Deir Seta

Coordinates: 36 ° 5 ′ 56.6 ″  N , 36 ° 38 ′ 40.2 ″  E

Deir Seta​

Syria

Deir Seta ( Arabic دير سيتا) also Der Sita , was an ancient settlement near today's village of the same name in the area of ​​the Dead Cities in northwest Syria . The remains of three churches in the settlement and one other church that belonged to an outside monastery have been preserved from the early Byzantine period. The hexagonal shape of a baptistery is unusual .

location

Deir Seta is located in the Idlib governorate in the central area of ​​the northern Syrian limestone massif in the south of the Jebel Barischa, on the eastern edge of this karst hilly area. Coming from the north, a side road branches off the main route Aleppo - Antakya (Turkey) just before the border and reaches Bashmishli, the first village on the hill. The two ancient neighboring towns of Dar Qita and Baqirha and Ba'uda can be reached within a few kilometers from here . Six kilometers south of Baqirha is Barischa and further south Deir Seta, which is 24 kilometers away from Bashmishli. The ruins are partly built up by houses of the modern village and, like in ancient times, surrounded by extensive olive groves . The next major city in the south is Idlib .

Townscape

The heyday of the settlement was in the 6th century. The preserved church ruins within the housing estate and the church of the monastery located 500 meters east of the town center date from this time. The largest church was the north church with a separate baptistery in the west of the village. From the 7th century onwards, Deir Seta was gradually abandoned by its Christian residents.

In contrast to most of the villages in the area of ​​the Dead Cities, which were uninhabited in the Middle Ages, a larger Islamic settlement may have existed in Deir Seta. Remains of residential buildings and two cemeteries with Arabic grave inscriptions were found. One of the Islamic cemeteries was to the west near the Baptistery. A grave inscription is dated 1431 AD. The second cemetery on the eastern edge attracted attention with an unusual grave. It is a replica of a stone sarcophagus from the Hellenistic and Christian times, which is covered by a stone lid with the typical acroteries at the four corners. This and other graves were also decorated with circular medallion reliefs, as they were common in Christian times. A tomb bears two inscriptions that refer to the years 1469/70 and 1530 AD.

North Church

North church, south facade with two entrances

The north church was first described by Melchior Comte de Vogüé in the 1860s and examined by Howard Crosby Butler in 1900 during the Princeton expedition he led . Further research was carried out by Georges Tchalenko in the 1950s, Christine Strube from the 1970s and Jean-Pierre Sodini in 1983. In 1987 Wedad Khoury published a complete archaeological survey of the ancient site.

The three -nave church is a columned arcades basilica , each with seven Jochen in the two high walls of the nave. Inside the straight east wall was a semicircular apse , which was surrounded by side rooms with no connection to the central apse; the southern adjoining room served as a martyrion ( reliquary ). The interior of the rectangular building was 32.2 meters long and 18.7 meters wide. It had two entrance doors in the south wall, one in the north and one in the west gable wall. Because of the sloping terrain to the north, the church stood on this side on a high terrace.

The longitudinal walls in the south and north were preserved up to the cornice . With the exception of the east wall, the outer facades are horizontally structured by a strip of cornice above the windows. Since Butler had visited the church, the west and east walls have been heavily modified by the addition of residential buildings. In the east all that remained was a cornice on the terrace and parts of the wall built into a modern wall. The southwest corner of the west facade stands upright with a window, the rest of the wall had to make way for a new building. The capitals described by Butler, which at that time still existed in large numbers, have disappeared apart from a few fragments. The capital of one of the two eastern pillar templates (for the first yoke of the nave wall) is designed in the Corinthian style with acanthus leaves around a central medallion. A stone belonging to the apse arch shows from the outside to the inside a round bar with a row of narrow leaves, a meander strip , an S-shaped curved cyma recta (a form of the sima ) with a leaf frieze and a final strip. The profile corresponds to that of the Basilica of Deir Turmanin , which was built at the end of the 5th century.

The north church is dated to the beginning of the 6th century. Essential style elements can be traced back to Qalʿat Simʿan (Simeon Monastery) via Deir Turmanin . The Simeonskloster, built between 476 and 490, represented the climax of church architecture in the north of the limestone massif. Style elements from there were often adopted and reproduced in smaller church buildings in partially simplified rural modifications. The outwardly protruding round apse on the Eastern Church of the Simeon Monastery is additionally highlighted by a two-storey row of pillars that support a cornice. This emphasis on the round apse was introduced in the church of Qalb Loze, which was completed around 470 . In both cases, as well as on the pentagonal apse of Deir Turmanin, the columns also had a static function. The same applies to the columns of the semicircular apse wall at the Phocas Church of Basufan (491/2 dated). The twelve pillars that, according to de Vogue's description, were placed in front of the straight east wall of the north church of Deir Seta, on the other hand, made less formal and static sense. The building decoration of Qal'at Sim'an has nowhere been so faithfully reproduced in context as on the north church of Deir Seta. Late forms of this development, the tendrils ornaments at the Madrasa al-Hallawiya (Hallawiya- are Madrassah ) in Aleppo (dated 1245).

Baptistery

Freestanding baptisteries were generally rectangular. The only hexagonal baptistery in the area of ​​the Dead Cities was located in front of the southeast corner of the local north church and was probably built a little later than this. Its diameter was about ten meters. Fluted cornices ran over the arched windows on both sides of the entrance door . Originally, the baptismal font was surrounded in the middle by six columns, which, according to de Vogüé, carried a central dome. The baptistery of Qal'at Sim'an had an octagonal central room.

Monastery church

Martyrion from the south

The monastery church (or eastern church) was a three-aisled column arcade basilica with six bays each in the naos and a rectangular chancel with side rooms within a straight east wall. The southern room served as a martyrion. Two entrances were in the south wall, one in the west wall and probably another in the north wall. The dimensions between the walls were 19 × 12 meters. The four fragments of column capitals found in the collapse outside show different Corinthian styles, three of which have classic acanthus leaves. From the cornice surrounding the inner walls of the apse, two stone cuboids with a heavy bulge profile and side borders have been preserved.

The lintel stone of the western door in the south wall was completely preserved in two parts lying on the ground. It is worked with a wide outer ridge , cyma recta and three fascia (horizontal stripes). The door frames had no ornaments. The side walls of the windows on the south facade were decorated with cornices that were rolled up into volutes at the ends . Such volutes first appeared in the Eastern Church of Kalota (dated 492) and in the Phocas Church of Basufan at the same time. Strube dates the monastery church to before 530 AD.

literature

• Wedad Khoury: Deir Seta - Prospection et Analyze D'une Ville Morte Inedite En Syrie. 2 vols. Damascus 1987
• 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
• Howard Crosby Butler: Early Churches in Syria. Fourth to Seventh Centuries. Princeton monographs in art and archeology. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1929, pp. 128, 153; Reprint: Hakkert, Amsterdam 1969
• Hermann Wolfgang Beyer : The Syrian church building. Studies of late antique art history . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1925; Reprint: de Gruyter, Berlin 1978, ISBN 3-11-005705-0

Web links

Commons : Deir Seta  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Enno Littmann : Semitic Inscriptions. Part IV of the Publications of an American Archaeological Expedition to Syria in 1899-1900. The Century, New York 1904, pp. 216f, online at Archive.org
2. ↑ Beyer, p. 78
3. ↑ Strube, pp. 23-25
4. ^ Robert Milburn: Early Christian Art and Architecture. University of California Press, Berkeley 1988, p. 211
5. ↑ Strube, pp. 27-30