al-Bara
Coordinates: 35 ° 41 ′ 0 ″ N , 36 ° 32 ′ 0 ″ E
Al-Bara , Arabic البارة, DMG al-Bāra , more rarely El-Barah, modern place al-Kafr, in antiquity Kapropera; was the largest early Byzantine city in the Dead Cities area in northwest Syria . The settlement was founded in the 4th century, flourished from the 5th to the 7th century and was abandoned in the 12th century.
location
Al-Bara is located in the Idlib governorate at an altitude of about 700 meters in the barren hill country of the Jebel Zawiye (also Jebel Riha), the southern part of the northern Syrian limestone massif. The place can be reached 35 kilometers south of Idlib via Ariha . From Maarat an-Numan a road leads west via the small town of Kafr Nabl (10 kilometers) and further via the small ancient settlement Ba'uda to the well-preserved ruined city of Serjilla . Serjilla has a new direct road connection to al-Bara, four kilometers northwest. The modern small town of al-Kafr with a few grocery stores looks well-kept and is expanding along the arteries. As in ancient times, olives , grapes and grains are grown on small plots separated by stone walls . In addition, almonds, figs, peaches and, in home gardens, pomegranates thrive . The ruins begin across a wadi in a gentle valley a few 100 meters east of the village.
history
Of the approximately 700 early Byzantine settlements in the area of the Dead Cities, there were only two other places of the size of cities apart from Kapropera (al-Bara), both of which were in the north: the pilgrimage center Telanissos ( Deir Seman ) and the administrative center Kaprobarada ( Brad ) . Al-Bara was the administrative center of the southern Apamene region and assigned to the city of Apamea . It was the seat of a bishop of the Syriac Orthodox Faith , who was subordinate to the Archbishop of Antioch .
While other places in the region have been initially settled as early as the 1st century AD, the oldest buildings in al-Bara date from the end of the 4th century. The first three churches were built at the beginning of the 5th century. The oldest church, built around the year 400, was a small building that was expanded several times in the 5th and 6th centuries. The following two churches were large basilicas . The city's heyday was in the 5th and 6th centuries and was made possible by the abundance of olive oil, wine and grain. Rapid growth in residential development can be observed, particularly up to around 470 AD. During the Persian and Arab conquest of the Roman eastern provinces at the beginning of the 7th century, al-Bara remained unharmed; As with the other places in the mountainous country, most of the Christian inhabitants gradually migrated to the plains in the following century. Until 1098 al-Bara belonged to the Orthodox church province of Apamea .
The Arab fortress of Abu Safyan a few 100 meters northeast of the city is likely to have been built during this time. A Jewish minority also lived under Islamic domination, which ended at the same time as the siege of Antioch on September 25, 1098 with the conquest and occupation of al-Bara by a partial army of the First Crusade under Raymond of Toulouse . After the conquest of Antioch in 1098, the crusader army was on a raid to procure provisions for the upcoming winter, which took them via Rugia and al-Bara to Maarat an-Numan , where it culminated in a gruesome massacre . Al-Bara was incorporated into the newly founded Principality of Antioch . The crusaders appointed the Catholic cleric Peter von Narbonne from their ranks as bishop of al-Bara. Before there had been no Orthodox diocese in al-Bara and so Bishop Peter was even confirmed and consecrated in 1099 by the Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch , John IV. In the years 1104 to 1105, 1119 to 1122 and 1123 to 1130 the Muslim emir of Aleppo occupied the place, each time afterwards the Crusaders from Antioch took it back until it finally fell to the Muslims under Nur ad-Din in 1148 . After the site was largely destroyed by violent earthquakes in 1157 and 1170, it was abandoned at the end of the 12th century. The current settlement was founded at the beginning of the 20th century.
Cityscape
Today's field of ruins extends over 3 × 2 kilometers on a slope sloping to the east, with few roads, but practically no footpaths. The ruins are scattered in olive groves, small, demarcated parcels with grain cultivation or grapes and partly hidden in the bushes.
Some large oil presses and preserved ruins of buildings in which grapes were pressed point to the foundations of the prosperity of the time.
Pyramid tombs
In the center and on the western edge of the ancient city, two pyramid tombs from the 6th century are about 200 meters apart. They correspond to the Hellenistic tradition and go back as a late form to the Greek mausoleum of Halicarnassus . The roof of the smaller tomb is completely preserved, the top of the roof is missing on the larger one, but it has a careful architectural decoration: The walls are divided by three circumferential cornices with the finest tendril ornaments on the central band and on the eaves. Above the two arched windows on each side, the tendrils converge in cross or Christ medallions as defense symbols. The wall corners are designed as pilasters in relief with Corinthian capitals. Inside, five stone sarcophagi with the same medallions are placed along the walls . Further south there is a large underground burial chamber ( hypogeum ) carved out of the rock with three monolithic round arches supported by columns at the entrance.
Churches
There were a total of five churches in the city, designated E 1 to E 5 , which are largely destroyed today. All were three nave basilicas and, as is customary in the region, had a semicircular apse on the east side, which was flanked by two side rooms. The first three churches were built at the beginning of the 5th century, followed by two more large churches.
In the north outside was the large basilica El Hosn (E 1), which, according to the quality of the construction, like the parish churches in the center, must have been carried out by qualified urban craftsmen. This basilica had architraves in the nave walls , which rested on columns with simple console capitals. The shape of the console capital was adopted from here on many churches and also on residential buildings in Jebel Zawiye. This simple capital can also be found in the older columned arcade basilica of Ruweiha and was later generally combined with Tuscan , Ionic and Corinthian designs. As one of the largest Syrian sacred buildings with a length of 56 meters and a width of 29.5 meters, the El Hosn basilica occupies a special position and was probably used as a pilgrimage church. This function speaks for its location on the outskirts and that it was surrounded by a walled, 100 × 60 meter large Temenos . The lower columns had console capitals, those on the upper floor had various forms of Corinthian capitals. Possibly the west side of El Hosn was emphasized by a porch with two corner towers (similar to the one in Qalb Loze ). In Islamic times it was used as a fortress.
El Hosn and the large town church (main church) from the middle of the 5th century had a gallery over the side aisles and were probably built by the same craftsmen because of their similar and elaborate building decoration and were completed before 470. The construction of the two high walls was carried out on the ground floor with architraves, on the upper floor with round arches over columns . The apse was surrounded by side rooms and lay within a straight east wall. There were probably three entrances in the south facade, two in the west and two on the north side. A narthex was built in front of the west . The length including the narthex was 34.6 meters and the width 16.9 meters. In front of the northeast corner there was a single-nave building with an apse. Howard Crosby Butler drew up the first floor plan of the town church around 1900; Georges Tchalenko corrected the plans in the 1950s. Christine Strube was able to locate nine capitals on the ground floor, twelve on the upper floor and four capitals from pillar templates in the rubble in the 1970s. All were in the Corinthian style, some with wind-driven acanthus .
Corinthian capitals, especially the most elaborate form with wind-moving acanthus, acanthus friezes and leaf tendrils generally formed the decoration program of al-Bara, which had a style-forming effect on the other places in Jebel Zawiye.
monastery
In Jebel Zawiye, in contrast to the north, there were only a few monasteries, almost all of which were located in the vicinity of al-Bara. The well-preserved ruins of the Deir Sobat monastery with partially reconstructed walls are located about 500 meters southwest below the village on the wadi. The complex from the 6th century shows itself today as a partially overgrown field of rubble enclosed by a wall, in the middle of which lies a nested building complex with a three-story main building. A reconstruction drawing by the French travel writer and diplomat Melchior Comte de Vogüé , who traveled to the Dead Cities in the 1860s and described it in detail for the first time, shows a central courtyard adjoining to the south, which is surrounded by an angular, two-storey building wing. The large hall of the main building is surrounded by corridors and side rooms. A square room on the east side was used as an oratory . Monastery life was oriented towards this space, so it took place within the walls, as in other monasteries in the south. In contrast, the monasteries in the north, as can be seen in Deir Seman , had separate church buildings in the vicinity.
Qalat Abu Safyan
The Arab Qalat Abu Safyan consists of a three-storey donjon with walls 4 to 5 meters thick, the limestone blocks of which are coarser than those of the Byzantine buildings. With this wall thickness, only small, almost lightless rooms remained inside. From its roof a surrounding wall with two corner towers and within the square the foundation walls of some outbuildings between underbrush and olives can be seen. According to a story that is an original legend for the introduction of Islam, the foundation of the fortress was the pre-Islamic, Jewish King Abu Safyan. His daughter Luhaifa married an Abd al-Rahman, both converted to Islam and were persecuted by Abu Safyan. When the battle broke out, the Muslims defeated their opponent with the support of the angel Jibril and the whole country fell into their hands.
literature
- Howard Crosby Butler: Early Churches in Syria. Fourth to Seventh Centuries. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1929 (Amsterdam 1969)
- Jean Pascal Fourdrin: Église E.5 d'El Bāra. In: Syria, T. 69, Fasc. 1/2, 1992, pp. 171-210
- Christine Strube : The "Dead Cities". Town and country in northern Syria during late antiquity. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1996, ISBN 3805318405
- Christine Strube: Building decoration in the northern Syrian limestone massif. Vol. 1. Forms of capitals, doors and cornices in the churches of the 4th and 5th centuries AD. Damascus Research Vol. 5, Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1993
Individual evidence
- ↑ Krijna Nelly Ciggaar, David Michael Metcalf: East and West in the Medieval Eastern Mediterrean. Antioch from the Byzantine reconquest until the end of the Crusader principality. Peeters Publishers, Leuven 2006, ISBN 9042917350 , p. 175
- ↑ M. Th. Houtsma et al. a. (Ed.): EJ Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol. 1, Brill Academic Publications, Leiden 1913, p. 103
- ^ Thomas S. Asbridge: The creation of the principality of Antioch, 1098-1130. Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2000, ISBN 0851156614 , p. 38 f.
- ↑ Steven Runciman: History of the Crusades. CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3406399606 , p. 248.
- ↑ Krijna Nelly Ciggaar, David Michael Metcalf: East and West in the Medieval Eastern Mediterrean. Antioch from the Byzantine reconquest until the end of the Crusader principality. Peeters Publishers, Leuven 2006, ISBN 9042917350 , p. 172
- ^ Thomas S. Asbridge: The creation of the principality of Antioch, 1098-1130. Boydell & Brewer Ltd, Woodbridge 2000, ISBN 0851156614 , p. 197
- ↑ Strube, 1993, pp. 172-179
- ↑ Strube 1996, pp. 48-52
- ↑ Melchior Comte de Vogüé: Syrie centrale. Architecture civile et religieuse du Ier au VIIe siècle. J. Baudry, Paris 1865-1877
- ↑ Johannes Odenthal: Syria. High cultures between the Mediterranean and the Arabian desert. DuMont, Cologne 1994, p. 233 f
- ^ EJ Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam, p. 103