Mosul Gate

The Mosul Gate was constructed at the southwestern end of the Amadiya/Amedi citadel. Integrated into the citadel fortifications that were rebuilt during the Zengid dynasty, the gate itself was erected during the reign of the breakaway ruler Badr ad-Din Lu’lu’ (r. 1225-1259 AD) and is dated on the basis of the original Arabic inscription of its outer frame. 

The gateway is approached by a stone staircase built in antiquity. The final stretch of this staircase runs south along the citadel’s western cliff—passing by the three Parthian-era reliefs—and thus the facade of the gateway is oriented to the north (see the plan). The portal was constructed of fine ashlar masonry, with subsidiary parts of the structure built of more roughly hewn stone. Until fairly recent times, the portal was fitted with a wooden and iron door; beyond the portal, the gatehouse structure is formed into a corridor, originally vaulted, covering the southward continuation of the staircase (see the panorama). To the west of the corridor are two small chambers set in a rounded bay, built precipitously over a natural bastion of the cliff. At the southern end of the corridor, the staircase turns east and opens into the city (see the panorama).

The gate was critically damaged due to a sudden collapse at the end of the 1960s. Some of the blocks along the left side of the portal were spared from the destruction, preserving the original masonry. The remainder of the structure, up to the rounded bay to the west, was reconstructed in the 1980s with errors in the placement of blocks. However, travelers’ drawings and photographs provide a record of its appearance before the collapse, during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries (see Walter Bachmann’s 1911 photograph).1 The gate was documented by the MMM team during several visits between 2013–2019, prior to the initiation of a project to stabilize the structure and to reconstruct the relief carving according to its original positioning of the sculpted blocks. 

The portal’s outer frame was bordered with a band of Arabic inscriptions (now fragmentarily preserved only along the left side; see further in “Inscriptions”). The architrave was supported by six brackets—now four—with an additional two in the corners. The portal’s inner arch is adorned with an intricate relief. The large keystone block centers on a solar disc with a frontal face surrounded by the so-called “Syrian knot” motif. Directly below the solar disc, the knot wraps around a rosette before splitting outward in both directions. Across the surrounding blocks, the knot reveals itself to be composed of the bodies of two intertwined dragons. Their snaky bodies loop down the voussoirs, doubling back at the arch’s springing and straightening as they wrap up around the edge of the frame. The erroneous reconstruction of the blocks above the keystone obscures how the twist above the knot expanded outward into the dragons’ upper bodies with wings, claws and gaping jaws. Toward the edges of the spandrels were two symmetrical human figures (the figure to the left is largely in place; the figure to the right is now quite jumbled). This beaded, long-haired man, wearing a robe and boots, grasps the dragon by the jaws and stabs a sword into its neck. The doubling of the figure is an iconographic convention well known in the dragon-slayer imagery prevalent in this region; it more likely serves the interests of emblematic impact than of narrative purposes.2 The figures are set in a field of twisting vegetal patterns, which seems to be related to a tree-like motif rising from the corners and lining both the rectangular frame and the outer edge of the dragons’ bodies. 

The “Snake Gate” that was once built into Amadiya/Amedi’s palace—probably a bit later in date—is decorated with similar dragons, though here they are subdued by a raptor. Both the raptor and the dragon are well attested in Seljuk iconography in Anatolia.3 More generally, the dragon was very common in the art of the medieval Islamic world.4 Originating in antiquity, this creature has deep roots in the region; it has been argued that its reuse on medieval Islamic portals in eastern Anatolia and Iraq served talismanic purposes.5 The inclusion of the victorious heroes on the Mosul Gate, along with the solar disc and lunette, adds additional layers of meaning to this particular representation.6 This likely relates to the creature’s threatening associations with eclipses, such that their defeat symbolizes triumph over chaos, while the heroic figures may have been based on legendary dragon-slayers (at least in iconographic terms); as the dragon was a multivalent image in Islamic art, a variety of meanings are possible and could have coexisted.7  

• 1. Bachmann 1913, pl. 1. Several of Bachmann’s photographs, not published in his original work, are illustrated in Gierlichs 1995; see also the photograph published in al-Janabi 1982, pl. 175.
• 2. Cf. Pancaroğlu 2004, 154. In the Byzantine period, the doubled figures were sometimes represented as St. Theodore and St. George. However, the identity of the dragon-slayer(s) is often vague in both Byzantine and Islamic contexts.
• 3. See Katharina Otto-Dorn, “Figural Stone Reliefs on Seljuk Sacred Architecture in Anatolia,” Kunst des Orients 12, H 1/2 (1978–1979), 103–149. See also the comments and bibliography in al-Janabi 1982, 253 and n. 411.
• 4. Kuehn 2013 provides the most recent overview, with numerous illustrations (on the Mosul Gate, see pp. 100–101).
• 5. Persis Berlekamp, “Symmetry, Sympathy, and Sensation: Talismanic Efficacy and Slippery Iconographies in Early Thirteenth Century Iraq, Syria and Anatolia,” Representations 133, no. 1 (2017): 59–109.
• 6. The relief bears especial similarities with that on the portal of the al-Han caravanserai, also commissioned by Lu’lu’. See Max van Berchem, “Arabische Inschriften” in Archäologische Reise im Euphrat- und Tigris-gebiet, eds. Friedrich Sarre and Ernst Herzfeld (Berlin: D. Riemer, 1911), 1–51, fig. 7; also published in al-Janabi 1982, fig. 51. Also note that a basin commissioned by Lu’lu’ in Mosul features personifications of Sol and Luna above addorsed dragons (Kuehn 2013, fig. 147).
• 7. Generally, see Kuehn 2013. On the eclipse symbolism of dragons, see ibid., pp. 136-144; on the Mosul Gate, Gierlichs 1995, 203–205. Regarding the heroic figures, there is a long tradition of dragon-slayers in this region, connected to the iconography of St. George/St. Theodore and later to Khidr (see Pancaroğlu 2004; Kuehn 2013, 87–110). However, it is unusual that the figures on the portals at Amadiya/Amedi and al-Han and are not mounted (cf. Gierlichs 1995, 178).