Dar Qita
Dar Qita , Dâr Ķîtā; was an ancient settlement in the Dead Cities area in northwest Syria . The ruins of three churches have been preserved from early Byzantine times.
location
Dar Qita is located in the Idlib governorate on the northern slope of the Jebel Barischa in the central area of the northern Syrian limestone massif. A few hundred meters south, a little higher on the karst and treeless rocky hill, the ruins of the neighboring village of Baqirha can be seen. Both places are uninhabited. The road leads about six kilometers northeast to Ba'uda , from which the Bab al-Hawa border crossing on the main road from Aleppo to Antakya in Turkey can be seen just under two kilometers away . To the south of this road there are seven ancient settlements within a few kilometers, including Barischa , Babisqa , Kseigbe and Qasr il-Benat. In Roman times the highway between Chalkis and Antioch passed near Dar Qita .
history
As early as the 1st century there was a settlement that received a market in 355 and became an economic center for the export of olive oil and wine. As with all Dead Cities, the heyday was in the 5th and 6th centuries.
The only inscription from pre-Christian times was attached to a private house in 295/296. The next known inscription from 339/340 begins like the ten following inscriptions up to 515, which are attached to portals and house entrances, with the formula "There is one God and his Christ ...". An inscription, 431 at the entrance of a churchyard, bears the trinity formula “There is one God and his Christ and the Holy Spirit”. The Christian message seems to have been brought to the place by a Flavius Eusebius, son of Cyril. According to the inscription from 339/340, he built and financed the market square ( agora ). An inscription from 355 mentions him as the builder of a gate. He is therefore likely to have played a decisive role in the place during this period and, through his public confession, also brought about converts to the new religion. However, until the construction of the first church, no buildings are known that were equipped for worship. Despite the well-documented Christian missionary efforts, there were followers of the Roman religion in the region until the mid-6th century .
Cityscape
Church of St. Paul and Moses
In the north of the Jebel Barischa, four churches can be assigned to the famous architect Markianos Kyris in the first two decades of the 5th century. The earliest church, completed around 403/404, is the Eastern Church of Babisqa, which is in a poor state of preservation. The church of St. Paul and Moses in Dar Qita, dated 418, is somewhat better preserved. Diodorus is named as the head of the church, the community is likely to have submitted to the Patriarch of Antioch at this time . The Greek inscription reads: “There is one God and his Christ and the Holy Spirit. With an ordination for Paul and Moses: Diodorus, the elder of the community, the architect Cyrus, on the 25th of Loös, (in the year) 466 “(corresponding to August 418 AD).
The three-aisled basilica with a total length of 20.3 meters had four columns in the nave, which supported the high walls and in the east a semicircular apse with lateral rectangular adjoining rooms with a straight east wall on the outside. There were two doors in the south facade, the north and west walls were closed, as is common in early churches. A courtyard was located within an enclosure on the south side. The side rooms had doors to the side aisles and the apse. "Arcuated lintels" lay over all (narrow) windows, these are lintel stones carved in the shape of a curve on the underside, which historically represent the transition to real arcades .
During two expeditions in 1900 and 1905, Howard Crosby Butler briefly examined the ruins, and in April 1909 he set up camp in Dar Qita to take in the remains of the site and the neighboring Baqirha more thoroughly. He described the church, which was rebuilt at the beginning of the 6th century, with doors now built into the west and north walls and framed by ornamental profiles.
At a distance from the south-west corner of the nave, he found the small baptistery in excellent condition up to a height of over six meters. It had a band of relief running around halfway up and also framed entrances in the west and north. The baptismal font was set in the ground, and the person to be baptized stood in it chest-deep in the water. The date of the inscription is read as the year 515 AD. Of the outer walls of the church, the lowest layer of the west wall and the east wall up to the approach of the apse arch are in situ . Six of the eight column capitals of the nave were exposed, they show the Corinthian style with smooth-leaved acanthus , an innovation by Markianos Kyris, others the Tuscan style.
Sergioskirche
The Church of St. Sergios is the second house of God, the completion date of which is documented with an inscription at 537 above the west portal. This three-aisled basilica also had a baptistery, here connected to the south side of the main building on its east corner, which was probably built at the same time. Another inscription above the entrance of the baptistery with the year 566/567 refers to the renewal of the door during the reign of Justin II under the patriarch Anastasios . Churches were often placed under the protection of saints, mostly martyrs. The most popular among them was Sergios , who was buried in Resafa . The profiled and ornamented lintels of the church, built 120 years later, imitate the style previously developed at the same location. After changes to the churches in the neighboring towns, the old style was revived at one of Markianos Kyris' places of work. The Sima profile on the lintel is decorated alternately with vertical, smooth acanthus leaves and palmettes . Only the wickerwork that used to be underneath has been replaced by a simplified vine leaf tendril.
Trinity Church
On the Trinity Church there was only an undated inscription in Syrian script . The church did not have a baptistery. It was no longer based on the early style of Markianos Kyris, but adopted the cathedral style in the ornamentation that had developed in the 6th century. These include horizontal bands in relief that run along the entire outer wall above the windows and roll up to form volutes at the ends . The lintels were given a strong bulge in the middle, the capitals were designed in the Corinthian style with lively wind-moving leaves.
None of the churches belonged to a monastery. The ashlar stones of a large number of stately residences are scattered across the former settlement area.
literature
- Howard Crosby Butler: Early Churches in Syria. Fourth to Seventh Centuries. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1929, pp. 50-53
- Hermann Wolfgang Beyer : The Syrian church building. Studies of late antique art history. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1925, pp. 83-88
- E. Baccache: Églises de village de la Syrie du Nord. Documents photographiques des archives de'l Institut Francais d'Archeologie due Proche-Orient. Paul Geuthner, Paris 1980, pp. 60–64 (black and white photographs)
Individual evidence
- ^ Frank Rainer Scheck, Johannes Odenthal: Syrien. High cultures between the Mediterranean and the Arabian desert. DuMont, Cologne 1998, pp. 302f
- ^ Frank R. Trombley: Hellenic Religion and Christianization C. 370-529. Volume 2, Brill, Leiden 1995, pp. 268-272
- ↑ Beyer, p. 39
- ↑ Butler 1929, p. 51
- ↑ Butler 1929, p. 50 f
- ^ Howard Crosby Butler: Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904-1905 and 1909. Division I: Geography and Itinerary. Brill, Leiden 1930, p. 63. Online at Archive.org
- ↑ Butler 1929, p. 156
- ↑ Christine Strube : Building decoration in the northern Syrian limestone massif. Vol. I. Forms of capitals, doors and cornices in the churches of the 4th and 5th centuries AD. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1993, p. 60 f
- ↑ Beyer, floor plan p. 84
- ↑ Butler 1929, p. 156
- ↑ Butler 1929, p. 156
- ↑ Beyer, p. 84
- ↑ Beyer, p. 88
Coordinates: 36 ° 12 ′ 54 ″ N , 36 ° 39 ′ 59 ″ E