Ramla - White Tower

Between St Joseph Church and the police station in Ramla is a street which runs west to the White Tower, known to Muslims as the Tower of the Forty Companions of the Prophet, to Christians as the Tower of the Forty Martyrs.

This square tower in Gothic style, built by Baibars in 1267, is 27m/89ft high, with 128 steps leading to its upper platform. A German traveler called Anton von Prokesch-Osten, who described Ramleh in 1831 as "a very charming little town in rich surroundings with over 800 Greek and 200 Mohammedan inhabitants", also recounted how he waited on the top of the tower until sunset, "enjoying wide views over the fair land of the Philistines". Napoleon also climbed the tower in 1799, and in 1917 General Allenby used it as an observation post.

The White Tower stands on the north side of a spacious walled courtyard fully 500 years older than the tower. On the south side are substantial remains, measuring 90m/295ft by 12m/40ft, of a mosque built by Caliph Suleiman in 716. In the courtyard are three large underground vaulted structures, perhaps warehouses belonging to an old caravanserai or cisterns, which were used in the 17th century as a lunatic asylum and in the 19th as a house of the Whirling Dervishes.