The exact location of the Seleucid fortress in Jerusalem, which is of great importance for the understanding of the events in the city during the period of the persecutions and the Revolt, has been a matter of dispute for many years. The question is regarded as the most difficult in the geographical history of Jerusalem, and the identifications proposed are scattered over almost the entire area of city that was inhabited during the Second Temple period.

The evidence of the sources

The sources in fact give clear indications of the placement of the Akra: I Maccabees places the citadel in the City of David (14.36), and states more than once that the Seleucid garrison was concentrated in the City of David (1.33, 2 2.31, 7.32), while Josephus puts it in the Lower City (Bell. 1.39, 5.137; Ant. 12.252), both of them referring to the south-eastern hill, south of the Dung Gate.3 This location, however, does not seem to fit in with the tradition that the citadel hill dominated the Temple, and that only in the time of Simeon the Hasmonaean was it levelled so that the Temple hill would tower above it (Ant. 12.252, 362, 13.215, 217; Bell. 1.50, 5.139). The top of that hill is about 40 metres lower than the Temple Mount, and for archaeological-topographical reasons it is impossible to assume that until Simeon's time any part of it was considerably higher than it is today.