Rumkale

Rumkale
Yavuzeli, Gaziantep Province, Turkey
The Rumkale Fortress
Rumkale
Coordinates	37°16′19″N 37°50′17″E / 37.27194°N 37.83806°E / 37.27194; 37.83806
Type	Fortress
Site history
Events	Council of Hromkla in 1179

Rumkale (lit. 'Roman Castle'; Armenian: Հռոմկլա, romanized: Hromgla^[1]), also known as Urumgala,^[2] is a ruined fortress on the Euphrates, located in the province of Gaziantep and 50 km west of Şanlıurfa.

Although Rumkale is sometimes linked with places mentioned in ancient sources, the foundations of the structure can be traced back to the Byzantine rule the earliest, when the fortress was the seat of a Syriac Orthodox bishopric. Rumkale evolved into a town when its Armenian civilian population grew in the 11th century. The fortress slipped away from the Byzantine rule when Philaretos Brachamios (r. 1071–1087), a Byzantine general of Armenian origin, usurped control of the region amidst the political turmoil caused by the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Rumkale then came under Kogh Vasil, whose adoptive son and successor Vasil Dgha was tortured by Baldwin II of Edessa and forced to relinquish his lands, including Rumkale, to the Crusader states in 1116. Sometime between 1148 and 1150, Catholicos Grigor III Pahlavuni purchased the fortress making it the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church, although it continued to house Syriac Orthodox and Catholic representatives. The town later became part of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, and by 1268, became isolated from the rest of the Cilician domains.

In 1292, the castle was besieged and captured by the Mamluk Sultanate. From then on, it served as a significant outpost on the border with the Ilkhanate, a breakaway state of the Mongol Empire. In 1516, Rumkale surrendered to the Ottoman army without a siege following the Mamluk defeat at the Battle of Marj Dabiq.

In 1831, the fortress was depopulated after the Ottoman forces suppressed the rebellion led by the local tax collector. The next year, Egyptian general Ibrahim Pasha bombarded the fortress during the Egyptian–Ottoman War.