With a multitude of Hollywood films to back it up, the name Transylvania conjures up dark images of vampires and horror. According to the legend, this was the home of Count Dracula and his castle, where many people entered, but where few were allowed to leave. The truth could not be more different, for Transylvania is a region of exquisite natural beauty and rich history in the central part of Romania, surrounded to the east and the south by the Carpathian mountain range. Here in this region of legends and stories of mountain spirits there are more than four thousand mountain caves and an underground glacier that is the second largest in Europe. It is an area of castles and fortified churches and has some of the best preserved mediaeval towns in Europe, featuring Old Saxon architecture and citadel ruins. In the towns of Brasov, Sibiu and Sighisoara, for example, you will find hilltop citadels, cobblestone streets and pastel-coloured houses. Visitors to Transylvania will come across delightful small villages, with tiny shops selling antiques and local handicrafts. Working as weavers, shepherds, carpenters and blacksmiths, the people still earn a living in this area of multi-ethnic heritage, where the evidence of German and Hungarian history is still to be found alongside the traditions of old Romania. Centuries-old traditions can also still be seen in the folk costumes, cuisine, music and festivals of the area. The area's importance as a region where trade routes converge and where military invasions have passed through time and again down through the centuries has made Transylvania an area of strategic importance. It is for this reason that you will find some of the most stunning castles in Europe. Corvinesti Castle, for example, dating back to the fifteenth century, is one of the most beautiful in the whole of Transylvania, with its towers and buttresses and mediaeval Knights hall. Even churches had to defend themselves from the waves of invaders, including the Ottomans, who passed this way, so at Prejmer you will find the largest fortified church in Southeastern Europe and at Harman a church with massive fortified towers dating from the thirteenth century. In all, then, Transylvania is far more than the story of Count Dracula, but it is the legend of Dracula that draws many of the visitors by its spell. Although Bram Stoker's Gothic novel had almost no basis in fact, the legend still persists and continues to draw countless visitors to this day to the castle of Dracula himself, Bran Castle. The Bran Gorge is especially important as the place where these trade routes converge, so its castle has played an important role in the region's history. Although Bram Stoker actually had in mind an empty mountain top, Mount Izvorul Calimanului, 2,033 metres high and close to the border with Moldavia, as the setting for his monstrous creation, it was Bran castle that became fixed in people's minds. Although Poenari Castle and Hunyad Castle have also been linked to the legend, Bran castle, near Brasov, has become fixed in the popular imagination with the Gothic legend. A wooden castle at Dietrichstein had been built by Teutonic Knights in 1212 to defend the mountain valley where traders had passed for more than one thousand years, but this was destroyed by the Mongols in 1242. It was King Louis I of Hungary who first allowed the Saxons of Kronstadt to build a stone fortress at their own expense in 1377. The settlement of Bran grew up nearby and between 1438 and 1442 it had become important enough to be used in defence against the Ottomans. Bran Castle later became a customs post on the mountain pass between Transylvania and Wallachia and it continued to play a militarily strategic role up to the mid eighteenth century. The truth about Vlad Tepes, prince of Tara Româneasca, is known from numerous works of Romanian and foreign historians. He was a real person, Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, who lived from 1416 to 1476 and who belonged to the House of Draculesti. The period of his rule coincided with the period of Ottoman invasions of the Balkans and Vlad became famous for the bloodthirsty way he dealt with his opponents. In an age not unfamiliar with brutal punishments, such as hangings and burning at the stake, Vlad became known because of his own hallmark way of punishing his opponents. He is remembered to this day as Vlad the Impaler. The Ottoman Turks were famous for their method of impaling their Christian enemies on wooden stakes, and Vlad seems to have taken revenge upon them with their own device, having impaled tens of thousands of invaders. Vlad III is not only famous amongst Romanians for having defended them against attack, but Bulgarians, too, see him as their hero, and many of them fled north of the Danube to place themselves under his protection. During his lifetime his reputation for cruelty spread as far as Germany and elsewhere in Europe. It was this figure from history, then, that Bram Stoker used in his novel of 1897, Dracula, as the base on which to hang his imaginary creation. Now a Romanian national monument and one of the most popular tourist sites in the country, Bran Castle has passed back into the hands of the Habsburg family, who once ruled here. For a brief time from 1920 to 1947, before the advent of Communism, Bran Castle was a royal residence and the favourite home of Queen Marie and her daughter Princess Ileana. The castle was seized by the Communists when the royal family was expelled in 1948, but it is now back in the hands of Ileana's son, Archduke Dominic von Habsburg, who has turned Bran Castle into a major tourist attraction and museum. Muslims read in the Holy Qur'an: “Say: He is Allah, the One; Allah, the Eternal, the Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him." (112:1-4) It is perhaps not all that surprising that, with their long history and their closeness to the beauty of nature, the people of Transylvania have down through the centuries been close to their Creator. It was here, in fact, that the Unitarian Church was founded, with its belief in the Oneness of God. Visiting this area of exquisite natural beauty, then, and being amused by tales from history and from fiction, let us also spare a thought for the Creator who made it all. Doing that, inshallah, will keep even the wildest fiction within the bounds of what is real. British Muslim writer, Idris Tawfiq, teaches at Al-Azhar University. The author of nine books about Islam, he divides his time between Egypt and the UK as a speaker, writer and broadcaster. You can visit his website at www.idristawfiq.com and join him on Facebook at Idris Tawfiq Page.
