Salkhad Castle

The castle does not sit on a hill; it sits on a volcanic cone. Salkhad stands at thirteen hundred and fifty metres in the middle of Jabal al-Druze, and the Ayyubids built the fortress here between 1214 and 1247 against the possibility of a Crusader push into the interior of the Hauran. The logic of the site becomes obvious once you are up: the plain opens westward as far as you can see, and anything coming across it can be seen from here.

Getting there

Thirty kilometres south-east of As-Suwayda, about an hour by car. The castle is on the cone in the middle of the town; a vehicle can get you to the foot, and the rest is on foot.

How long it takes

An hour and a half: half an hour up and down, half an hour on the walls, the rest among the stone buildings of the town. The climb is short but steep, and the ground is volcanic cinder that slides underfoot.

What to see

The castle itself is ruined: parts of the towers and walls stand, and the interiors are largely filled in. What you have really come for is the position and the view — the Hauran plain to the west, and to the east the point where the desert begins. Down in the main square of the town a six-sided basalt minaret stands intact, and there are few like it in the region. Around it are tombs carved in the Nabataean, Roman and Ayyubid periods, and Roman houses that are still partly lived in.

What not to miss

The minaret. Most visitors climb to the castle and drive away, but the six-sided minaret on the square is the soundest single building in the town. The second thing lies underneath the castle: long before the Ayyubids, Salkhad was a Nabataean town, and a votive inscription to the goddess Allat dated to AD 57 was found here. The fortress was raised on a settlement a thousand years older than itself.

Where it stands now

Salkhad is the seat of the southernmost district of Suwayda governorate, and the governorate has been inside an armed conflict since July 2025. The present condition of the castle cannot be confirmed from independent sources, and access to the region is not regular. This page tells you what Salkhad is; it does not tell you that you can go there today.