Basufan
Coordinates: 36 ° 20 ' N , 36 ° 52' E
Basufan ( Bāşūfān; ) is a remote village in northwest Syria . The early Byzantine settlement of the same name is mentioned because of the Phokas church from 491/92, which was one of the most beautiful churches in the area of the Dead Cities at the time .
location
Basufan is located in Aleppo Governorate , about 30 kilometers as the crow flies northwest of Aleppo at an altitude of 583 meters in the western area of Jebel Siman. The karst hilly area is part of the northern Syrian limestone massif. The place is on the on the main line from Aleppo to Afrin preferred Deir Seman achievable. From here a side road winds five kilometers to the northeast into the mountains. Remains of other places settled in early Byzantine times have been preserved in the area: three kilometers further east, the road leads to the town of Burj Haidar with several church ruins, not far from there are Kharab Shams and Fafertin with the oldest church in Western Syria. From Burj Haidar 2.5 kilometers to the north, a temple ruin from Roman times has been preserved in Kafr Nabu, which has been in bloom since the 2nd century . This southern area of Jebel Siman is separated from the central plateau of Brad by a limestone bar. Brad, about four miles away as the crow flies, was the ancient administrative center of the region.
Townscape
From the heyday of the place from the 5th to the 7th century only small remains are preserved. Howard Crosby Butler, who led an expedition to the American Princeton University in 1905 examined the Dead Cities, reported of a large Islamic cemetery around the Phocas church. He found the remains of another, what he suspected, older church, which was almost completely destroyed. The Phokas Church was probably part of a monastery .
In the same year Gertrude Bell also traveled through Basufan. She found the village predominantly inhabited by Kurds who rented their houses during the hot summer months to Christians and Jews from Aleppo who were on vacation here. The Kurds lived in tents for so long.
Phocas Church
The Church of St. Phocas was a three- nave pillar basilica that is dated by an inscription on the south wall 491/2. The Syrian inscription gives the saint's name in addition to the year. The arcades of the central nave high walls rested on six pillars and on pilasters on the outer walls . The nave measured 24 × 15.4 meters. In the east, two rectangular side apse rooms protruded laterally over the semicircular apse in between , which was not hidden as usual behind a continuous east wall. The side rooms opened to the aisles; the southern chamber also had a connecting door to the apse, so it served as a martyrion ( reliquary chamber ). One entrance to the nave was in the middle of the south side, a second on the west gable side.
The preserved remains of the apse and a small piece of the south wall show that there were arched windows in the walls, three of them in the apse. A continuous frieze ran over the window arches, rolled up into volutes at the ends . A further horizontal structure of the facade was made by a continuous cornice at the level of the window sills , a base cornice and one on the roof with carnies . A bulging lintel lay above the portal , above it a profiled relief arch. The lintel was decorated with thick acanthus leaves that crept in circles .
On the altar wall, an elaborately profiled triumphal arch spanned the apse, the outer edge of which formed a chain of semicircles open at the top. In accordance with its outstanding importance within the church, the arch was supported by columns that were placed in front of the wall and the shafts of which were emphasized by twisted fluting . The capitals of these columns were designed in the most sophisticated way in the Corinthian style with wind-moving acanthus.
The style development of the most beautiful northern Syrian basilicas took place towards the end of the 5th century within a narrowly limited area. The starting point was the church of Qalb Loze, completed around 470 . There, for the first time, friezes that ran around the windows in an arch shape became an essential design feature of the exterior walls. In Qalb Loze, the apse protrudes freely from the east wall. To emphasize the design, pillars were presented at two-story height of the apse wall, which at the same time support the roof crown. This design of the apse was imitated in a more modest way in some smaller churches and further developed in the large basilicas of the region. The basilica of The Turmanin had a pentagonal apse with a column in front of it, which was bordered by rectangular adjoining rooms, similar to the Phocas Church. The most famous further development of the round apse protruding freely from the east wall shows the Simeon monastery . Like the churches mentioned, the Phokas Church had two-story columns in front of the apse wall, and three columns divided the apse, corresponding to the Simeon monastery that was built at the same time. The building is considered a rare example of a church in a village where an experienced municipal workshop worked with the same artistic quality as the model of this church.
literature
- Hermann Wolfgang Beyer : The Syrian church building. Studies of late antique art history. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1925, pp. 37, 57 f,
- Frank Rainer Scheck, Johannes Odenthal: Syria. High cultures between the Mediterranean and the Arabian desert. DuMont, Cologne 1998, p. 296, ISBN 3770113373
Web links
- Gertrude Bell Archive, Photoghraphs. Photographs by Gertrude Bell, April 1905 (C 032 to C 034)
Individual evidence
- ^ Basufan, Syria Page. Fallingrain.com
- ^ Howard Crosby Butler: Syria. Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904-5 and 1909. Division I: Geography and Itinerary. EJ Brill, Leiden 1930, p. 73, online at Archive.org
- ↑ Christine Strube : The "Dead Cities". Town and country in northern Syria during late antiquity. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1996, p. 81
- ↑ Gertrude Bell: At the end of the lava flow. Through the deserts and cultural sites of Syria. Gabriele Habinger (Ed.), Promedia, Vienna 1991, p. 254, original edition: The Desert and the Sown , 1908
- ^ Howard Crosby Butler: Early Churches in Syria. Fourth to Seventh Centuries. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1929, pp. 67, 69 (plan), 70. (Amsterdam 1969)
- ↑ Beyer, p. 57
- ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann : Qalb Lōze and Qal'at Sem'ān. The special development of northern Syriac late antique architecture. Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Meeting reports, year 1982, issue 6, CH Beck, Munich 1982, p. 24 f