Deir Khabiye
Coordinates: 33 ° 22 ′ 0 ″ N , 36 ° 9 ′ 0 ″ E
Deir Khabiye , also Deïr Khābīyé, Dayr Khabiya; is a village in the ghouta -Oase of Damascus in Syria . A settlement mound ( Tell ) contains the remains of a bronze age and iron age from the beginning of the 2nd to the 1st millennium BC. Settled, fortified city.
location
Deir Khabiye is located at an altitude of 763 meters about 15 kilometers southwest of Damascus in the densely populated oasis belt of villages and individual farms between irrigated fields that surrounds the state capital. The place can be reached on a side road that branches off the highway 18 kilometers south of Damascus before al-Kiswah (Kissoue) to the west towards Artuz. At al-Kiswah, in ancient times, the river crossed the Nahr el-Awadsch (Nahr el-Aaouaj), which could be controlled by the Deir Khabiye, a little above the river, together with the passage from Artuz. The Nahr el-Awaj, which rises in the mountain range of Anti-Lebanon, flows eastward through the wide valley level of the Ghouta and, together with the Barada, has irrigated the fertile alluvial plain since ancient times. Deir Khabiye is located at the point where the river flows from the plain into a rift valley that is bordered in the south by a rugged, volcanic range of hills. This forms an east-west barrier in the south of the plain.
Tell
The construction of irrigation channels probably only began in the Hellenistic period, which resulted in the green tree groves typical of the Ghouta to this day. It is possible that the adjacent, now treeless belt of the Merj, which until the 20th century was only managed by nomads, was more densely populated than the heartland during the Iron Age.
Tell is 300 meters south of the town center. It was examined on the surface by a Swedish expedition in 1952. Previously, when a road was being built on the edge of the hill, ceramics and a cylinder seal were found, which are now in the Museum of Aleppo . The oval hill measures 310 × 220 meters with a longitudinal extension in an east-west direction. The highest point is 12 to 14 meters above the plain in the west of the hill. In a shallow depression on the west side, remains of the foundation made of hewn basalt blocks could be seen, which indicate a city gate. There should have been similar gates in the three hollows on the other sides. The edge of the hill is formed by a rampart that slopes steeply to the plain with a seven to eight meter high embankment. The entire inner area of the hill was littered with basalt blocks. During the largest expansion of the city, the lower residential area was located here, while the upper city with the longest period of settlement was in the elevated western part. This is believed to have been around 1700 BC. A fortified settlement was created. In the time of the Aramaic city-states in the 1st millennium BC A heavily fortified palace was built over it.
As was evident from the exposure at the southeast corner when the road was built, the outer fortification consisted of a mud brick wall at least five meters high and over three meters thick that stood on top of an earth wall. This type of defense system, in which the wall is the main obstacle, was typical of northern Syrian cities such as Karkemiš , Ugarit or the neighboring Ras Ibn Hani . Deir Khabiye and Tell eṣ-Ṣaliḥiyeh east of Damascus are examples of central Syria. Such walls served to enlarge an already existing inner city core, which was extended by a lower city.
literature
- Hans Henning von der Osten : The excavation of Tell eṣ-Ṣaliḥiyeh. Svenska Syria Expedition 1952–1953. Svenska Institutet i Athens, Uppsala 1956, pp. 13 f, 77, 82
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dayr Khabiyah, Syria Page. fallingrain.com
- ^ Eugen Wirth : Syria, a geographical country study. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1971, p. 402