Serjilla
Serjilla , Arabic سيرجيلة, more rarely Serdjilla, Sirdjilla; was an early Byzantine settlement in the northern Syrian limestone massif in northwest Syria . The very well-preserved stately residential buildings from the 5th and 6th centuries AD make Serjilla the most famous of the Dead Cities .
location
Serjilla is located in the Idlib governorate at an altitude of about 700 meters in the barren and sparsely populated hill country of the Jebel Zawiye (also Jebel Riha). The place is about 35 kilometers south of Idlib and can be reached via Ariha . Alternatively, a road leads from Maarat an-Numan to the west via the small town of Kafr Nabl (ten kilometers) and after a further six kilometers past the smaller ancient settlements of Btirsa and Muglaya (Muğleyya). There a road branches off to the north, after two kilometers you reach Ba'uda , which can be recognized by a pyramid tomb, and after another two kilometers Serjilla. The large early Byzantine city of al-Bara is on a new road four kilometers northwest. The ruins can be seen from the bus parking lot in a wide valley.
Cityscape
In the center of the place, whose history begins in the middle of the 4th century and ends after the 7th century, the two best preserved buildings are next to each other. They date from the 5th century and form a public building complex. In terms of design, they correspond to the large private villas, i.e. two-storey gabled houses made from solid limestone blocks and seamlessly layered . There is a general distinction that private houses usually open to a courtyard surrounded by a high wall, while the entrances to public buildings are oriented towards the street.
Public buildings
The two houses were examined by Melchior Comte de Vogüé in the 1860s and have hardly changed in their state of preservation since then.
The Andron, which functions as a community and inn for men, had a store room or stable on the ground floor and a large undivided room on the upper floor that was used as a meeting room. A two-storey portico with closed side walls and three columns is presented on the southern entrance side . Column porticoes on houses are typical of the Jebel Zawiye area in the 5th and 6th centuries, while in the north of the limestone massif at least the lower architraves were supported by pillars . The columns are crowned on each floor by simple Doric capitals, which are designed in a special style variant with laterally protruding widenings. This local style of capital was referred to as "Syrian" by Howard Crosby Butler. The Syrian capital was reserved for residential buildings, it only occurs in churches in Btirsa and in the southern church of Ruweiha . Butler stayed briefly in Serjilla for the first time as part of the American expedition in 1899/1900. On his next visit in 1904/1905 he carried out detailed investigations.
The adjoining bathhouse, oriented in the same direction, can be chronologically classified according to a remains of a mosaic floor that Butler found in 1900. The mosaic shows a pomegranate tree in a somewhat more provincial representation than a comparable mosaic motif that was found in the Eliaskirche in Madaba , Jordan . It bears the date 784 of the Seleucid era , which corresponds to AD 473. In the northern half of the thermal baths there was a lounge and a changing room, in the southern part, which has only been preserved in small remnants, there was a succession of hot and cold water baths. There was a cistern outside. The northern part of the building with the still upright gable had a gable roof , the flat roof of the southern extension was covered with stone slabs. The pool was founded by a Julianos and his wife Donna.
The rectangular windows on the west side have no frame design; instead, two adjacent arched windows on the east side are framed by a profile strip that runs over the window, bends horizontally at the bottom corner of the window and breaks off after a short distance. This shows how the design of the churches could also influence secular buildings. In churches that were built at the same time, the east windows on the altar were emphasized compared to the other windows. The emphasis on these windows suggests that underneath was the main entrance to the thermal baths.
Private homes
Many of the other secular buildings also demonstrate the prosperity and urban character of the place. The rich design of the facade with cornices and window frames on house number 18, which is located in a slightly higher part of the village at the rear of the entrance, is unusual. The building had a two-storey porch on the south side, of which the entire lower column position is in situ . Its condition has not changed since Butler's description in 1900. The capital variants of the upper portico columns correspond to those of the Muglaya church, so the house was probably built at the end of the 5th century. In general, the first private houses with cornices on the outer walls in Jebel Zawiye did not appear until after the middle of the 5th century. House number 17 below dates from the 6th century.
Residences No. 2 and No. 9 also had a vestibule to the south. From No. 2 a column with a capital and architrave stone and the facade to the upper cornice are preserved. At house number 9 there are two lower pillars with architraves and parts of the outer walls in the north-west and east. The column capitals are Tuscan variants.
A special feature of Serjilla are, in addition to some windows, small round niches in the outer walls, framed by a profile, in which lamps were probably placed.
church
The three-aisled basilica of Serjilla corresponds in size and the shape of the apse to the churches in the neighboring towns of Dalloza and Muglaya. On each of the six pillars of the central nave high walls were "arcuated lintels" (architrave stones, which are carved in an arch on the underside). There were two entrances in the south wall, two in the north wall and at least one door on the west side. One door each in the south and north had a portico.
The semicircular apse lay within a straight east wall on the outside and was flanked by rectangular side rooms. The northern of the two served as a martyrion (reliquary chamber), the southern side room was connected to the side aisle by a door and another directly to the chancel and is therefore recognizable as the diakonicon . At least for this one adjoining room - in other comparable churches (such as in Jerada ) for both - an originally two-story height is secured.
In a later construction phase, the north side and the adjacent apse were given a transept-like extension. From the walls, the southern part of the apse up to the level of the apse cornice, the outer walls of the Martyrion, the eastern part of the south facade up to the eaves and some stone layers of the north wall have been preserved. Five Tuscan column capitals were found lying on the ground, four of them with a profiled and one with a smooth echinus . Butler dated the church to the middle of the 5th century and the extensions at the end of it.
literature
- Gérard Charpentier: Les bains de Serjilla. Syria, 71, 1994, pp. 113-142
- Christine Strube : The "Dead Cities". Town and country in northern Syria during late antiquity. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1996, pp. 11, 13, 74, ISBN 3805318405
- Christine Strube: Building decoration in the northern Syrian limestone massif. Vol. I. Forms of capitals, doors and cornices in the churches of the 4th and 5th centuries AD. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1993, pp. 154–159
- Howard Crosby Butler: Early Churches in Syria. Fourth to Seventh Centuries. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1929, p. 26 (Amsterdam 1969)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Hermann Wolfgang Beyer : The Syrian church building. Studies of late antique art history. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1925, p. 101
- ^ Josef Strzygowski : The newly found Orpheus mosaic in Jerusalem. In: Immanuel Benzinger (Hrsg.): Journal of the German Palestine Association. Vol. XXIII, Karl Baedeker, Leipzig 1901, p. 162 f, online at Archive.org
- ↑ Strube 1996, p. 13
- ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann : Qalb Lōze and Qal'at Sem'ān . The special development of northern Syriac late antique architecture. Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Meeting reports, year 1982, issue 6, CH Beck, Munich 1982, p. 35 f
- ↑ Strube 1996, p. 74 f; Strube 1993, pp. 157-159
- ↑ Strube 1993, p. 154 f
Coordinates: 35 ° 40 ′ 17 ″ N , 36 ° 35 ′ 2 ″ E