Brad (Syria)
Coordinates: 36 ° 23 ′ 0 ″ N , 36 ° 54 ′ 0 ″ E
Brad , also Barad, ancient names Barade, Kaprobarada; was one of the largest cities in early Byzantine times in the Dead Cities area in northwest Syria . During the 5th and 6th centuries it flourished as the administrative center of the northern region of Jebel Siman. The ruins of several churches, houses and a monastery have been preserved from this period.
location
Brad is located in the Aleppo Governorate about 40 kilometers northwest of Aleppo at an altitude of 586 meters in the center of the Jebel Siman, a north-south karst mountain range with little agricultural use that borders the Afrin Valley in the east. The Jebel Siman forms the northernmost range of hills within the northern Syrian limestone massif.
The road from Aleppo to Afrin bypasses the mountains in the valley to the west. 14 kilometers north of Deir Seman , a narrow road branches off in Basuta 10 kilometers to the east into the remote town. Brad is the northernmost known ancient settlement in the Dead Cities area. A few kilometers to the south the ruins of churches and residential buildings of smaller early Byzantine places are preserved: In an area from west to east these are Basufan , Kharab Shems , Burj Haidar and Fafertin ; in Kafr Nabu there is a ruined temple from Roman times.
The administrative capital Kapropera ( Al-Bara ) for the south, the pilgrimage center Telanissos (Deir Seman) and Kaprobarada as the center of Antioch , the northern region of Antiochene were the only three cities in the densely populated area with over 700 villages.
history
In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the place was an agricultural settlement in which the cultivation of olives was of outstanding importance. During this time, a public bathing facility ( thermal bath ) was built near a mausoleum . In the 4th century, the place expanded to the north to include an area with larger country houses, which belonged to a wealthy class of landowners. The decline began in the 7th century when the settlements in the Dead Cities area were gradually abandoned.
Nothing is known about settlement in the Middle Ages. Gertrude Bell described Brad in 1905 as the largest village in Jebel Siman, which is partially inhabited by Kurds .
According to SOHR, Brad was occupied by Turkish auxiliaries on March 21, 2018 as part of the Turkish military offensive on Afrin .
Townscape
At its heyday in the 6th century, the city had country houses (residences), four churches, a monastery and oil presses as the economic basis, covering an area of around two square kilometers.
Julianoskirche
The most important building was the three aisled pillared basilica . It was built between 395 and 402 by Julianos with the assistance of Marinos. The architects were mentioned in writing from the end of the 4th century. Julianos was the great adversary of Markianos Kyris; all three were the leading architects and in the first two decades of the 5th century were responsible for the main churches in the north of the limestone massif.
The church, which has been destroyed to the ground today, was built on the site of a Roman temple, from which the central door on the western gable side with particularly long limestone blocks and some half-columns as spolia were taken over into the new building. The classic temple portal was formed by very flat relief arches over a narrow, far projecting door lintel , the ends of which rested on consoles . There were three arched windows in the east wall of the apse ; the two apse side rooms were accessible through doors from the side aisles, above the doors there were window openings. The triumphal arch on the apse wall inside rested laterally on the capitals of pilasters that corresponded to those of the oldest church in Fafertin . In the Julianoskirche , the earliest bema was installed in the middle of the nave . This podium for the clergy has changed over time. At first there were movable wooden seats on a low platform. It was later enlarged and given a U-shaped stone base on which twelve seats were permanently installed.
The tradition-bound Julianos used spoilage more often than Markianos Kyris, who is considered to be the more innovative in the design of the decorative elements, but stuck to the older tradition of a closed west facade in his buildings. In the Julianoskirche, on the other hand, the western entrance side is emphasized by the portal on which the inauguration inscription 401/2 was located. Most of the churches were entered through entrances on the south side. Two entrances on the north and south sides with porticos probably come from a later period. There were several inscriptions inside, which indicate that wealthy residents of the place financed the church.
A chapel on the north side should have been added at the same time as the entrances. It was shaped like a tiny three-aisled basilica with a three-part chancel. In the south there was an elongated inner courtyard with rows of columns on the three outer sides.
100 meters east of the Julianoskirche was an Andron (community house), the upper floor of which, together with the two-storey portico attached to the entrance side, collapsed. The massive floor of the upper floor was supported by three wide, five-meter-spanning round arches.
North Church
Get better remained the North Church, a 561 dated wide arcades basilica with three yokes and a semicircular apse. It was in the tradition of the slightly larger basilica of Qalb Loze, built almost 100 years earlier . This type of building, to which only the basilica of Sheikh Sleman (dated 602) with its unusually high and closely spaced pillars can be counted in the north and the Bizzos Church of Ruweiha in the south of the area , was not realized anywhere else. The abundant and easy-to-work limestone allowed the production of pillars, which were preferred because they did not look as bulky. The two central nave high walls rose on two massive, squat pillars, the upper row of arched openings was arranged without reference to the arcades on the ground floor. The two arches and the central part of the altar wall in the east are still upright. Inside the church there was almost no ornamentation. The lower windows of the outer south wall were only individually surrounded by a frieze in the reduction of earlier decorative bands running horizontally along the facades on other churches . On the other hand, a carefully carved garland band delimited the window openings of the upper aisle , which stretched over all the windows and rolled into volutes at the ends .
The round apse was enclosed within the straight east wall; the two side rooms of the apse were rectangular. As elsewhere, they served as a martyrion ( reliquary ) and diakonicon . There were two entrances on the southern long side and another to the southern side room, which makes this room recognizable as a former Martyrion. In this most sacred space, accessible to the pilgrims from the outside, there was the Greek inscription with the date of inauguration above the entrance.
monastery
The relatively well-preserved south church (also south-west church ) from the 6th century was one of the largest hall churches . It was single-nave and had a rectangular apse. Together with residential buildings and a hostel, it belonged to a monastery located 500 meters southwest of the village, the ruins of which are known locally as "Qasr" (Arabic: "castle"). One residential building is two-story, including the gable and with attached pillar porticos. There is also a three or four-story square tower 20 meters south of the west end of the church, which has been preserved up to the eaves and which presumably served as a monastic retreat.
Roman times building
In the north of today's village are the remains of the Roman thermal baths. Roman baths have been found in six settlements in the Dead Cities. The best preserved are those of Serjilla in Jebel Zawiye and Babisqa in Jebel Barisha from the 5th or 6th century. The thermal bath of Brad was reconstructed by Georges Tchalenko in the 1950s as a two-story basilica building with several extensions. According to Tchalenko, in the 2nd century it was part of a landowner's residence earlier than the village. Howard Crosby Butler had dated the bathroom to the 3rd century around 1900.
100 meters east of it, a rare grave monument in the shape of a tetrapylon has been preserved from the 2nd or 3rd century . On a low, square base zone, which is closed off by a cornice with a hollow, stand four massive corner pillars, over which round arches support a pyramid roof. Busts peer down from the closing stones of the arches . The basement has an interior space that may have housed the sarcophagus . Alternatively, the tower was the visible part of an underground tomb. A similar but hexagonal tomb tower has been completely preserved further north in Kyrrhos .
literature
- Ross Burns: Monuments of Syria. A Historical Guide. IB Tauris, London / New York 1992, p. 58 f
- Hermann Wolfgang Beyer : The Syrian church building. Studies of late antique art history. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1925, pp. 38, 50 f, 93
- Frank Rainer Scheck, Johannes Odenthal: Syria. High cultures between the Mediterranean and the Arabian desert. DuMont, Cologne 2009, p. 290 f, ISBN 3770113373
- Christine Strube : The "Dead Cities". Town and country in northern Syria during late antiquity. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1996, p. 36 f, 42, ISBN 3805318405
- Christine Strube: Building decoration in the northern Syrian limestone massif. Vol. II. Forms of capitals, doors and cornices from the 6th and early 7th centuries AD. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2002, pp. 205–207
Web links
- Gertrude Bell Archive, Photoghraphs. Photographs by Gertrude Bell, April 1905 (C 019 to C 030)
- Syria looks. naturales.wordpress.com (Photos)
Individual evidence
- ^ Barad, Syria page. fallingrain.com
- ↑ Gertrude Bell: At the end of the lava flow. Through the deserts and cultural sites of Syria. Gabriele Habinger (Ed.), Promedia, Vienna 1991, p. 251, original edition: The Desert and the Sown , 1908
- ^ "The Turkish forces and their allied Syrian opposition factions control Saint Maron Shrine in the north of Aleppo and come closer to the towns of Nobol and Al-Zahraa" SOHR of March 21, 2018 Original
- ↑ Beyer, p. 50
- ↑ Strube, 1996, pp. 37, 42
- ↑ Strube, 1996, p. 36 f.
- ↑ Beyer, p. 34 f
- ^ Burns, p. 59
- ↑ Strube, 2002, pp. 205-207
- ^ 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. 28
- ↑ Beyer, p. 93
- ^ Warwick Ball: Rome in the East. The Transformation of an Empire. Routledge, London / New York 2000, pp. 219 f, ISBN 0-415-11376-8