Naryn Castle
Interesting facts
- In 1722 the beys of Derbent handed Peter the Great the city keys on a silver dish draped in Persian brocade, now kept in St Petersburg's Kunstkamera.
- For centuries the Derbent walls were called the Wall of Alexander, after a legend that he built them, though Alexander never came here.
- One reading of the name Naryn-Kala from Middle Persian is Sunny Fortress.
- The citadel measures roughly 255 by 180 metres, with small towers set every 20 to 30 metres along its walls.
- At Derbent the Caucasus leaves only a strip of plain about 3 km wide beside the Caspian, which is why a fortress here could block the route.
- In 2018 physicists and archaeologists studied a buried 12-metre cross-shaped chamber, debating whether it is a cistern or Russia's oldest Christian church.
- During the Persian campaign of 1796 the Russian commander Valerian Zubov set up his headquarters inside the citadel.
- The writer Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky complained that the Russians rebuilt Peter the Great's room in the khan's palace, sparing not even his window.
- A classical-style guardhouse built in 1827–1828 survives inside the walls, while the khan's palace was rebuilt by the army and later dismantled.
Why it is worth it
On the ridge above Derbent, where the foothills of the Caucasus press closest to the Caspian Sea, the citadel of Naryn-Kala commands the narrow coastal corridor that was for centuries the main route between the steppes of the north and the lands of Persia. Its massive stone walls, in places 20 to 25 metres high and up to 3.5 metres thick, enclose an irregular area of about 4.5 hectares at the top of the old city.
The fortress was built in the sixth century by the Sasanian king Khosrow I, who reigned from 531 to 579, as the anchor of a defensive system meant to seal the so-called Caspian Gates. From the citadel two parallel walls ran down to the sea, between 350 and 450 metres apart, enclosing the city between them, while a further mountain wall stretched about 40 km inland. Inside Naryn-Kala are the remains of a khan's palace, baths, a water supply carried in ceramic pipes, and an underground cistern; a vaulted structure of disputed purpose is among the oldest buildings within the walls. The citadel, the city walls and the old town were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2003 as the Citadel, Ancient City and Fortress Buildings of Derbent.
Derbent, in the Republic of Dagestan, is regarded as the oldest city in Russia and its southernmost. Its name comes from Persian words for a gate or barrier, and after the Arab conquest in the seventh century it became known as Bab al-Abwab, the "Gate of Gates". The Juma Mosque in the old town is considered the oldest mosque in Russia. Arabs, Persians, local khans and finally the Russian Empire, which took the city in the early nineteenth century, all held the citadel in turn.
Getting there
The citadel stands above the old town of Derbent, about 1.8 km from the centre. Derbent railway station lies on the line from Makhachkala towards Baku. The nearest airport is Makhachkala Uytash International Airport (MCX), about 99 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Naryn-Kala is an ancient pre-Arab citadel, part of the Derbent fortress, connected to the Caspian Sea by double walls designed to block the so-called Caspian gates to the Persian state. It is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
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