Izra '
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إزرع / Izraʿ Izra ' |
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| Coordinates | 32 ° 51 ′ N , 36 ° 15 ′ E | ||
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| Country | Syria | ||
| Darʿā | |||
| ISO 3166-2 | SY-DR | ||
| height | 572 m | ||
| Residents | 15,000 | ||
 Small area with still preserved building style typical of the Hauran
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Izra ' ( Arabic إزرع, DMG Izraʿ ) is a small town in the Darʿā governorate in the south of Syria with a high Christian population, best known for the Georgskirche, one of the best preserved Byzantine churches in the country.
location
Izra 'is 600 meters high, about 80 kilometers south of Damascus and 3 kilometers east of the highway, which reaches the Jordanian border after another 37 kilometers . The place has about 15,000 inhabitants. The next larger city, Dar'a , is 30 kilometers south. On the western edge of the city is a station of the Hejaz Railway .
To the east, the place borders on a flat hilly area typical of the southern Syrian volcanic landscape of the Hauran , whose red-brown soils are heavily interspersed with basaltic rocks. Here olive trees are planted between stone walls . In the other cardinal directions there is open flat land, which is suitable for large-scale cultivation of crops.
Cityscape
From the founding of the Roman city until the 20th century, all buildings were built from black basalt. The northern part of the town is the old town, mostly inhabited by Christians. A few traditionally built massive houses are still preserved here. High stone walls surround intensely cultivated house gardens, narrow alleys in between suggest the former village structure. There are two churches from the 6th century that are used for worship services, and there are three more new churches.
The larger residential and business center consists of the two to three-story streets that are customary in the country. On the north-western outskirts there is a large cement plant that cannot be overlooked. The high military presence in the city is due to barracks in the area.
George's Church
The Greek Orthodox Basilica of Saint George ( Arabic كنيسة مار جرجس, Kineeset Mar Jirjis ) is the best preserved church in southern Syria. It is dated to the year 515 and stands on the site of an older Roman temple, of which there are no more remains. This is evident from an inscription on the lintel of the west entrance. The victory of the martyr George over the dragon becomes a symbol of the triumph over the pagan idols.
From the outside, a rectangular structure with carefully assembled basalt blocks can be seen, the only wall structure on three sides of which is a round arched window framed with a ledge above the door. On the east side, the choir is extended by an attached, trapezoidal apse on the outside . After deducting the choir, a square base remains for the church interior, in which an octagon has been inscribed, with the four corners being filled by niches. An inner octagon, which is formed by angular pillars, creates a central dome space with an outer corridor. The dome spans 10.2 meters measured on the diagonals between the eight pillars, the entire interior measures 18.7 meters diagonally. Instead of today's upper ribbon of windows and the pointed arch-shaped dome made of a wooden construction that was put on during a restoration in 1910, there was originally a massive dome without a drum . This was shown by the remains of pendentives that could be seen between the arches of the octagon.
Behind the iconostasis in the east, which closes a wide arched opening, lies a rectangular room, which is flanked by two rectangular side rooms. The adjoining horseshoe-shaped apse has a synthronon (priest's bench ) on the outer wall.
George's Church as a pilgrimage destination
The apse behind the altar houses the place of worship of a famous fertility saint , who is called al-Chidr (also al-Chadir , DMG al-Ḫa „r, "the Green") and is equated with Saint George (Arabic Mar Girgis ). This saint is also venerated by Sunni Muslims; the church becomes a qubba for them . In Islamic mythology , al-Khidr can be traced back to the pre-Islamic Syrian fertility god Adonis , but also to the biblical George and the prophet Elijah . The attribute fertility was retained, it is evident in the name al-Chadir , which means "green" or "green seed".
The holy grave (ḍarīḥ, pl. Ḍarā'iḥ) consists of a substructure of piled stone blocks. There is a wooden box on top of which the lid made of a glass plate shows that it is a sacrificial box for donations (Geldandūq) . Pieces of fabric are wrapped around this box and pictures of St. George are set up. At one end there are some bottles that contain holy oil. Numerous pictures are leaning on the walls of the room, which pilgrims can take with them if they donate a picture of the same size that they brought with them. You leave a part of you behind in exchange for an object that comes from the environment of the sacred and is charged with blessing power ( baraka ) . Believers do not assume that the remains of St. George are actually located in this place, but only his spirit or soul (rūḥ , plural arwāḥ) . Muslims and Christians alike have access to the tomb, whereby the differences in religious practice are maintained: Muslims take off their shoes when entering, Christians do not.
Traditionally or were on the outside of the enclosure and even in the church sacrifice complete. In the past, a gutter around the altar with a drain used to hold the blood of the sheep or goats killed. Most of the sacrificial rituals that take place outside the church are performed by Muslims.
Elias Church
About 200 meters away, surrounded by houses, is the Greek Catholic Church of the Prophet Elias from 542. The roughly square plan was expanded to form a cross with two rectangular extensions on the side and a wide, semicircular apse in the east. In the place of today's wooden dome with high windows in the drum zone there was a lower dome. Another new feature is a flat concrete roof, which replaces the former wooden structure, and a bell tower.
literature
- Johannes Odenthal: Syria. High cultures between the Mediterranean and the Arabian desert. DuMont, Cologne 1983, p. 123 f
- Walter Karnapp: The dome problem of St. George in Ezra (Syria). In: Walter Nikolaus Schumacher (Ed.): Tortulae. Studies on early Christian and Byzantine monuments. Festschrift for Johannes Kollwitz. Herder, Rome / Freiburg / Vienna 1966, pp. 178–186
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Marcell Restle : The history of exploration of the architectural monuments in Hauran. Vienna, p. 6 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 307 kB)
- ↑ Jean Lassus: Izr'a. St. George. In: Beat Brenk (ed.): Late antiquity and early Christianity. (Propylaea art history) Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main 1985, p. 229f
- ↑ Gebhard Fartacek: pilgrim sites in the Syrian periphery. An ethnological study on the cognitive construction of sacred places and their practical relevance. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2003, pp. 60–64
