Lattakia, Qala'at Salah Ad-Din and Ugarit

I arrived in Lattakia, a port town, yesterday afternoon and after checking out a couple of hotels and wandering through the town it seemed it had no real tourist attractions. It’s pretty ugly and dusty to boot. Fortunately I was only here as a means to visit of a couple of nearby sights.

This morning my friendly cab driver, Ali, drove me out to Qala’at Salah Ad-Din. I was expecting to be disappointed after the incredible Krak des Chevaliers but I was wrong. The castle is also enormous and flanked by a huge stretch of walls all set in a spectacular location on a forested hilltop with beautiful ravines stretching along its southern side. Despite the impressiveness of the castle it was apparently all in vein as it was conquered in a mere 2 days and the Western Knights were forced to surrender to the armies of Saladin. Inside the walls are a mosque, a church, towers, a stable, a palace and a bath complex. The site is a joy to explore and photograph but the Eastern side is overgrown and cannot be explored which is a shame. I’m sure some day this will be rectified.

After a delicious lunch of Chicken Shish Taouk myself and Ali drove out to Ugarit, an ancient site with finds going back to about 6000 BC. However the most interesting finds date from 1800 to 1200 BC including clay tablets with the world’s oldest alphabet. Other findings indicated that this trading post did business with Cyprus, Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as a knowledge of their writing systems including hieroglyphics. Armed with this knowledge they obviously took it one step further and founded the basis for all modern Western and much eastern written communication. The site of Ugarit spans 27 hectares and has a vast structure of ruins including a palace, an acropolis and 2 temples. The famous clay tablet with the world’s first alphabet is in a museum in Damascus. Tomorrow back to Aleppo, Syria’s second city which I visited 2 years ago and has the best souk (market) in all of Syria.

- David