2 Items
Hawwarin
Hawwarin was known as Evaria in late antiquity and is recorded as being the seat of two bishoprics. It appears to date from the Roman era as there is extensive evidence of Roman spolia in the Byzantine remains in the town. The local population talk of there having been seven basilicas in the settlement and evidence of three of these is still extant, although only one has been excavated thus far - by a Syrian team led by Wedad Khoury of the DGAM. The Roman dressed limestone blocks were carried to the site from some distance away as there are no quarries in the vicinity of the town and the modern dwellings are mud brick or cement. At the centre of the settlement is the mysterious "burj" or tower, which local people believe to have been part of an Umayyad hunting lodge, but which is built with Roman spoil and may well date from the Byzantine period as its nearest equivalent structure is the C6th stone tower at Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi. However, unlike the Qasr and neighbouring Khans/Caravanserai this tower has entrances to both the north and south rather than the single entrance that is the norm for such structures.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Archaeological Excavation, Architecture, Basilica, Byzantine, Castle, Church, Evaria, Hawwarin, Limestone, Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi, Roman, Syria, Tower, Umayyad
Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi
Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi is the western of the two famous Umayyad palaces built to the east and west of Palmyra. This palace was built on the site of an earlier building and the stone tower still extant from that earlier phase has an inscription suggesting that it may have been part of a C6th monastery complex. The Qasr ("little castle") was built of mud brick, field stone and bricks and the whole was covered with a layer of stucco. The façade was covered with stucco decoration that was excavated from the site in the early C20th and reconstructed in Damascus as the façade of the National Museum. The frescoes and a number of stucco figurative three dimensional sculptures taken from the site are now on display in the National Museum.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Byzantine, Castle, Fresco, Khan, Monastery, Palmyra, Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi, Sculpture, Stucco, Syria, Umayyad