Talk:List of castles in Jordan/Archive 1

Wrong name. "Desert castles" aren't castles, other items also not
They don't belong in this same category. Read the definition (it should be there in the lead). The desert castles are a very diverse lot by themselves, but can be collected under the same category of "desert castles", but that's it, "castles" they are not.

"Castle" is a term reserved for medieval fortresses of a certain type. Ajloun is a Muslim castle, Montreal/Shawbak and Karak are Crusader & Mamluk, Wu'ayra, al-Habis and a couple smaller ones are Crusader castles. The Ayyubid tower on the Amman Citadel Hill might fit, and the Jarash temple of Artemis fortified by the Damascenes also. Karak castle belongs here, no doubt about it, but the fortified city adjacent to it is already a different story.

The Mamluk & Ottoman fort at Aqaba is again a different category. Harrana is a fortified khan, fits uneasily under desert castles, but it's not a castle either.

We can think about a new category, "Fortified structures in Jordan", which would cover all.

The Roman and Byzantine forts & walled cities could be included there, but not under "castles". There might be Nabataean forts, too, and older fortified towers, cities, etc. from much earlier periods: none of those is called a "castle".

The Ottoman forts along the pilgrimage route, Darb al-Hajj, are also fortifications, but not castles.

Some caution please. Arminden (talk) 02:42, 4 December 2021 (UTC)


 * , hi. I took more time and saw now that this is entirely your baby. Please do reconsider the name, it's not trivial, but quite important as it's very misleading. They're all fortified places, but only a fraction are castles. Don't take my word for it, read the definition at Castle or in any treatise about the topic.
 * There is a similar category with a much more flexible name: "Castles and fortifications of the Kingdom of Jerusalem". If you really like the word castle to be in the cat. and don't mind having very long cat. names, "Castles and fortified structures in Jordan" can be the solution.
 * Muwaqqar and Mushash do NOT belong together. They're 20 km apart. I have put some effort into clarifying this in the Muwaqqar article.
 * I don't know enough to have an opinion on Mamluk forts (as opposed to larger castles), such as Al-Mudawara Castle and even the Aqaba fort, both with a Mamluk and Ottoman phase. They are related to, if not part of, the mainly Ottoman-built forts along the darb al-Hajj, which include Qatrana and Unaiza, even Aqaba Fortress is nothing else than a fortified hajj khan who got some extra work later on. I see now that somebody added a whole list of such hajj forts on the Qatrana page. They missed out one wikilink (Al-Mudawara) and made lots of typos, maybe you can correct it further and in the end identify more who have articles and can be wikilinked? Maybe just the area can be wikilinked? Is manzilt/manzil a word used in Arabic, or did the editor just copy from a Turkish source? If the latter is true, I'd say the "manzil(t)" can be removed. Hedjaz Jordan Railway is an interesting page in this context, the hajj route overlaps partially with the railroad route. Here they are:


 * Khan/Qal'at el-Mafraq
 * Manzil al-Zarqa/Qasr Shabib
 * Manzil/Qala'at Zizya
 * Manzil/Qah'at Dab'ah
 * Khan al-Hasa
 * Khan al-'Unayzah
 * Manzilt/Qal'at Ma'an
 * Manzilt/Qal'a Fasu'aa


 * The category "Castles in Jordan" is closely related and has the same issues., hi, I saw you added this cat. somewhere where it's questionable.
 * Please make the necessary fixes there too. Please mind that you always have cat. "Archaeological sites in Jordan" as an alternative when "fortification" or "fortified place", whatever we agree changing this to, isn't the most prominent characteristic of a place, or when unsure for another reason.
 * Amathus is placed in this category and has absolutely nothing to do with a medieval castle, unless there were some recent discoveries I know nothing about, but now there's nothing in the article to justify it.
 * Thanks and keep up the good work, but please, with more care for definitions. Arminden (talk) 00:47, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Check out this cat., it shows up at the bottom as "Ottoman hajj routes / Syrian route":


 * Arminden (talk) 01:08, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, hey the article belongs to everyone, and if there is research to support your opinion it should be done. I am rather new at editing here and apologize for any errors that I may have produced. The research about the structures goes back and forth between castle and fortification. And nearly all castles are fortifications. So perhaps the category you suggest would encompass both. Regarding Muwaqqar and Mushash my mistake was in thinking they were in a similar location and my research did not separate them. Thanks for the message, I think you can go ahead and make changes if you like. Have a great weekend. Bruxton (talk) 01:36, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi Bruxton, and thanks. I should be off Wiki completely, I've slipped in again by mistake and lost control quite a bit. So I'll try to stay out as good as I can.
 * I think there are a few categories here, who all fit under "antiquities and archaeology" (level 1), and a step lower under "fortified structures" (level 2). The level 3 categories for Jordan would be "desert castles", "medieval castles" (Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk also but maybe just Early Mamluk, when they were still expanding real castles), and "hajj forts". Of course they can overlap here and there, but still. The stone towers, walled cities, fortified monasteries etc., either older or newer, don't need their own level-3 categories, they can all go directly under level 1 or 2. Petra had a city wall in the Byzantine period, Rujm al-Malfouf in Amman is probably even Ammonite, and so forth. Just thinking aloud. But it's all yours, at least if I manage to stick to my real life chores. Have a great week, Arminden (talk) 02:07, 5 December 2021 (UTC)