Refade
Coordinates: 36 ° 17 ′ 34 ″ N , 36 ° 59 ′ 22 ″ E
Refade was an early Byzantine settlement in the Dead Cities area in northwest Syria . The former prosperity of the trading place can be seen in the ruins of stately houses from the 5th and 6th centuries AD. The monastery of Sitt er-Rum was located nearby .
location
Refade is located in Aleppo Governorate , about 33 kilometers northwest of Aleppo , west of the road that leads to the Simeon Monastery and further into the Afrin Valley. The ruins of the trading center extend over a wide area on the broad ridge of the Jebel Halaqa, a northern part of the northern Syrian limestone massif, on the edge of the plains of Qatura. The highest elevation of the karst rocky hill is reached a few kilometers south at 870 meters at the summit of Deschebel Sheikh Baraqat. Because of the thin layer of soil, the area around Refade can only be used as grazing land for goats and sheep; occasionally olive trees thrive, in the valley plains there are larger grain fields.
Three kilometers northwest of the small town of Dar Taizzah (Daret Azze), a road branches off to the left to Qatura, one kilometer away. Shortly before the village, a slope leads two kilometers north to Sitt er-Rum. Refade is another half a kilometer north. The Simeons Monastery can be seen three kilometers to the northeast, a stony footpath leads 3.5 kilometers through a rock valley to the former pilgrimage town of Deir Seman at the foot of the monastery hill .
history
The area around Qatura was already settled in Roman times. In the vicinity of what is now Qatura, the Romans carved cave tombs into the rock face in the 2nd century AD. The earliest tomb inscription from Qatura is dated 122 AD. Refade was one of the first Roman places in the area. The oldest dated inscription in the entire limestone mountain region from the year 73/74 AD was found here.
Until the 4th century there were a few small settlements in the region that mainly planted olive trees. The rise of Refade in the 5th and 6th centuries to a flourishing trading center in the midst of olive groves can be seen in the splendid residences of the large landowners and traders built during this period. A house inscription from 489 names a Kosmas as the owner. Other inscriptions on the lintels from the beginning of the 6th century contain Christian blessings. The Christian residents continued to live in their villages after the Arab conquest in the first half of the 7th century. From the 8th century the economic importance of the place was lost.
In contrast to the ancient villages in the area, Refade was not repopulated in the 19th century. Except for two simple farmsteads, whose residential buildings and cattle sheds were built into the ruins using rubble stones, the place remained deserted.
Cityscape Refade
The eye-catcher in the center of the village is the eight to nine meter high ruin of a tower from the 6th century. The function of such tower houses, of which more have been preserved in the area of the Dead Cities inside and outside the localities, is not entirely clear. A function as a camp or for surveillance is possible, although attacks by nomads on the rural population in the mountains were rarely a major problem. Such towers are also believed to be monastic retreats, which could have occupied a middle position between the stylite cult of Symeon and its imitators, which were widespread throughout the northern region of the mountainous region, and life in the monasteries.
Most of the residences of the large landowners have been badly damaged, and half a dozen of them are still two-story wall sections. Melchior Comte de Vogüé carried out the first investigations in the 1860s. The drawing of a villa published by him from the year 510 shows a two-storey facade with a portico made up of pillars on the ground floor and columns with variants of Ionic and Corinthian capitals on the upper floor . Above this, a strip of cornice stretches across the entire facade, which rolls into volutes at the ends . The ashlar masonry was worked extremely carefully; the ornaments on the outer walls adopted the treasure trove of Qal'at Sim'an, just as contemporary church architecture generally served as a model for residential buildings.
Sitt er rum
The single-nave hall church from the 4th century including the gable walls is well preserved, only the rectangular apse on the east side has disappeared apart from a remnant of a wall. Rectangular altar rooms were only found in smaller village churches and were relatively rare compared to the semicircular apses. They had a simple monopitch roof. The now isolated building was part of a monastery complex. Of other buildings nearby, only the stone pillars of a two-story vestibule are upright. The small structural remains of the residential buildings of Sitt er-Rum may once have formed, together with the stately residential area of Refade, the district of a coherent settlement.
Two tall pillars with architraves nearby belong to a Roman funerary monument. The Hypogeum of Eisidotos (Isodotus), son of Ptolemy is, according to the inscription on the architrave of the Arab Macedonian calendar on the 5th Hyperberetaios 201 (corresponding to October 152 n. Chr.) Dates. There were 15 sarcophagi in the underground tomb, carved out of the rock.
literature
- Christine Strube : The "Dead Cities". Town and country in northern Syria during late antiquity. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1996, ISBN 3-8053-1840-5
- Frank Rainer Scheck, Johannes Odenthal: Syria. High cultures between the Mediterranean and the Arabian desert. DuMont, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-7701-1337-3
Individual evidence
- ↑ Strube, p. 24
- ↑ Scheck, Odenthal, p. 293
- ↑ Melchior Comte de Vogüé: Syrie centrale. Architecture civile et religieuse du Ier au VIIe siècle. (1865-1877). Strube, p. 73, there illustration by de Vogüé p. 75
- ^ Murray Steuben Butler: Hellenistic Architecture in Syria. Princeton University, Princeton 1917, p. 16, online at Archive.org
- ^ Howard Crosby Butler: Syria. Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904-5 and 1909. Division I: Geography and Itinerary. EJ Brill, Leiden 1930, p. 68, online at Archive.org