237 Items
Sergibleh
The C5th century church was very well preserved apart from on the south side, as the ruins were located at a short distance from modern dwellings. The only exception to this was the fact that the bema had been disturbed by looters.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Architecture, Bema, C5th, Church, Jebel Halaqa, Limestone Massif, Sergibleh, Syria
Dehes
Dehes is in the south of the Jebel Barisha and has been excavated by a French team since it was initially surveyed by Tchalenko. The C5th church in the village is generally very well preserved and has a bema, chancel screen and the altar stone still extant at the time of the site visit.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Altar, Architecture, Bema, C5th, Chancel Screen, Dehes, Jebel Barisha, Limestone Massif, Syria
Sinkhar
Sinkhar is located in a valley between Batuta and Sheikh Sulaiman and, at the time of the site visit, was only accessible by walking for some distance. The C4th church in the village was severely overgrown, meaning that only a well-preserved chapel to the south of the main church, that was added in the C6th, could be accessed and it was impossible to find any trace of the bema and other features recorded by Tchalenko in the 1950s.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Architecture, Bema, C4th, C6th, Church, Jebel Seman, Limestone Massif, Sinkhar, Syria
Brad 561 Church
This church is a relatively large size considering that it stands directly to the north of the cathedral-sized Church of Julianos in Brad. An inscription dates it to 561.
Type: Architecture
Tags: 561, Architecture, Brad, Church, Jebel Seman, Limestone Massif, Syria
Brad Church of Julianos
Brad is on a high plateau in one of the more inaccessible areas of the Jebel Seman and was a large town in late antiquity, famous in hagiographical sources as the birthplace of St. Maroun. The Church of Julianos has been dated by inscriptions to 399-402 and is one of the largest churches in the region, with the remains of a large bema still visible and a side apse to the north and the west wall being the best preserved elements of the site at the time of visit. Much of the stone seemed to have been reused in the construction of local dwellings.
Type: Architecture
Tags: 399-402, Architecture, Bema, Brad, Church, Jebel Seman, Julianos, Limestone Massif, St. Maroun, Syria
Kimar
The modern village now surrounds the C5th church in Kimar, although a recently built house beside the site did not immediately threaten the ruins at the time of the site visit. The walls and bema were in relatively good condition, although nothing stood higher than around knee-height. At this site the bema had clear notches in the stone indicating that wooden seats and panels would have originally been attached to the stone base of the platform.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Architecture, Bema, C5th, Church, Jebel Seman, Kimar, Limestone Massif, Syria
Suganeh
The C4th church of Suganeh is located in the centre of the village and, on a visit in 1998, was surrounded by modern dwellings and at risk of being destroyed. At that time it was being used as a village rubbish dump and the stone was being taken for modern building projects. Only the apse, bema and a group of sarcophagi south of the apse were still extant at the time of the visit.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Architecture, Bema, C4th, Church, Jebel Seman, Limestone Massif, Suganeh, Syria
Palmyra Temple of Bel
The Temple of Bel as it appears today dates from the C1st-C2nd AD, but stands on a much older cult site near the date palm grove and Eqfa spring that enabled the foundation of a city in the middle of the Syrian desert. Later on the cella of the temple was adapted for use as a Christian church and faint traces of frescoes are still visible on the interior walls. It was also fortified in the middle ages and there was a village within the walls of the compound until the population was removed by the French authorities during their rule of Syria in the 1920s.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Archaeology, Architecture, Bel, C1st-C2nd, Church, Fresco, Islam, Medieval, Palmyra, Roman, Sculpture, Syria, Tadmor, Temple
Resafa Cisterns
Located in the Syrian desert approximately 25 kilometres south of the River Euphrates, Resafa depended on capturing seasonal rainwater and irrigation systems for its water. This water was then stored in large cisterns until needed.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Archaeology, Architecture, Byzantine, Cistern, Euphrates, Resafa, Roman, Sergiupolis, Syria, Water
The Church of the Entrance of the Theotokos in the Temple, Hama
This church dates back to the C5th, but has been damaged and rebuilt many times over its history. Before the current civil war, it was last rebuilt in the 1990s having sustained damage in the 1982 offensive by the Syrian government against the Muslim Brotherhood in the city. Elements of the earliest structure do survive and it is particularly interesting for being a transverse-nave church, a type more usually found in the Tur Abdin region of Turkey.
Although Hama, then known as Epiphania, was an important Christian centre in late antiquity, more recently it had one of the smallest Christian communities in a major city. For that reason this entry is linked to nearby Homs, rather than treating Hama as a separate collection of data.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Architecture, C20th, C5th, Church, Hama, Syria, The Entrance of the Theotokos in the Temple, Transverse nave, Tur Abdin, Turkey