Michael Eisenberg - The Art of Siege Warfare and Military Architecture From the Classical World to the Middle Ages

THE ART OF SIEGE WARFARE AND MILITARY ARCHITECTURE FROM THE CLASSICAL WORLD TO THE MIDDLE AGES

Edited by

MICHAEL EISENBERG AND RABEI KHAMISY

Scientific Editorial

DENYS PRINGLE, WERNER ECK AND ADRIAN BOAS

Published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by

OXBOW BOOKS

The Old Music Hall, 106108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JE

and in the United States by

OXBOW BOOKS

1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083

Oxbow Books and the individual contributors 2021

Hardback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78925-406-8

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78925-407-5 (epub)

Digital Edition: ISBN 9781789254082 (kindle)

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020947356

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Front cover: Belvoir Castle, Israel (aerial photo. M. Eisenberg)

Back cover: Qalat al-Subeiba (Nimrod Fortress), Israel (photo. M. Eisenberg)

U ZI A D

Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel

S ARAH A RENSON

Caesarea, Israel

A LEXANDER B ARANOV

Free University of Berlin, Germany

H ERV B ARB

Service rgional de larchologie, Direction rgionale des affaires culturelles, Orlans Cedex, France

C HAIM B EN -D AVID

Kinneret College, Israel

A YE D ALYANCI -B ERNS

Technical University of Berlin, Germany

G WYN D AVIES

Florida International University, USA

T OMASZ D ZIURDZIK

Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Poland

M ICHAEL E ISENBERG

The Zinman Institue of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Israel

W ERNER E CK

Universitt zu Kln, Historisches Institut Alte Geschichte, Germany

S VEN E KDAHL

University of Gothenburg, Sweden

E HUD G ALILI

The Zinman Institue of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Israel

P ETER G ENDELMAN

Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel

B RITA J ANSEN

Bremen, Germany

C HANG -H O J I

La Sierra University, USA

J OHN D. H OSLER

U.S. Army Command & General Staff College, USA

M ELANIE J ONASCH

Deutsches Archologisches Institut, Berlin

R ABEI K HAMISY

The Zinman Institue of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Israel

I LGIN K LEKI

Istanbul Technical University, Turkey

D ANIT L EVI

Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel

U TE L OHNER -U RBAN

Institut fr Archologie, Karl-Franzens-Universitt Graz, Austria

A NNA M ECH

Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Poland

J EAN M ESQUI

University of Poitiers, France

S ILKE M TH

National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen

I OANNIS N AKAS

Athens, Greece

A DAM P AOUT

The Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Israel

E LKE R ICHTER

Brandenburgisch Technische Universitt

Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany

A LINOR R UFIN S OLAS

Universit Paris, France

T URGUT S ANER

Istanbul Technical University, Turkey

V ARDIT S HOTTEN -H ALLEL

Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel

V ASSILIKI G. S TAMATOPOULOU

Ministry of Culture, Ephorate of Antiquities of Thessaloniki City and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

I TAMAR T AXEL

Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel

S HLOMIT W EKSLER -B DOLAH

Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel

C LAUDIA W INTERSTEIN

Deutsches Archologisches Institut, Berlin, Germany

The art of siege warfare and military architecture, that is to say poliorcetics in its widest sense, was always a part of Greek, and later Latin, historiography. The size and strength of the protective walls of the polis were just as vital for its security and the pride of its citizens as the heroic acts of its warriors in life and death on the battlefield. In the Classical period, the growing importance of cities as centres of culture, power and stability intensified the race in poliorcetics fortifications became more complex, while new and more ingenious ways of overcoming them were invented. In the Classical period, the main expense of the public treasury on towns and cities was devoted to military defences and temples. Until Imperial times, urban fortifications represented an expression of military prestige and political power, besides defining the civic and religious boundary of every city. During the Imperial times, the focus shifted from city walls to strengthening the military units and organizing their deployment along the borders of the Empire. The Pax Romana brought an unfamiliar phenomenon unfortified city foundations; however, the peace was neither global nor everlasting. By the 4th century CE, unfortified cities found it necessary to build walls. This military focus continued through the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods, when many cities, finding it impossible to maintain the size of their earlier fortifications, were forced to abandon them in favour of smaller urban citadels, sometimes located on the site of an earlier acropolis. The harsh military reality of the Early Middle Ages brought a new wave of investment and innovation in the military architecture of cities and citadels. The development of larger siege weapons and machines after about half a millennium of technological stagnation forced townsfolk to apply new techniques to the design of their urban defences, some of them relearned from surviving classical texts. The new city walls had to be built not only to withstand newly developed stone-throwing engines, rams, mining techniques and incendiary devices such as Greek fire, but also to incorporate strategies designed to keep would-be attackers as far as possible from the main walls themselves.

Five main stages characterize the development of poliorcetics from the Classical period to the Late Middle Ages:

Before 398 BCE: period before the invention of siege machinery and projectiles.

398 BCE to Late Roman: the development of siege machinery, including mobile siege towers ( helepoleis ), battering rams, torsion artillery and new urban military architecture.

Late Roman to Early Medieval: period of stagnation in the development of sieging and projectile machinery.

Early to Late Medieval: development of new heavy projectiles and sophisticated siege techniques, together with political and demographic changes that forced rebuilding of fortifications.

Late Medieval: the invention and adaptation of gunpowder, the beginning of a new era in military development.

At first glance, the long chronological spectrum of this book, from the Classical period to the Late Middle Ages, may seem too broad a period to permit the development of a consistent methodology and terminology, yet this is exactly the supposed barrier that we, the editors, wish to show is largely imaginary. This idea was born during a spontaneous debate that we had about terminology. While our research specialisms relate respectively to the classical and medieval worlds, we realized, and agreed, that although some of the terminology used in and applied to the different periods was different, the concepts and arguments employed by scholars investigating them have mutual ground. This idea became the thread running through the conference that we organized in Haifa, Israel, in February 2017. We wished to combine presentations and debates between scholars working on the study of poliorcetics in two historical periods that are usually treated separately. The conference, titled The Art of Siege Warfare and Military Architecture from the Classical World to the Middle Ages: An International Conference for the Study of Poliorcetics, Military Historiography and the Archaeology of Battlefields , gathered some of the fields leading experts as well as emerging scholars, who all contributed to the fruitful discussions, and not less importantly, to the friendly atmosphere.