Posted on 04/19/2020 1:54:03 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The walls stand up to 20 feet tall. It was built at the start of the 4th century AD, as part of defensive works for a limes Arabicus, and held a cavalry unit of perhaps 120-150 men. The building inscription survives:Optimis maximisque principibus nostris Caio AurelioWhich tells us that the fort was called Mobene, and was constructed by the Praeses of the province of Arabia, a chap named Aurelius Asclepiades, in the reign of the tetrarchy, Diocletian and friends.
Valerio Diocletiano Pio Felici Invicto Augusto et
Marco Aurelio Valerio Maximiano Pio Felici Invicto Augusto et
Flavio Valerio Constantio et Galerio Valerio Maximiano
nobilissimis Caesaribus Castra Praetorii Mobeni fossamentis
Aurelius Asclepiades praeses provinciae Arabiae
perfici curavit.
I [Roger Pearse] found this marvellous photograph of a Roman fortlet in the Jordanian desert on Twitter here.
sidebars:
(Excerpt) Read more at roger-pearse.com ...
Or maybe the German Crusaders took ther term for a fortified military installation with them to the Holy Land, and Arabic borrowed the term from them? Or was the term an earlier Arabic one? (We need a philologist here on this issue.)
Probably "Castra" Arabicized = "Qasr", eh?
That's correct [Constantius I Chlorus]. After the crisis of the 3rd century, the Emperor Aurelian defeated a huge barbarian invasion after recovering from a defeat by those very same barbarians, defeated his Roman rivals, put the Empire back together, sobered everyone up something wonderful, built the Aurelian Wall around Rome (parts still exist and visible), defeated a rebellion in the east, consolidated borders, and did all of it in five years, despite his humble birth. Oh, and was assassinated by one of his aides who apparently thought his own corruptions had been found out. This brief respite in the Empire's troubles were followed by a few more years of much better organized troubles.
The next effective leader was Emperor Diocletian. The D man reestablished central imperial control, then, for the first time in Roman history, set up a system to regularize the succession process, making Emperor more frankly and openly a hereditary office. He divided the Empire into two parts, and each of the halves into two parts, so that there were two emperors and two heirs apparent running things in a coordinated fashion. Then Diocletian built a self-sufficient retirement villa (still stands in Split, Croatia) and retired, compelling his eastern colleague to retire at the same time, leading to the first test of the system. Each of their designated heirs rose in rank, then named their own successors. After a couple of bumps in the road, it worked out.
The Roman commander Carausius was under a cloud when he led his legions and the Atlantic navy over to Britain, creating the first independent "united kingdom". Eventually he got murdered by his short-lived successor, who apparently thought he'd get back into the good graces of Rome if he did in his boss (or perhaps had connived with Rome), but that really didn't work out for him. It's possible that Carausius or Allectus constructed the still-mysterious Wansdyke.
There was an ongoing climate event, the Roman Cooling, during which Central Asian ethnic groups were migrating out along the steppes, which are like the North American Great Plains, but instead of N-S they go E-W. This resulted in generations of pressure on the Roman polity in northern and western Europe, and large shifts and new layers of paint as it were. But everything had to work out the way that it did to result in my own rather unremarkable and mostly unremarked existence, so I'm okay with this. :^)
Emperor Constantine wound up ruling the entire Empire, which was beset on all sides, and did a pretty good job. He stopped wasting resources on persecution of Christians, who made up a very large part of the population by that time. He publically converted (although he continued to revere Mars and Apollo), wound up executing various members of his family, and replaced the old Greek city Byzantium with the remarkable Constantinople. The "Engineering an Empire" episode about Constantinople is well worth seeing. In a way, he's the Henry VIII of the Roman Empire; he converted to a new faith, but still did observations in the old one, he used the power of the state and supremo of his religion to confiscate treasuries from the pagan deities' temples, and demolishing same, analogous to Viii's dissolution of the monasteries.
It's strange to consider that the final fall of the Roman Empire took place about 40 years before Columbus set sail in the Santa Maria.
Yup, that's what I'd kinda thought (probably the same for the German word, Latin route), and that's what the wiki-wacky page sez. I've been wondering if Kasserine Pass (site of a US defeat in WWII) may have its roots in Qasr / castra as well. Probably not though, unless it's indirect.
might be a great place for a remake of The Lost Patrol
So, SunkenCiv, what’s the strategic advantage of a “fortlet” like this. Even though it could house a garrison and a small unit of cavalry, what else did it do. Would it provide temporary refuge from an uprising until help arrived? Was it really just a trading center with protective walls?
I read quite a bit, but still didn’t find the answers to these questions.
Thanks.
It was a long frontier, but distant from any meaningful settlements, so, no indigenous uprisings to worry about, and the garrison had unobstructed views, probably in all directions. They were a cavary force and could patrol and strike quickly if needed. Other forts of course existed along and (as here) out in front of the more than 900 mile Limes Arabicus. The barrier tended to funnel trade into Roman controlled gates across ancient existing routes.
I just read a summary -- I'm sure I've seen that, I must have been very young, and it was on TV. And not a bad idea. Of course, it would need some sprucin' up...
Sometimes I wonder how various pieces - stone and brick especially - end up on the ground . . . where they rest.
Around here, you can see 1 twister every 5-10 minutes during the afternoon hours, on a warm sunny day.
The lower portion of the twister, drills the ground and rocks, raising dust 300 ft plus into the air.
Usually there is pause - in appearance, as stuff falls back to the ground - and then 50 to 200 ft away, that twister’s base is ready for more earth moving.
At night, with the sun long gone, the heat of your roof will “attracts” a small twister, and stuff up on the roof is then moved around. Rocks end up on the ground around your domicile.
So, I am thinking that the elements move those bricks and stone, more than visitors, in some locations.
I think the reason more of these stones remain than at other sites is the remoteness of the location. Perfectly good reusable building stone, vs. unshaped local rocks that are nearby.
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