of Tripoli and the local Fatimid commander to lift their siege of Maraclea.

Why the tower was pulled down

By the middle of the 13th century the castle was disputed between the Principality of Antioch and the Knights Hospitaller. In 1271 the Mamluks destroyed the town. Its lord, Barthélémy de Maraclée, fled to the court of the Ilkhanid ruler Abaqa in Persia and urged the Mongols to intervene in the Holy Land. The last fortification left in the area was the square tower standing out from the shore, and Barthélémy had dug in there. In 1285 the Mamluk sultan Qalawun forced Bohemond VII, count of Tripoli, to demolish it, saying he would besiege Tripoli if the tower was not dismantled.

How long it takes

Half an hour on the shore. Maraclea is not a trip on its own but a stop on the way to Margat Castle, between Tartus and Baniyas.

What most people miss

The colour of the water. Because the footings sit so close to the surface, on a calm day the shoal shows a different colour from the sea around it; in the 1936 photograph the tower sits inside that pale patch too. It is the easiest way to find the tower from the shore.