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Dumbarton Oaks Studies
The Fortifications of Armenian Cilicia
Robert W. Edwards

The largest, and politically the most significant, medieval Armenian settlement outside the confines of Armenia Major was in Cilicia. From approximately 1080 to 1375 a community of diverse origins was slowly fused into a unified kingdom. The Armenians prospered because of the intricate network of defenses that turned a natural concavity of the Taurus Mountains into a Mediterranean-based fortified march. This study is primarily a systematic assessment of the military architecture of that kingdom.

Although most of these sites in Cilicia are Armenian, Muslim, Byzantine, and Crusader forts also come under close scrutiny. Part I is a digest and analysis of the formal survey of each fortification in Part II (the Catalogue). Since the latter includes discussions of the topography and history of each site, geographers and historians will find a wellspring of information.