Isengard

Isengard, called Angrenost in the Elvish tongue, is a great fortress in a ring of stone at the southern end of the Misty Mountains, at the mouth of the vale of Nan Curunír, near the gap that divides the mountains from the White Mountains. Once a stronghold of Gondor, it became the seat of the wizard Saruman, who corrupted it into a center of his own power and treachery during the War of the Ring. At its heart stands the black tower of Orthanc.

Isengard's name means "Iron Fort," and under Saruman it lived up to the name, becoming a place of furnaces, pits, and forges where he bred his armies and devised engines of war.

Geography

Isengard is a vast circular plain enclosed by a high natural wall of rock, a ring of stone with a single gate, like a great bowl in the land. At its center rises Orthanc, a tower of black stone hard as adamant, untouched by time. The river Isen flows from the mountains nearby. In its earlier days Isengard within the ring was green, with trees, gardens, and a fair court. Under Saruman it was stripped bare: the trees felled, the green destroyed, and the ground torn open with pits, furnaces, and tunnels where orcs and the breed called Uruk-hai labored and were spawned.

History

Isengard was built by the Men of Gondor in the days of their power, to guard the western approaches of the realm together with the Hornburg at Helm's Deep. As Gondor's strength waned, Isengard was eventually granted to Saruman, chief of the wizards, who took it as his stronghold. Trusted as a leader of the wise and the keeper of Orthanc and its palantír, Saruman secretly turned to evil, desiring the One Ring and dominion for himself, and he raised an army and despoiled the land around his fortress.

In the story

From Isengard, Saruman sends his Uruk-hai and Dunlending allies to war against Rohan, assailing the kingdom and besieging Helm's Deep. His treachery is undone by his own works: the Ents of Fangorn forest, roused to wrath by Saruman's destruction of the trees, march on Isengard, break its gates, and flood the ring of Isengard by loosing the river Isen, drowning its pits and furnaces and trapping Saruman in Orthanc. Gandalf, Théoden, and their companions come to a ruined and flooded Isengard, where Saruman is confronted and cast from the order of wizards.