Qasr Ibrim Cathedral

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The former hilltop with the fortified city now protrudes from Lake Nasser as an island. In the center of the picture one of the basilica's wide arcades

The Cathedral of Qasr Ibrim , also known as St. Mary's Cathedral , was the episcopal church of Qasr Ibrim in Lower Nubia , built in the 7th century . The ruined city is located near the southern border of Egypt on a cliff that forms an island in Lake Nasser .

Design

The cathedral is a five-aisled wide arcade basilica , the high walls of the nave rest on long rectangular pillars made of sandstone blocks. The external dimensions are approximately 32 × 19 meters. The building was first described by Ugo Monneret de Villard at the beginning of the 20th century. The Christian archaeologist William Frend explored the church in 1963 and 1964 as the head of a British team for the Egypt Exploration Society . The lower part of the outer walls consists of the reused stone blocks of a temple, as they were only produced in Nubia and Egypt until the end of the 3rd century. The very large sandstone blocks come from an older construction phase, which is known as the "Old Church". The bricks, which are generally carefully worked with a toothed iron, ensure an unusually even structure of the masonry with relatively wide, but long horizontal bearing joints. In the outer facades, horizontal wooden beams were inserted into the wall at the height of the upper and lower window edges, more for decoration and less for static reasons. The wooden beams are also likely to have been recognizable on the once plastered wall surfaces and caused a facade structure. Wood was not common on the walls of the Nubian adobe buildings. Its use is a takeover by builders from Egypt, where wood inlays were common in early Christian church buildings.

The central nave is slightly wider than the side aisles. The central chancel, called Haikal in Coptic church buildings , is emphasized in the same width opposite the side apses . Behind the apse are two rooms, each supported by a column . Under these rooms there are two crypts that contained two and four burials, respectively. In the west facade opposite is the entrance with three doors through which a vestibule is reached. As is common in smaller Nubian churches, this anteroom is flanked by two adjoining rooms. The southern one contained a staircase, the northern side room was almost completely demolished in the Middle Ages .

The Armenian historian Abu Salih (around 1200) described the building with a domed roof. For static reasons this can be doubted. Inclined roof surfaces made of palm tree trunks are more in keeping with the conditions.

history

The core of the cathedral was dated by Frend to the middle of the 7th century. Older stones were also built into the inner southern high arcade wall, but much less carefully and with a different spacing between the pillars, which suggests a later renovation in Islamic times. The church was damaged in 1173 attacks by the Muslim Ayyubids . The residents then remained Christian and used the partially rebuilt church. After the city was conquered by troops of the Ottoman Empire in 1528, the church served as a mosque until it was finally destroyed in 1812.

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Coordinates: 22 ° 38 ′ 59 "  N , 31 ° 59 ′ 33"  E